Written by
Rita Dove |
She was thinner, with a mannered gauntness
as she paused just inside the double
glass doors to survey the room, silvery cape
billowing dramatically behind her.What's this,
I thought, lifting a hand until
she nodded and started across the parquet;
that's when I saw she was dressed all in gray,
from a kittenish cashmere skirt and cowl
down to the graphite signature of her shoes.
"Sorry I'm late," she panted, though
she wasn't, sliding into the chair, her cape
tossed off in a shudder of brushed steel.
We kissed.Then I leaned back to peruse
my blighted child, this wary aristocratic mole.
"How's business?" I asked, and hazarded
a motherly smile to keep from crying out:
Are you content to conduct your life
as a cliché and, what's worse,
an anachronism, the brooding artist's demimonde?
Near the rue Princesse they had opened
a gallery cum souvenir shop which featured
fuzzy off-color Monets next to his acrylics, no doubt,
plus beared African drums and the occasional miniature
gargoyle from Notre Dame the Great Artist had
carved at breakfast with a pocket knife.
"Tourists love us.The Parisians, of course"--
she blushed--"are amused, though not without
a certain admiration . . ."
The Chateaubriand
arrived on a bone-white plate, smug and absolute
in its fragrant crust, a black plug steaming
like the heart plucked from the chest of a worthy enemy;
one touch with her fork sent pink juices streaming.
"Admiration for what?"Wine, a bloody
Pinot Noir, brought color to her cheeks."Why,
the aplomb with which we've managed
to support our Art"--meaning he'd convinced
her to pose nude for his appalling canvases,
faintly futuristic landscapes strewn
with carwrecks and bodies being chewed
by rabid cocker spaniels."I'd like to come by
the studio," I ventured, "and see the new stuff."
"Yes, if you wish . . ."A delicate rebuff
before the warning: "He dresses all
in black now.Me, he drapes in blues and carmine--
and even though I think it's kinda cute,
in company I tend toward more muted shades."
She paused and had the grace
to drop her eyes.She did look ravishing,
spookily insubstantial, a lipstick ghost on tissue,
or as if one stood on a fifth-floor terrace
peering through a fringe of rain at Paris'
dreaming chimney pots, each sooty issue
wobbling skyward in an ecstatic oracular spiral.
"And he never thinks of food.I wish
I didn't have to plead with him to eat. . . ."Fruit
and cheese appeared, arrayed on leaf-green dishes.
I stuck with café crème."This Camembert's
so ripe," she joked, "it's practically grown hair,"
mucking a golden glob complete with parsley sprig
onto a heel of bread.Nothing seemed to fill
her up: She swallowed, sliced into a pear,
speared each tear-shaped lavaliere
and popped the dripping mess into her pretty mouth.
Nowhere the bright tufted fields, weighted
vines and sun poured down out of the south.
"But are you happy?"Fearing, I whispered it
quickly."What?You know, Mother"--
she bit into the starry rose of a fig--
"one really should try the fruit here."
I've lost her, I thought, and called for the bill.
|
Written by
Anne Sexton |
Slim inquirer, while the old fathers sleep
you are reworking their soil, you have
a grocery store there down under the earth
and it is well stocked with broken wine bottles,
old cigars, old door knobs and earth,
that great brown flour that you kiss each day.
There are dark stars in the cool evening and
you fondle them like killer birds' beaks.
But what I want to know is why when small boys
dig you up for curiosity and cut you in half
why each half lives and crawls away as if whole.
Have you no beginning and end? Which heart is
the real one? Which eye the seer? Why
is it in the infinite plan that you would
be severed and rise from the dead like a gargoyle
with two heads?
|
Written by
Amy Lowell |
Slowly, without force, the rain drops into the
city. It stops a moment
on the carved head of Saint John, then slides on again, slipping
and trickling
over his stone cloak. It splashes from the lead conduit
of a gargoyle,
and falls from it in turmoil on the stones in the Cathedral square.
Where are the people, and why does the fretted steeple sweep about
in the sky?
Boom! The sound swings against the rain. Boom,
again! After it, only water
rushing in the gutters, and the turmoil from the spout of the gargoyle.
Silence. Ripples and mutters. Boom!
The room is damp, but warm. Little flashes swarm about
from the firelight.
The lustres of the chandelier are bright, and clusters of rubies
leap in the bohemian glasses on the `etagere'. Her hands
are restless,
but the white masses of her hair are quite still. Boom! Will
it never cease
to torture, this iteration! Boom! The vibration
shatters a glass
on the `etagere'. It lies there, formless and glowing,
with all its crimson gleams shot out of pattern, spilled, flowing
red,
blood-red. A thin bell-note pricks through the silence. A
door creaks.
The old lady speaks: "Victor, clear away that broken
glass." "Alas!
Madame, the bohemian glass!" "Yes, Victor, one hundred
years ago
my father brought it --" Boom! The room shakes,
the servitor quakes.
Another goblet shivers and breaks. Boom!
It rustles at the window-pane, the smooth, streaming rain, and he
is shut
within its clash and murmur. Inside is his candle, his
table, his ink,
his pen, and his dreams. He is thinking, and the walls
are pierced with
beams of sunshine, slipping through young green. A fountain
tosses itself
up at the blue sky, and through the spattered water in the basin
he can see
copper carp, lazily floating among cold leaves. A wind-harp
in a cedar-tree
grieves and whispers, and words blow into his brain, bubbled, iridescent,
shooting up like flowers of fire, higher and higher. Boom!
The flame-flowers snap on their slender stems. The fountain
rears up
in long broken spears of dishevelled water and flattens into the
earth. Boom!
And there is only the room, the table, the candle, and the sliding
rain.
Again, Boom! -- Boom! -- Boom! He stuffs his fingers
into his ears.
He sees corpses, and cries out in fright. Boom! It
is night,
and they are shelling the city! Boom! Boom!
A child wakes and is afraid, and weeps in the darkness. What
has made
the bed shake? "Mother, where are you? I am
awake." "Hush, my Darling,
I am here." "But, Mother, something so ***** happened,
the room shook."
Boom! "Oh! What is it? What is
the matter?" Boom! "Where is Father?
I am so afraid." Boom! The child sobs and
shrieks. The house
trembles and creaks. Boom!
Retorts, globes, tubes, and phials lie shattered. All
his trials
oozing across the floor. The life that was his choosing,
lonely, urgent,
goaded by a hope, all gone. A weary man in a ruined laboratory,
that is his story. Boom! Gloom and ignorance,
and the jig of drunken brutes.
Diseases like snakes crawling over the earth, leaving trails of
slime.
Wails from people burying their dead. Through the window,
he can see
the rocking steeple. A ball of fire falls on the lead
of the roof,
and the sky tears apart on a spike of flame. Up the spire,
behind the lacings of stone, zigzagging in and out of the carved
tracings,
squirms the fire. It spouts like yellow wheat from the
gargoyles, coils round
the head of Saint John, and aureoles him in light. It
leaps into the night
and hisses against the rain. The Cathedral is a burning
stain on the white,
wet night.
Boom! The Cathedral is a torch, and the houses next to
it begin to scorch.
Boom! The bohemian glass on the `etagere' is no longer
there.
Boom! A stalk of flame sways against the red damask curtains.
The old lady cannot walk. She watches the creeping stalk
and counts.
Boom! -- Boom! -- Boom!
The poet rushes into the street, and the rain wraps him in a sheet
of silver.
But it is threaded with gold and powdered with scarlet beads. The
city burns.
Quivering, spearing, thrusting, lapping, streaming, run the flames.
Over roofs, and walls, and shops, and stalls. Smearing
its gold on the sky,
the fire dances, lances itself through the doors, and lisps and
chuckles
along the floors.
The child wakes again and screams at the yellow petalled flower
flickering at the window. The little red lips of flame
creep along
the ceiling beams.
The old man sits among his broken experiments and looks at
the burning Cathedral. Now the streets are swarming with
people.
They seek shelter and crowd into the cellars. They shout
and call,
and over all, slowly and without force, the rain drops into the
city.
Boom! And the steeple crashes down among the people. Boom! Boom,
again!
The water rushes along the gutters. The fire roars and
mutters. Boom!
|
Written by
Carl Sandburg |
I SAW a mouth jeering. A smile of melted red iron ran over it. Its laugh was full of nails rattling. It was a child’s dream of a mouth.
A fist hit the mouth: knuckles of gun-metal driven by an electric wrist and shoulder. It was a child’s dream of an arm.
The fist hit the mouth over and over, again and again. The mouth bled melted iron, and laughed its laughter of nails rattling.
And I saw the more the fist pounded the more the mouth laughed. The fist is pounding and pounding, and the mouth answering.
|
Written by
Robert William Service |
(The Wounded Canadian Speaks)
My leg? It's off at the knee.
Do I miss it? Well, some. You see
I've had it since I was born;
And lately a devilish corn.
(I rather chuckle with glee
To think how I've fooled that corn.)
But I'll hobble around all right.
It isn't that, it's my face.
Oh I know I'm a hideous sight,
Hardly a thing in place;
Sort of gargoyle, you'd say.
Nurse won't give me a glass,
But I see the folks as they pass
Shudder and turn away;
Turn away in distress . . .
Mirror enough, I guess.
I'm gay! You bet I AM gay;
But I wasn't a while ago.
If you'd seen me even to-day,
The darndest picture of woe,
With this Caliban mug of mine,
So ravaged and raw and red,
Turned to the wall -- in fine,
Wishing that I was dead. . . .
What has happened since then,
Since I lay with my face to the wall,
The most despairing of men?
Listen! I'll tell you all.
That poilu across the way,
With the shrapnel wound in his head,
Has a sister: she came to-day
To sit awhile by his bed.
All morning I heard him fret:
"Oh, when will she come, Fleurette?"
Then sudden, a joyous cry;
The tripping of little feet,
The softest, tenderest sigh,
A voice so fresh and sweet;
Clear as a silver bell,
Fresh as the morning dews:
"C'est toi, c'est toi, Marcel!
Mon frère, comme je suis heureuse!"
So over the blanket's rim
I raised my terrible face,
And I saw -- how I envied him!
A girl of such delicate grace;
Sixteen, all laughter and love;
As gay as a linnet, and yet
As tenderly sweet as a dove;
Half woman, half child -- Fleurette.
Then I turned to the wall again.
(I was awfully blue, you see),
And I thought with a bitter pain:
"Such visions are not for me."
So there like a log I lay,
All hidden, I thought, from view,
When sudden I heard her say:
"Ah! Who is that malheureux?"
Then briefly I heard him tell
(However he came to know)
How I'd smothered a bomb that fell
Into the trench, and so
None of my men were hit,
Though it busted me up a bit.
Well, I didn't quiver an eye,
And he chattered and there she sat;
And I fancied I heard her sigh --
But I wouldn't just swear to that.
And maybe she wasn't so bright,
Though she talked in a merry strain,
And I closed my eyes ever so tight,
Yet I saw her ever so plain:
Her dear little tilted nose,
Her delicate, dimpled chin,
Her mouth like a budding rose,
And the glistening pearls within;
Her eyes like the violet:
Such a rare little queen -- Fleurette.
And at last when she rose to go,
The light was a little dim,
And I ventured to peep, and so
I saw her, graceful and slim,
And she kissed him and kissed him, and oh
How I envied and envied him!
So when she was gone I said
In rather a dreary voice
To him of the opposite bed:
"Ah, friend, how you must rejoice!
But me, I'm a thing of dread.
For me nevermore the bliss,
The thrill of a woman's kiss."
Then I stopped, for lo! she was there,
And a great light shone in her eyes;
And me! I could only stare,
I was taken so by surprise,
When gently she bent her head:
"May I kiss you, Sergeant?" she said.
Then she kissed my burning lips
With her mouth like a scented flower,
And I thrilled to the finger-tips,
And I hadn't even the power
To say: "God bless you, dear!"
And I felt such a precious tear
Fall on my withered cheek,
And darn it! I couldn't speak.
And so she went sadly away,
And I knew that my eyes were wet.
Ah, not to my dying day
Will I forget, forget!
Can you wonder now I am gay?
God bless her, that little Fleurette!
|
Written by
Carl Sandburg |
Momus is the name men give your face,
The brag of its tone, like a long low steamboat whistle
Finding a way mid mist on a shoreland,
Where gray rocks let the salt water shatter spray
Against horizons purple, silent.
Yes, Momus,
Men have flung your face in bronze
To gaze in gargoyle downward on a street-whirl of folk.
They were artists did this, shaped your sad mouth,
Gave you a tall forehead slanted with calm, broad wisdom;
All your lips to the corners and your cheeks to the high bones
Thrown over and through with a smile that forever
wishes and wishes, purple, silent, fled from all the
iron things of life, evaded like a sought bandit, gone
into dreams, by God.
I wonder, Momus,
Whether shadows of the dead sit somewhere and look
with deep laughter
On men who play in terrible earnest the old, known,
solemn repetitions of history.
A droning monotone soft as sea laughter hovers from
your kindliness of bronze,
You give me the human ease of a mountain peak, purple,
silent;
Granite shoulders heaving above the earth curves,
Careless eye-witness of the spawning tides of men and
women
Swarming always in a drift of millions to the dust of toil,
the salt of tears,
And blood drops of undiminishing war.
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