Written by
Jean Valentine |
Jane is big
with death, Don
sad and kind - Jane
though she's dying
is full of mind
We talk about the table
the little walnut one
how it's like
Emily Dickinson's
But Don says No
Dickinson's
was made of iron.
No
said Jane
Of flesh.
|
Written by
Jean Valentine |
We met for supper in your flat-bottomed boat.
I got there first: in a white dress: I remember
Wondering if you'd come.
Then you shot over the bank,
A Virgilian ****** Jim, and poled us off
To a little sea-food barker's cave you knew.
What'll you have? you said.
Eels hung down,
Bamboozled claws hung up from the crackling weeds.
The light was all behind us.
To one side
In a dish of ice was a shell shaped like a sand-dollar
But worked with Byzantine blue and gold.
What's that?
Well, I've never seen it before, you said,
And I don't know how it tastes.
Oh well, said I, if it's bad,
I'm not too hungry, are you? We'd have the shell.
.
.
I know just how you feel, you said.
And asked for it; we held out our hands.
Six Dollars! barked the barker, For This Beauty!
We fell down laughing in your flat-bottomed boat, .
And then I woke up: in a white dress:
Dry as a bone on dry land, Jim,
Bone dry, old, in a dry land, Jim, my Jim.
|
Written by
Jean Valentine |
Late have I called &
late my
beloved
was blessing me
I was covering
my breasts with my arms
"Those doves"
you said
In the sun I took my arms away
|
Written by
Jean Valentine |
So what use was poetry
to a white empty house?
Wolf, swan, hare,
in by the fire.
And when your tree
crashed through your house,
what use then
was all your power?
It was the use of you.
It was the flower.
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