Written by
Lisel Mueller |
In Sleeping Beauty's castle
the clock strikes one hundred years
and the girl in the tower returns to the world.
So do the servants in the kitchen,
who don't even rub their eyes.
The cook's right hand, lifted
an exact century ago,
completes its downward arc
to the kitchen boy's left ear;
the boy's tensed vocal cords
finally let go
the trapped, enduring whimper,
and the fly, arrested mid-plunge
above the strawberry pie
fulfills its abiding mission
and dives into the sweet, red glaze.
As a child I had a book
with a picture of that scene.
I was too young to notice
how fear persists, and how
the anger that causes fear persists,
that its trajectory can't be changed
or broken, only interrupted.
My attention was on the fly:
that this slight body
with its transparent wings
and life-span of one human day
still craved its particular share
of sweetness, a century later.
|
Written by
Robert William Service |
There's sunshine in the heart of me,
My blood sings in the breeze;
The mountains are a part of me,
I'm fellow to the trees.
My golden youth I'm squandering,
Sun-libertine am I;
A-wandering, a-wandering,
Until the day I die.
I was once, I declare, a Stone-Age man,
And I roomed in the cool of a cave;
I have known, I will swear, in a new life-span,
The fret and the sweat of a slave:
For far over all that folks hold worth,
There lives and there leaps in me
A love of the lowly things of earth,
And a passion to be free.
To pitch my tent with no prosy plan,
To range and to change at will;
To mock at the mastership of man,
To seek Adventure's thrill.
Carefree to be, as a bird that sings;
To go my own sweet way;
To reck not at all what may befall,
But to live and to love each day.
To make my body a temple pure
Wherein I dwell serene;
To care for the things that shall endure,
The simple, sweet and clean.
To oust out envy and hate and rage,
To breathe with no alarm;
For Nature shall be my anchorage,
And none shall do me harm.
To shun all lures that debauch the soul,
The orgied rites of the rich;
To eat my crust as a rover must
With the rough-neck down in the ditch.
To trudge by his side whate'er betide;
To share his fire at night;
To call him friend to the long trail-end,
And to read his heart aright.
To scorn all strife, and to view all life
With the curious eyes of a child;
From the plangent sea to the prairie,
From the slum to the heart of the Wild.
From the red-rimmed star to the speck of sand,
From the vast to the greatly small;
For I know that the whole for good is planned,
And I want to see it all.
To see it all, the wide world-way,
From the fig-leaf belt to the Pole;
With never a one to say me nay,
And none to cramp my soul.
In belly-pinch I will pay the price,
But God! let me be free;
For once I know in the long ago,
They made a slave of me.
In a flannel shirt from earth's clean dirt,
Here, pal, is my calloused hand!
Oh, I love each day as a rover may,
Nor seek to understand.
To enjoy is good enough for me;
The gipsy of God am I;
Then here's a hail to each flaring dawn!
And here's a cheer to the night that's gone!
And may I go a-roaming on
Until the day I die!
Then every star shall sing to me
Its song of liberty;
And every morn shall bring to me
Its mandate to be free.
In every throbbing vein of me
I'll feel the vast Earth-call;
O body, heart and brain of me
Praise Him who made it all!
|
Written by
Anne Sexton |
Jean, death comes close to us all,
flapping its awful wings at us
and the gluey wings crawl up our nose.
Our children tremble in their teen-age cribs,
whirling off on a thumb or a motorcycle,
mine pushed into gnawing a stilbestrol cancer
I passed on like hemophilia,
or yours in the seventh grade, with her spleen
smacked in by the balance beam.
And we, mothers, crumpled, and flyspotted
with bringing them this far
can do nothing now but pray.
Let us put your three children
and my two children,
ages ranging from eleven to twenty-one,
and send them in a large air net up to God,
with many stamps, real air mail,
and huge signs attached:
SPECIAL HANDLING.
DO NOT STAPLE, FOLD OR MUTILATE!
And perhaps He will notice
and pass a psalm over them
for keeping safe for a whole,
for a whole God-damned life-span.
And not even a muddled angel will
peek down at us in our foxhole.
And He will not have time
to send down an eyedropper of prayer for us,
the mothering thing of us,
as we drip into the soup
and drown
in the worry festering inside us,
lest our children
go so fast
they go.
|
Written by
Philip Levine |
In Lake Forest, a suburb of Chicago,
a woman sits at her desk to write
me a letter. She holds a photograph
of me up to the light, one taken
17 years ago in a high school class
in Providence. She sighs, and the sigh
smells of mouthwash and tobacco.
If she were writing by candlelight
she would now be in the dark, for
a living flame would refuse to be fed
by such pure exhaustion. Actually
she is in the dark, for the man
she's about to address in her odd prose
had a life span of one 125th of a second
in the eye of a Nikon, and then he
politely asked the photographer to
get lost, whispering the request so as
not to offend the teacher presiding.
Those students are now in their thirties,
the Episcopal girls in their plaid skirts
and bright crested blazers have gone
unprepared, though French-speaking, into
a world of liars, pimps, and brokers.
2.7% have died by their own hands,
and all the others have considered
the act at least once. Not one now
remembers my name, not one recalls
the reading I gave of César Vallejo's
great "memoriam" to his brother Miguel,
not even the girl who sobbed and
had to be escorted to the school nurse,
calmed, and sent home in a cab. Evenings
in Lake Forest in mid-December drop
suddenly; one moment the distant sky
is a great purple canvas, and then it's
gone, and no stars emerge; however,
not the least hint of the stockyards
or slaughterhouses is allowed to drift
out to the suburbs, so it's a deathless
darkness with no more perfume than
cellophane. "Our souls are mingling
now somewhere in the open spaces
between Illinois and you," she writes.
When I read the letter, two weeks
from now, forwarded by my publisher,
I will suddenly discover a truth
of our lives on earth, and I'll bless
Mrs. William Settle of Lake Forest
for giving me more than I gave
her, for addressing me as Mr. Levine,
the name my father bore, a name
a man could take with courage
and pride into the empire of death.
I'll read even unto the second page,
unstartled by the phrase "By now
you must have guessed, I am
a dancer." Soon snow will fall
on the Tudor houses of the suburbs,
turning the elegant parked sedans
into anonymous mounds; the winds
will sweep in over the Rockies
and across the great freezing plains
where America first died, winds
so fierce boys and men turn their backs
to them and simply weep, and yet
in all that air the soul of Mrs. William
Settle will not release me, not even
for one second. Male and female,
aged and middle-aged, we ride it out
blown eastward toward our origins,
one impure being become wind. Above
the Middle West, truth and beauty
are one though never meant to be.
|
Written by
Francesco Petrarch |
CANZONE I. Che debb' io far? che mi consigli, Amore? HE ASKS COUNSEL OF LOVE, WHETHER HE SHOULD FOLLOW LAURA, OR STILL ENDURE EXISTENCE. What should I do? what, Love, dost thou advise?Full time it is to die:And longer than I wish have I delay'd.My mistress is no more, and with her gone my heart;To follow her, I must needBreak short the course of my afflictive years:To view her here belowI ne'er can hope; and irksome 'tis to wait.Since that my every joyBy her departure unto tears is turn'd,Of all its sweets my life has been deprived. Thou, Love, dost feel, therefore to thee I plain,How grievous is my loss;I know my sorrows grieve and weigh thee down,E'en as our common cause: for on one rockWe both have wreck'd our bark;And in one instant was its sun obscured.What genius can with wordsRightly describe my lamentable state?Ah, blind, ungrateful world!Thou hast indeed just cause with me to mourn;That beauty thou didst hold with her is fled! Fall'n is thy glory, and thou seest it not;Unworthy thou with her,While here she dwelt, acquaintance to maintain.Or to be trodden by her saintly feet;For that, which is so fair,Should with its presence decorate the skiesBut I, a wretch who, reftOf her, prize nor myself nor mortal life,[Pg 234]Recall her with my tears:This only of my hope's vast sum remains;And this alone doth still support me here. Ah, me! her charming face is earth become,Which wont unto our thoughtTo picture heaven and happiness above!Her viewless form inhabits paradise,Divested of that veil,Which shadow'd while below her bloom of life,Once more to put it on,And never then to cast it off again;When so much more divine,And glorious render'd, 'twill by us be view'd,As mortal beauty to eternal yields. More bright than ever, and a lovelier fair,Before me she appears,Where most she's conscious that her sight will pleaseThis is one pillar that sustains my life;The other her dear name,That to my heart sounds so delightfully.But tracing in my mind,That she who form'd my choicest hope is deadE'en in her blossom'd prime;Thou knowest, Love, full well what I become:She I trust sees it too, who dwells with truth. Ye sweet associates, who admired her charms,Her life angelical,And her demeanour heavenly upon earthFor me lament, and be by pity wroughtNo wise for her, who, risenTo so much peace, me has in warfare left;Such, that should any shutThe road to follow her, for some length of time,What Love declares to meAlone would check my cutting through the tie;But in this guise he reasons from within: "The mighty grief transporting thee restrain;For passions uncontroll'dForfeit that heaven, to which thy soul aspires,Where she is living whom some fancy dead;[Pg 235]While at her fair remainsShe smiles herself, sighing for thee alone;And that her fame, which livesIn many a clime hymn'd by thy tongue, may ne'erBecome extinct, she prays;But that her name should harmonize thy voice;If e'er her eyes were lovely held, and dear."Fly the calm, green retreat;And ne'er approach where song and laughter dwell,O strain; but wail be thine!It suits thee ill with the glad throng to stay,Thou sorrowing widow wrapp'd in garb of woe.
|
Written by
Francesco Petrarch |
CANZONE XXI. I' vo pensando, e nel pensier m' assale. SELF-CONFLICT. Ceaseless I think, and in each wasting thoughtSo strong a pity for myself appears,[Pg 227]That often it has broughtMy harass'd heart to new yet natural tears;Seeing each day my end of life draw nigh,Instant in prayer, I ask of God the wingsWith which the spirit springs,Freed from its mortal coil, to bliss on high;But nothing, to this hour, prayer, tear, or sigh,Whatever man could do, my hopes sustain:And so indeed in justice should it be;Able to stay, who went and fell, that heShould prostrate, in his own despite, remain.But, lo! the tender armsIn which I trust are open to me still,Though fears my bosom fillOf others' fate, and my own heart alarms,Which worldly feelings spur, haply, to utmost ill. One thought thus parleys with my troubled mind—"What still do you desire, whence succour wait?Ah! wherefore to this great,This guilty loss of time so madly blind?Take up at length, wisely take up your part:Tear every root of pleasure from your heart,Which ne'er can make it blest,Nor lets it freely play, nor calmly rest.If long ago with tedium and disgustYou view'd the false and fugitive delightsWith which its tools a treacherous world requites,Why longer then repose in it your trust,Whence peace and firmness are in exile thrust?While life and vigour stay,The bridle of your thoughts is in your power:Grasp, guide it while you may:So clogg'd with doubt, so dangerous is delay,The best for wise reform is still the present hour. "Well known to you what rapture still has beenShed on your eyes by the dear sight of herWhom, for your peace it wereBetter if she the light had never seen;And you remember well (as well you ought)[Pg 228]Her image, when, as with one conquering bound,Your heart in prey she caught,Where flame from other light no entrance found.She fired it, and if that fallacious heatLasted long years, expecting still one day,Which for our safety came not, to repay,It lifts you now to hope more blest and sweet,Uplooking to that heaven around your headImmortal, glorious spread;If but a glance, a brief word, an old song,Had here such power to charmYour eager passion, glad of its own harm,How far 'twill then exceed if now the joy so strong." Another thought the while, severe and sweet,Laborious, yet delectable in scope,Takes in my heart its seat,Filling with glory, feeding it with hope;Till, bent alone on bright and deathless fame,It feels not when I freeze, or burn in flame,When I am pale or ill,And if I crush it rises stronger still.This, from my helpless cradle, day by day,Has strengthen'd with my strength, grown with my growth,Till haply now one tomb must cover both:When from the flesh the soul has pass'd away,No more this passion comrades it as here;For fame—if, after death,Learning speak aught of me—is but a breath:Wherefore, because I fearHopes to indulge which the next hour may chase,I would old error leave, and the one truth embrace. But the third wish which fills and fires my heartO'ershadows all the rest which near it spring:Time, too, dispels a part,While, but for her, self-reckless grown, I sing.And then the rare light of those beauteous eyes,Sweetly before whose gentle heat I melt,As a fine curb is felt,To combat which avails not wit or force;[Pg 229]What boots it, trammell'd by such adverse ties,If still between the rocks must lie her course,To trim my little bark to new emprize?Ah! wilt Thou never, Lord, who yet dost keepMe safe and free from common chains, which bind,In different modes, mankind,Deign also from my brow this shame to sweep?For, as one sunk in sleep,Methinks death ever present to my sight,Yet when I would resist I have no arms to fight. Full well I see my state, in nought deceivedBy truth ill known, but rather forced by Love,Who leaves not him to moveIn honour, who too much his grace believed:For o'er my heart from time to time I feelA subtle scorn, a lively anguish, steal,Whence every hidden thought,Where all may see, upon my brow is writ.For with such faith on mortal things to dote,As unto God alone is just and fit,Disgraces worst the prize who covets most:Should reason, amid things of sense, be lost.This loudly calls her to the proper track:But, when she would obeyAnd home return, ill habits keep her back,And to my view portrayHer who was only born my death to be,Too lovely in herself, too loved, alas! by me. I neither know, to me what term of lifeHeaven destined when on earth I came at firstTo suffer this sharp strife,'Gainst my own peace which I myself have nursed,Nor can I, for the veil my body throws,Yet see the time when my sad life may close.I feel my frame beginTo fail, and vary each desire within:And now that I believe my parting dayIs near at hand, or else not distant lies,Like one whom losses wary make and wise,I travel back in thought, where first the way,[Pg 230]The right-hand way, I left, to peace which led.While through me shame and grief,Recalling the vain past on this side spread,On that brings no relief,Passion, whose strength I now from habit, feel,So great that it would dare with death itself to deal. Song! I am here, my heart the while more coldWith fear than frozen snow,Feels in its certain core death's coming blow;For thus, in weak self-communing, has roll'dOf my vain life the better portion by:Worse burden surely ne'erTried mortal man than that which now I bear;Though death be seated nigh,For future life still seeking councils new,I know and love the good, yet, ah! the worse pursue. Macgregor.
|
Written by
Francesco Petrarch |
[Pg 92] SONNET LXXIII. Quando giugne per gli occhi al cor profondo. HE DESCRIBES THE STATE OF TWO LOVERS, AND RETURNS IN THOUGHT TO HIS OWN SUFFERINGS. When reaches through the eyes the conscious heartIts imaged fate, all other thoughts depart;The powers which from the soul their functions takeA dead weight on the frame its limbs then make.From the first miracle a second springs,At times the banish'd faculty that brings,So fleeing from itself, to some new seat,Which feeds revenge and makes e'en exile sweet.Thus in both faces the pale tints were rife,Because the strength which gave the glow of lifeOn neither side was where it wont to dwell—I on that day these things remember'd well,Of that fond couple when each varying mienTold me in like estate what long myself had been. Macgregor.
|
Written by
Francesco Petrarch |
CANZONE XX. Ben mi credea passar mio tempo omai. HE CANNOT LIVE WITHOUT SEEING HER, BUT WOULD NOT DIE THAT HE MAY STILL LOVE HER. As pass'd the years which I have left behind,To pass my future years I fondly thought,Amid old studies, with desires the same;But, from my lady since I fail to findThe accustom'd aid, the work himself has wroughtLet Love regard my tempter who became;Yet scarce I feel the shameThat, at my age, he makes me thus a thiefOf that bewitching lightFor which my life is steep'd in cureless grief;In youth I better mightHave ta'en the part which now I needs must take,For less dishonour boyish errors make. [Pg 187]Those sweet eyes whence alone my life had healthWere ever of their high and heavenly charmsSo kind to me when first my thrall begun,That, as a man whom not his proper wealth,But some extern yet secret succour arms,I lived, with them at ease, offending none:Me now their glances shunAs one injurious and importunate,Who, poor and hungry, didMyself the very act, in better stateWhich I, in others, chid.From mercy thus if envy bar me, beMy amorous thirst and helplessness my plea. In divers ways how often have I triedIf, reft of these, aught mortal could retainE'en for a single day in life my frame:But, ah! my soul, which has no rest beside,Speeds back to those angelic lights again;And I, though but of wax, turn to their flame,Planting my mind's best aimWhere less the watch o'er what I love is sure:As birds i' th' wild wood green,Where less they fear, will sooner take the lure,So on her lovely mien,Now one and now another look I turn,Wherewith at once I nourish me and burn. Strange sustenance! upon my death I feed,And live in flames, a salamander rare!And yet no marvel, as from love it flows.A blithe lamb 'mid the harass'd fleecy breed.Whilom I lay, whom now to worst despairFortune and Love, as is their wont, expose.Winter with cold and snows,With violets and roses spring is rife,And thus if I obtainSome few poor aliments of else weak life,Who can of theft complain?So rich a fair should be content with this,Though others live on hers, if nought she miss. [Pg 188]Who knows not what I am and still have been,From the first day I saw those beauteous eyes,Which alter'd of my life the natural mood?Traverse all lands, explore each sea between,Who can acquire all human qualities?There some on odours live by Ind's vast flood;Here light and fire are foodMy frail and famish'd spirit to appease!Love! more or nought bestow;With lordly state low thrift but ill agrees;Thou hast thy darts and bow,Take with thy hands my not unwilling breath,Life were well closed with honourable death. Pent flames are strongest, and, if left to swell,Not long by any means can rest unknown,This own I, Love, and at your hands was taught.When I thus silent burn'd, you knew it well;Now e'en to me my cries are weary grown,Annoy to far and near so long that wrought.O false world! O vain thought!O my hard fate! where now to follow thee?Ah! from what meteor lightSprung in my heart the constant hope which she,Who, armour'd with your might,Drags me to death, binds o'er it as a chain?Yours is the fault, though mine the loss and pain. Thus bear I of true love the pains along,Asking forgiveness of another's debt,And for mine own; whose eyes should rather shunThat too great light, and to the siren's songMy ears be closed: though scarce can I regretThat so sweet poison should my heart o'errun.Yet would that all were done,That who the first wound gave my last would deal;For, if I right divine,It were best mercy soon my fate to seal;Since not a chance is mineThat he may treat me better than before,'Tis well to die if death shut sorrow's door. [Pg 189]My song! with fearless feetThe field I keep, for death in flight were shame.Myself I needs must blameFor these laments; tears, sighs, and death to meet,Such fate for her is sweet.Own, slave of Love, whose eyes these rhymes may catch,Earth has no good that with my grief can match.
|
Written by
Francesco Petrarch |
SESTINA IV. Chi è fermato di menar sua vita. HE PRAYS GOD TO GUIDE HIS FRAIL BARK TO A SAFE PORT. Who is resolved to venture his vain lifeOn the deceitful wave and 'mid the rocks,Alone, unfearing death, in little bark,Can never be far distant from his end:Therefore betimes he should return to portWhile to the helm yet answers his true sail. The gentle breezes to which helm and sailI trusted, entering on this amorous life,And hoping soon to make some better port,Have led me since amid a thousand rocks,And the sure causes of my mournful endAre not alone without, but in my bark. Long cabin'd and confined in this blind bark,I wander'd, looking never at the sail,Which, prematurely, bore me to my end;Till He was pleased who brought me into lifeSo far to call me back from those sharp rocks,That, distantly, at last was seen my port. As lights at midnight seen in any port,Sometimes from the main sea by passing bark,Save when their ray is lost 'mid storms or rocks;So I too from above the swollen sailSaw the sure colours of that other life,And could not help but sigh to reach my end. [Pg 83]Not that I yet am certain of that end,For wishing with the dawn to be in port,Is a long voyage for so short a life:And then I fear to find me in frail bark,Beyond my wishes full its every sailWith the strong wind which drove me on those rocks. Escape I living from these doubtful rocks,Or if my exile have but a fair end,How happy shall I be to furl my sail,And my last anchor cast in some sure port;But, ah! I burn, and, as some blazing bark,So hard to me to leave my wonted life. Lord of my end and master of my life,Before I lose my bark amid the rocks,Direct to a good port its harass'd sail! Macgregor.
|
Written by
Francesco Petrarch |
[Pg 145] SONNET CXVI. Non Tesin, Po, Varo, Arno, Adige e Tebro. HE EXTOLS THE LAUREL AND ITS FAVOURITE STREAM. Not all the streams that water the bright earth,Not all the trees to which its breast gives birth,Can cooling drop or healing balm impartTo slack the fire which scorches my sad heart,As one fair brook which ever weeps with me,Or, which I praise and sing, as one dear tree.This only help I find amid Love's strife;Wherefore it me behoves to live my lifeIn arms, which else from me too rapid goes.Thus on fresh shore the lovely laurel grows;Who planted it, his high and graceful thought'Neath its sweet shade, to Sorga's murmurs, wrote. Macgregor. [IMITATION.] Nor Arne, nor Mincius, nor stately Tiber,Sebethus, nor the flood into whose streamsHe fell who burnt the world with borrow'd beams;Gold-rolling Tagus, Munda, famous Iber,Sorgue, Rhone, Loire, Garron, nor proud-bank'd Seine,Peneus, Phasis, Xanthus, humble Ladon,Nor she whose nymphs excel her who loved Adon,Fair Tamesis, nor Ister large, nor Rhine,Euphrates, Tigris, Indus, Hermus, Gange,Pearly Hydaspes, serpent-like Meander,—The gulf bereft sweet Hero her Leander—Nile, that far, far his hidden head doth range,Have ever had so rare a cause of praiseAs Ora, where this northern Phœnix stays. Drummond.
|