Written by
Mark Doty |
Glassmakers,
at century's end,
compounded metallic lusters
in reference
to natural sheens (dragonfly
and beetle wings,
marbled light on kerosene)
and invented names
as coolly lustrous
as their products'
scarab-gleam: Quetzal,
Aurene, Favrile.
Suggesting,
respectively, the glaze
of feathers,
that sun-shot fog
of which halos
are composed,
and -- what?
What to make of Favrile,
Tiffany's term
for his coppery-rose
flushed with gold
like the alchemized
atmosphere of sunbeams
in a Flemish room?
Faux Moorish,
fake Japanese,
his lamps illumine
chiefly themselves,
copying waterlilies'
bronzy stems,
wisteria or trout scales;
surfaces burnished
like a tidal stream
on which an excitation
of minnows boils
and blooms, artifice
made to show us
the lavish wardrobe
of things, the world's
glaze of appearances
worked into the thin
and gleaming stuff
of craft. A story:
at the puppet opera
--where one man animated
the entire cast
while another ghosted
the voices, basso
to coloratura -- Jimmy wept
at the world of tiny gestures,
forgot, he said,
these were puppets,
forgot these wire
and plaster fabrications
were actors at all,
since their pretense
allowed the passions
released to be--
well, operatic.
It's too much,
to be expected to believe;
art's a mercuried sheen
in which we may discern,
because it is surface,
clear or vague
suggestions of our depths,
Don't we need a word
for the luster
of things which insist
on the fact they're made,
which announce
their maker's bravura?
Favrile, I'd propose,
for the perfect lamp,
too dim and strange
to help us read.
For the kimono woven,
dipped in dyes, unraveled
and loomed again
that the pattern might take on
a subtler shading
For the sonnet's
blown-glass sateen,
for bel canto,
for Faberge
For everything
which begins in limit
(where else might our work
begin?) and ends in grace,
or at least extravagance.
For the silk sleeves
of the puppet queen,
held at a ravishing angle
over her puppet lover slain,
for her lush vowels
mouthed by the plain man
hunched behind the stage.
|
Written by
Heather McHugh |
There, a little right
of Ursus Major, is
the Milky Way:
a man can point it out,
the biggest billionfold of all
predicaments he's in:
his planet's street address.
What gives? What looks
a stripe a hundred million
miles away from here
is where we live.
*
Let's keep it clear. The Northern Lights
are not the North Star. Being but
a blur, they cannot reassure us.
They keep moving - I think far
too easily. September spills
some glimmers of
the boreals to come:
they're modest pools
of horizontal haze, where later
they'll appear as foldings in the vertical,
a work of curtains, throbbing dim
or bright. (One wonders at
one's eyes.) The very sight
will angle off in glances or in shoots
of something brilliant, something
bigger than we know, its hints uncatchable
in shifts of mind ... So there
it is again, the mind, with its
old bluster, its self-centered
question: what
is dimming, what is bright?
The spirit sinks and swells, which cannot tell
itself from any little luster.
|
Written by
A R Ammons |
Fall fell: so that's it for the leaf poetry:
some flurries have whitened the edges of roads
and lawns: time for that, the snow stuff: &
turkeys and old St. Nick: where am I going to
find something to write about I haven't already
written away: I will have to stop short, look
down, look up, look close, think, think, think:
but in what range should I think: should I
figure colors and outlines, given forms, say
mailboxes, or should I try to plumb what is
behind what and what behind that, deep down
where the surface has lost its semblance: or
should I think personally, such as, this week
seems to have been crafted in hell: what: is
something going on: something besides this
diddledeediddle everyday matter-of-fact: I
could draw up an ancient memory which would
wipe this whole presence away: or I could fill
out my dreams with high syntheses turned into
concrete visionary forms: Lucre could lust
for Luster: bad angels could roar out of perdition
and kill the AIDS vaccine not quite
perfected yet: the gods could get down on
each other; the big gods could fly in from
nebulae unknown: but I'm only me: I have 4
interests--money, poetry, sex, death: I guess
I can jostle those. . . .
|
Written by
Nazim Hikmet |
If instead of being hanged by the neck
you're thrown inside
for not giving up hope
in the world, your country, your people,
if you do ten or fifteen years
apart from the time you have left,
you won't say,
"Better I had swung from the end of a rope
like a flag" --
You'll put your foot down and live.
It may not be a pleasure exactly,
but it's your solemn duty
to live one more day
to spite the enemy.
Part of you may live alone inside,
like a tone at the bottom of a well.
But the other part
must be so caught up
in the flurry of the world
that you shiver there inside
when outside, at forty days' distance, a leaf moves.
To wait for letters inside,
to sing sad songs,
or to lie awake all night staring at the ceiling
is sweet but dangerous.
Look at your face from shave to shave,
forget your age,
watch out for lice
and for spring nights,
and always remember
to eat every last piece of bread--
also, don't forget to laugh heartily.
And who knows,
the woman you love may stop loving you.
Don't say it's no big thing:
it's like the snapping of a green branch
to the man inside.
To think of roses and gardens inside is bad,
to think of seas and mountains is good.
Read and write without rest,
and I also advise weaving
and making mirrors.
I mean, it's not that you can't pass
ten or fifteen years inside
and more --
you can,
as long as the jewel
on the left side of your chest doesn't lose it's luster!
May 1949
|
Written by
Robert Frost |
I've tried the new moon tilted in the air
Above a hazy tree-and-farmhouse cluster
As you might try a jewel in your hair.
I've tried it fine with little breadth of luster,
Alone, or in one ornament combining
With one first-water start almost shining.
I put it shining anywhere I please.
By walking slowly on some evening later,
I've pulled it from a crate of crooked trees,
And brought it over glossy water, greater,
And dropped it in, and seen the image wallow,
The color run, all sorts of wonder follow.
|
Written by
Sir Walter Raleigh |
Now Serena be not coy,
Since we freely may enjoy
Sweet embraces, such delights,
As will shorten tedious nights.
Think that beauty will not stay
With you always, but away,
And that tyrannizing face
That now holds such perfect grace
Will both changed and ruined be;
So frail is all things as we see,
So subject unto conquering Time.
Then gather flowers in their prime,
Let them not fall and perish so;
Nature her bounties did bestow
On us that we might use them, and
'Tis coldness not to understand
What she and youth and form persuade
With opportunity that's made
As we could wish it. Let's, then, meet
Often with amorous lips, and greet
Each other till our wanton kisses
In number pass the day Ulysses
Consumed in travel, and the stars
That look upon our peaceful wars
With envious luster. If this store
Will not suffice, we'll number o'er
The same again, until we find
No number left to call to mind
And show our plenty. They are poor
That can count all they have and more.
|
Written by
Bernadette Geyer |
And so I look back
still thinking of her
with painful heart,
this clench of inner flesh.
—Kakinomoto Hitomaro
from Manyoshu
*
Praise the irritant, that genesis,
implanted within the soft
and malleable animal that bore you.
*
Your brethren strung around my neck,
dangling from my earlobes.
The imperfections the jeweler slights, I praise.
*
Artifact of a biological process,
why do we expect
symmetry from a grain of sand?
*
Praise the oblong beauty
of you, solidified raindrops,
your stony quietude.
*
Let me praise the waters that bestow
your milky luster,
worshipped to ensure a bountiful hunt.
*
Manyoshu poems praised the ama,
female divers, who collected you,
as gently as quail eggs.
*
Let me rub you against my teeth to test
the veracity of you, roll you
around my tongue to weigh your heft.
*
The heart clenches, hides its moon
among clouds. Would that I, too, could build
a radiant world around a bitter nucleus.
|
Written by
Robert Herrick |
Chorus.
What sweeter music can we bring,
Than a Carol, for to sing
The Birth of this our heavenly King?
Awake the Voice! Awake the String!
Heart, Ear, and Eye, and every thing
Awake! the while the active Finger
Runs division with the Singer.
From the Flourish they came to the Song.
Voice 1:
Dark and dull night, fly hence away,
And give the honor to this Day,
That sees December turn'd to May.
Voice 2:
If we may ask the reason, say:
The why, and wherefore all things here
Seem like the Spring-time fo the year?
Voice 3:
Why does the chilling Winter's morn
Smile, like a field beset with corn?
Or smell, like to a mead new-shorn,
Thus, on the sudden?
Voice 4:
Come and see
The cause, why things thus fragrant be:
'Tis He is born, whose quick'ning Birth
Gives life and luster, public mirth,
To Heaven and the under-Earth.
Chorus:
We see Him come, and know Him ours,
Who, with His Sun-shine, and His Showers,
Turns all the patient ground to flowers.
Voice 1:
The Darling of the World is come,
And fit it is, we find a room
To welcome Him.
Voice 2:
The nobler part
Of all the house here, is the Heart,
Chorus:
Which we will give Him; and bequeath
This Holly and this Ivy Wreath,
To do Him honor; who's our King,
And Lord of all this Revelling.
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