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Best Famous Lusters Poems

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Written by Mark Doty | Create an image from this poem

Metro North

 Over the terminal,
 the arms and chest
 of the god

brightened by snow.
 Formerly mercury,
 formerly silver,

surface yellowed
 by atmospheric sulphurs
 acid exhalations,

and now the shining
 thing's descendant.
 Obscure passages,

dim apertures:
 these clouded windows
 show a few faces

or some empty car's
 filmstrip of lit flames
 --remember them

from school,
 how they were supposed
 to teach us something?--

waxy light hurrying
 inches away from the phantom
 smudge of us, vague

in spattered glass. Then
 daylight's soft charcoal
 lusters stone walls

and we ascend to what
 passes for brightness,
 this February,

scumbled sky
 above graduated zones
 of decline:

dead rowhouses,
 charred windows'
 wet frames

around empty space,
 a few chipboard polemics
 nailed over the gaps,

speeches too long
 and obsessive for anyone
 on this train to read,

sealing the hollowed interiors
 --some of them grand once,
 you can tell by

the fillips of decoration,
 stone leaves, the frieze
 of sunflowers.

Desolate fields--open spaces,
 in a city where you
 can hardly turn around!--

seem to center
 on little flames,
 something always burning

in a barrel or can
 As if to represent
 inextinguishable,

dogged persistence?
 Though whether what burns
 is will or rage or

harsh amalgam
 I couldn't say.
 But I can tell you this,

what I've seen that
 won my allegiance most,
 though it was also

the hallmark of our ruin,
 and quick as anything
 seen in transit:

where Manhattan ends
 in the narrowing
 geographical equivalent

of a sigh (asphalt,
 arc of trestle, dull-witted
 industrial tanks

and scaffoldings, ancient now,
 visited by no one)
 on the concrete

embankment just
 above the river,
 a sudden density

and concentration
 of trash, so much
 I couldn't pick out

any one thing
 from our rising track
 as it arced onto the bridge

over the fantastic
 accumulation of jetsam
 and contraband

strewn under
 the uncompromising
 vault of heaven.

An unbelievable mess,
 so heaped and scattered
 it seemed the core

of chaos itself--
 but no, the junk was arranged
 in rough aisles,

someone's intimate
 clutter and collection,
 no walls but still

a kind of apartment
 and a fire ribboned out
 of a ruined stove,

and white plates
 were laid out
 on the table beside it.

White china! Something
 was moving, and
 --you understand

it takes longer to tell this
 than to see it, only
 a train window's worth

of actuality--
 I knew what moved
 was an arm,

the arm of the (man
 or woman?) in the center
 of that hapless welter

in layer upon layer
 of coats blankets scarves
 until the form

constituted one more
 gray unreadable;
 whoever

was lifting a hammer,
 and bringing it down
 again, tapping at

what work
 I couldn't say;
 whoever, under

the great exhausted dome
 of winter light,
 which the steep

and steel surfaces of the city
 made both more soft
 and more severe,

was making something,
 or repairing,
 was in the act

(sheer stubborn nerve of it)
 of putting together.
 Who knows what.

(And there was more,
 more I'd take all spring
 to see. I'd pick my seat

and set my paper down
 to study him again
 --he, yes, some days not

at home though usually
 in, huddled
 by the smoldering,

and when my eye wandered
 --five-second increments
 of apprehension--I saw

he had a dog!
 Who lay half in
 half out his doghouse

in the rain, golden head
 resting on splayed paws.
 He had a ruined car,

and heaps of clothes,
 and things to read--
 was no emblem,

in other words,
 but a citizen,
 who'd built a citizen's

household, even
 on the literal edge,
 while I watched

from my quick,
 high place, hurtling
 over his encampment

by the waters of Babylon.)
 Then we were gone,
 in the heat and draft

of our silver, rattling
 over the river
 into the South Bronx,

against whose greasy
 skyline rose that neoned
 billboard for cigarettes

which hostages
 my attention, always,
 as it is meant to do,

its motto ruby
 in the dark morning:
 ALIVE WITH PLEASURE.


Written by Mark Doty | Create an image from this poem

Favrile

 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 Philip Levine | Create an image from this poem

Last Words

 I do not want a plain box, I want a sarcophagus
With tigery stripes, and a face on it
Round as the moon, to stare up.
I want to be looking at them when they come
Picking among the dumb minerals, the roots.
I see them already -- the pale, star-distance faces.
Now they are nothing, they are not even babies.
I imagine them without fathers or mothers, like the first gods.
They will wonder if I was important.
I should sugar and preserve my days like fruit!
My mirror is clouding over --
A few more breaths, and it will reflect nothing at all.
The flowers and the faces whiten to a sheet.

I do not trust the spirit. It escapes like steam
In dreams, through mouth-hole or eye-hole. I can't stop it.
One day it won't come back. Things aren't like that.
They stay, their little particular lusters
Warmed by much handling. They almost purr.
When the soles of my feet grow cold,
The blue eye of my tortoise will comfort me.
Let me have my copper cooking pots, let my rouge pots
Bloom about me like night flowers, with a good smell.
They will roll me up in bandages, they will store my heart
Under my feet in a neat parcel.
I shall hardly know myself. It will be dark,
And the shine of these small things sweeter than the face of Ishtar.
Written by Robert Herrick | Create an image from this poem

Proof to No Purpose

 You see this grntle stream that glides, 
Shoved on, by quick-succeeding tides: 
Try if this sober stream you can 
Follow to th' wider ocean, 
And see, if there it keeps unspent 
In that congesting element. 
Next, from that world of waters, then 
By pores and caverns back again 
Induct that inadultrate same 
Stream to the spring from whence it came. 
This with a wonder when ye do, 
As easy, and else easier too: 
Then ye may recollect the grains 
Of my particular remains, 
After a thousand lusters hurled, 
By roughing winds, around the world.

Book: Reflection on the Important Things