Written by
Wole Soyinka |
Blue diaphane, tobacco smoke
Serpentine on wet film and wood glaze,
Mutes chrome, wreathes velvet drapes,
Dims the cave of mirrors. Ghost fingers
Comb seaweed hair, stroke acquamarine veins
Of marooned mariners, captives
Of Circe's sultry notes. The barman
Dispenses igneous potions ?
Somnabulist, the band plays on.
Cocktail mixer, silvery fish
Dances for limpet clients.
Applause is steeped in lassitude,
Tangled in webs of lovers' whispers
And artful eyelash of the androgynous.
The hovering notes caress the night
Mellowed deep indigo ?still they play.
Departures linger. Absences do not
Deplete the tavern. They hang over the haze
As exhalations from receded shores. Soon,
Night repossesses the silence, but till dawn
The notes hold sway, smoky
Epiphanies, possessive of the hours.
This music's plaint forgives, redeems
The deafness of the world. Night turns
Homewards, sheathed in notes of solace, pleats
The broken silence of the heart.
|
Written by
William Carlos (WCW) Williams |
The pure products of America
go crazy—
mountain folk from Kentucky
or the ribbed north end of
Jersey
with its isolate lakes and
valleys, its deaf-mutes, thieves
old names
and promiscuity between
devil-may-care men who have taken
to railroading
out of sheer lust of adventure—
and young slatterns, bathed
in filth
from Monday to Saturday
to be tricked out that night
with gauds
from imaginations which have no
peasant traditions to give them
character
but flutter and flaunt
sheer rags-succumbing without
emotion
save numbed terror
under some hedge of choke-cherry
or viburnum-
which they cannot express—
Unless it be that marriage
perhaps
with a dash of Indian blood
will throw up a girl so desolate
so hemmed round
with disease or murder
that she'll be rescued by an
agent—
reared by the state and
sent out at fifteen to work in
some hard-pressed
house in the suburbs—
some doctor's family, some Elsie—
voluptuous water
expressing with broken
brain the truth about us—
her great
ungainly hips and flopping breasts
addressed to cheap
jewelry
and rich young men with fine eyes
as if the earth under our feet
were
an excrement of some sky
and we degraded prisoners
destined
to hunger until we eat filth
while the imagination strains
after deer
going by fields of goldenrod in
the stifling heat of September
Somehow
it seems to destroy us
It is only in isolate flecks that
something
is given off
No one
to witness
and adjust, no one to drive the car
|
Written by
Denise Levertov |
Those groans men use
passing a woman on the street
or on the steps of the subway
to tell her she is a female
and their flesh knows it,
are they a sort of tune,
an ugly enough song, sung
by a bird with a slit tongue
but meant for music?
Or are they the muffled roaring
of deafmutes trapped in a building that is
slowly filling with smoke?
Perhaps both.
Such men most often
look as if groan were all they could do,
yet a woman, in spite of herself,
knows it's a tribute:
if she were lacking all grace
they'd pass her in silence:
so it's not only to say she's
a warm hole. It's a word
in grief-language, nothing to do with
primitive, not an ur-language;
language stricken, sickened, cast down
in decrepitude. She wants to
throw the tribute away, dis-
gusted, and can't,
it goes on buzzing in her ear,
it changes the pace of her walk,
the torn posters in echoing corridors
spell it out, it
quakes and gnashes as the train comes in.
Her pulse sullenly
had picked up speed,
but the cars slow down and
jar to a stop while her understanding
keeps on translating:
'Life after life after life goes by
without poetry,
without seemliness,
without love.'
|
Written by
Norman Dubie |
You were never told, Mother, how old Illyawas drunk
That last holiday, for five days and nights
He stumbled through Petersburg forming
A choir of mutes, he dressed them in pink ascension gowns
And, then, sold Father's Tirietz stallion so to rent
A hall for his Christmas recital: the audience
Was rowdy but Illya in his black robes turned on them
And gave them that look of his; the hall fell silent
And violently he threw his hair to the side and up
Went the baton, the recital ended exactly one hour
Later when Illya suddenly turned and bowed
And his mutes bowed, and what applause and hollering
Followed.
All of his cronies were there!
Illya told us later that he thought the voices
Of mutes combine in a sound
Like wind passing through big, winter pines.
Mother, if for no other reason I regret the war
With Japan for, you must now be told,
It took the servant, Illya, from us. It was confirmed.
He would sit on the rocks by the water and with his stiletto
Open clams and pop the raw meats into his mouth
And drool and laugh at us children.
We hear guns often, now, down near the village.
Don't think me a coward, Mother, but it is comfortable
Now that I am no longer Czar. I can take pleasure
From just a cup of clear water. I hear Illya's choir often.
I teach the children about decreasing fractions, that is
A lesson best taught by the father.
Alexandra conducts the French and singing lessons.
Mother, we are again a physical couple.
I brush out her hair for her at night.
She thinks that we'll be rowing outside Geneva
By the spring. I hope she won't be disappointed.
Yesterday morning while bread was frying
In one corner, she in another washed all of her legs
Right in front of the children. I think
We became sad at her beauty. She has a purple bruise
On an ankle.
Like Illya I made her chew on mint.
Our Christmas will be in this excellent barn.
The guards flirt with your granddaughters and I see...
I see nothing wrong with it. Your little one, who is
Now a woman, made one soldier pose for her, she did
Him in charcoal, but as a bold nude. He was
Such an obvious virgin about it; he was wonderful!
Today, that same young man found us an enormous azure
And pearl samovar. Once, he called me Great Father
And got confused.
He refused to let me touch him.
I know they keep your letters from us. But, Mother,
The day they finally put them in my hands
I'll know that possessing them I am condemned
And possibly even my wife, and my children.
We will drink mint tea this evening.
Will each of us be increased by death?
With fractions as the bottom integer gets bigger, Mother, it
Represents less. That's the feeling I have about
This letter. I am at your request, The Czar.
And I am Nicholas.
|
Written by
Lady Mary Chudleigh |
WIFE and servant are the same,
But only differ in the name :
For when that fatal knot is ty'd,
Which nothing, nothing can divide :
When she the word obey has said,
And man by law supreme has made,
Then all that's kind is laid aside,
And nothing left but state and pride :
Fierce as an eastern prince he grows,
And all his innate rigour shows :
Then but to look, to laugh, or speak,
Will the nuptial contract break.
Like mutes, she signs alone must make,
And never any freedom take :
But still be govern'd by a nod,
And fear her husband as a God :
Him still must serve, him still obey,
And nothing act, and nothing say,
But what her haughty lord thinks fit,
Who with the power, has all the wit.
Then shun, oh ! shun that wretched state,
And all the fawning flatt'rers hate :
Value yourselves, and men despise :
You must be proud, if you'll be wise.
|
Written by
|
Blue diaphane, tobacco smoke
Serpentine on wet film and wood glaze,
Mutes chrome, wreathes velvet drapes,
Dims the cave of mirrors. Ghost fingers
Comb seaweed hair, stroke acquamarine veins
Of marooned mariners, captives
Of Circe's sultry notes. The barman
Dispenses igneous potions ?
Somnabulist, the band plays on.
Cocktail mixer, silvery fish
Dances for limpet clients.
Applause is steeped in lassitude,
Tangled in webs of lovers' whispers
And artful eyelash of the androgynous.
The hovering notes caress the night
Mellowed deep indigo ?still they play.
Departures linger. Absences do not
Deplete the tavern. They hang over the haze
As exhalations from receded shores. Soon,
Night repossesses the silence, but till dawn
The notes hold sway, smoky
Epiphanies, possessive of the hours.
This music's plaint forgives, redeems
The deafness of the world. Night turns
Homewards, sheathed in notes of solace, pleats
The broken silence of the heart.
|