Written by
Jennifer Reeser |
What would I do without your voice to wake me?
Cor ad cor loquitur, I’m loath to know.
Kitsch operas sound, unhesitant to shake me,
The sheers undrawn, the heavens hardly showing,
My camisole askew, of lace-trimmed black –
Not red, not white; not passionate or pure.
I raise the volume, and the voices crack—
Vanilla scores: accessible, obscure.
But what would I do without your certain voice?
Disjecta membra .
.
.
I am loath to think.
This negligée is sable, but my choice
If black had been forbidden, would be pink:
The blood of ballet satins, quartz, the lover,
That cut from which I never could recover.
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Written by
Rudyard Kipling |
When I was a King and a Mason -- a Master proven and skilled --
I cleared me ground for a Palace such as a King should build.
I decreed and dug down to my levels.
Presently, under the silt,
I came on the wreck of a Palace such as a King had built.
There was no worth in the fashion -- there was no wit in the plan --
Hither and thither, aimless, the ruined footings ran --
Masonry, brute, mishandled, but carven on every stone:
"After me cometh a Builder.
Tell him, I too have known.
"
Swift to my use in my trenches, where my well-planned ground-works grew,
I tumbled his quoins and his ashlars, and cut and reset them anew.
Lime I milled of his marbles; burned it, slacked it, and spread;
Taking and leaving at pleasure the gifts of the humble dead.
Yet I despised not nor gloried; yet, as we wrenched them apart,
I read in the razed foundations the heart of that builder's heart.
As he had risen and pleaded, so did I understand
The form of the dream he had followed in the face of the thing he had planned.
* * * * *
When I was a King and a Mason -- in the open noon of my pride,
They sent me a Word from the Darkness.
They whispered and called me aside.
They said -- "The end is forbidden.
" They said -- "Thy use is fulfilled.
"Thy Palace shall stand as that other's -- the spoil of a King who shall build.
"
I called my men from my trenches, my quarries, my wharves, and my sheers.
All I had wrought I abandoned to the faith of the faithless years.
Only I cut on the timber -- only I carved on the stone:
"AfterT me cometh a BuilderT.
Tell him, I too have known!"
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