Written by
Wallace Stevens |
Sister and mother and diviner love,
And of the sisterhood of the living dead
Most near, most clear, and of the clearest bloom,
And of the fragrant mothers the most dear
And queen, and of diviner love the day
And flame and summer and sweet fire, no thread
Of cloudy silver sprinkles in your gown
Its venom of renown, and on your head
No crown is simpler than the simple hair.
Now, of the music summoned by the birth
That separates us from the wind and sea,
Yet leaves us in them, until earth becomes,
By being so much of the things we are,
Gross effigy and simulacrum, none
Gives motion to perfection more serene
Than yours, out of our own imperfections wrought,
Most rare, or ever of more kindred air
In the laborious weaving that you wear.
For so retentive of themselves are men
That music is intensest which proclaims
The near, the clear, and vaunts the clearest bloom,
And of all the vigils musing the obscure,
That apprehends the most which sees and names,
As in your name, an image that is sure,
Among the arrant spices of the sun,
O bough and bush and scented vine, in whom
We give ourselves our likest issuance.
Yet not too like, yet not so like to be
Too near, too clear, saving a little to endow
Our feigning with the strange unlike, whence springs
The difference that heavenly pity brings.
For this, musician, in your girdle fixed
Bear other perfumes. On your pale head wear
A band entwining, set with fatal stones.
Unreal, give back to us what once you gave:
The imagination that we spurned and crave.
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Written by
William Carlos (WCW) Williams |
Vast and grey, the sky
is a simulacrum
to all but him whose days
are vast and grey and—
In the tall, dried grasses
a goat stirs
with nozzle searching the ground.
My head is in the air
but who am I . . . ?
—and my heart stops amazed
at the thought of love
vast and grey
yearning silently over me.
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Written by
Barry Tebb |
To Thushari Williams
Dear Thushie, the six months you spent with us
Will never be forgotten, the long days you laboured
In the care home, your care-worn comings home
To sit with Brenda Williams, po?te maudit sang pur,
Labouring together to bring to light poems buried alive
And turn them into a book, the living text
Proof enough of your divine gift as muse
And enchantress of both word and screen.
Now in far Indonesia you strive to strike a bargain
With an uncaring world, webmaster with magic fingertips
You engrave the words of us, careworn poets of our age,
In blue and scarlet on a canvas alabaster page.
Simulacrum more real than reality itself,
Should reality exist in cyberspace.
My Pr?vert, my Nerval, I never thought to see
So handsomely orthographed, like Li Po scrolled
In Chinese water by a blue pagoda.
Indeed if anyone could write in troubled water
It would be you, my dearest daughter.
Whether this world will grant you a living
Only time’s indifference and your subtle craft will tell,
Artists like poets live on other’s bounty, as you know so well.
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