Written by
Dorothy Parker |
I was seventy-seven, come August,
I shall shortly be losing my bloom;
I've experienced zephyr and raw gust
And (symbolical) flood and simoom.
When you come to this time of abatement,
To this passing from Summer to Fall,
It is manners to issue a statement
As to what you got out of it all.
So I'll say, though reflection unnerves me
And pronouncements I dodge as I can,
That I think (if my memory serves me)
There was nothing more fun than a man!
In my youth, when the crescent was too wan
To embarrass with beams from above,
By the aid of some local Don Juan
I fell into the habit of love.
And I learned how to kiss and be merry- an
Education left better unsung.
My neglect of the waters Pierian
Was a scandal, when Grandma was young.
Though the shabby unbalanced the splendid,
And the bitter outmeasured the sweet,
I should certainly do as I then did,
Were I given the chance to repeat.
For contrition is hollow and wraithful,
And regret is no part of my plan,
And I think (if my memory's faithful)
There was nothing more fun than a man!
|
Written by
T S (Thomas Stearns) Eliot |
WHEN Mr.
Apollinax visited the United States
His laughter tinkled among the teacups.
I thought of Fragilion, that shy figure among the birch-trees,
And of Priapus in the shrubbery
Gaping at the lady in the swing.
In the palace of Mrs.
Phlaccus, at Professor Channing-Cheetah’s
He laughed like an irresponsible foetus.
His laughter was submarine and profound
Like the old man of the sea’s
Hidden under coral islands
Where worried bodies of drowned men drift down in the green silence,
Dropping from fingers of surf.
I looked for the head of Mr.
Apollinax rolling under a chair
Or grinning over a screen
With seaweed in its hair.
I heard the beat of centaur’s hoofs over the hard turf
As his dry and passionate talk devoured the afternoon.
“He is a charming man”—“But after all what did he mean?”—
“His pointed ears.
.
.
He must be unbalanced,”—
“There was something he said that I might have challenged.
”
Of dowager Mrs.
Phlaccus, and Professor and Mrs.
Cheetah
I remember a slice of lemon, and a bitten macaroon.
|
Written by
Anne Sexton |
This is the key to it.
This is the key to everything.
Preciously.
I am worse than the gamekeeper's children
picking for dust and bread.
Here I am drumming up perfume.
Let me go down on your carpet,
your straw mattress -- whatever's at hand
because the child in me is dying, dying.
It is not that I am cattle to be eaten.
It is not that I am some sort of street.
But your hands found me like an architect.
Jugful of milk! It was yours years ago
when I lived in the valley of my bones,
bones dumb in the swamp.
Little playthings.
A xylophone maybe with skin
stretched over it awkwardly.
Only later did it become something real.
Later I measured my size against movie stars.
I didn't measure up.
Something between
my shoulders was there.
But never enough.
Sure, there was a meadow,
but no yound men singing the truth.
Nothing to tell truth by.
Ignorant of men I lay next to my sisters
and rising out of the ashes I cried
my sex will be transfixed!
Now I am your mother, your daughter, your brand new thing -- a snail, a nest.
I am alive when your fingers are.
I wear silk -- the cover to uncover --
because silk is what I want you to think of.
But I dislike the cloth.
It is too stern.
So tell me anything but track me like a climber
for here is the eye, here is the jewel,
here is the excitement the nipple learns.
I am unbalanced -- but I am not mad with snow.
I am mad the way young girls are mad,
with an offering, an offering.
.
.
I burn the way money burns.
|