Long Rowley Poems
Long Rowley Poems. Below are the most popular long Rowley by PoetrySoup Members. You can search for long Rowley poems by poem length and keyword.
Europe was frozen in a tide of hate
The genius Jew was being persecuted
Bound to the intransigence of fate
His violin played the tunes they executed
Now it was time to think as they electrocuted
The hopes of young people in the dawn of their history
Whose own stories would have so much mystery
Down in the baker’s the story ran around
Hitler was marching to a frenzied tune
He bruised the flowers underneath the ground
And told them works of genius had no boon
While the bridal pair planned their honeymoon
On country roads, a visit to the town
Where they would see wonders and a family found
The day of the wedding dawned so fair
It would seem creation began again
Every single person going there
Wore the best they could, the men
With dark serge suits, and a fountain pen
For Granddad to write to his daughter
Who lived across three thousand miles of water
The wedding Nora had lived for all her life
Now like fate, could be too late to cancel
Nothing would please her more than being a wife
No longer a woman her relatives liked to spancel
They went the evening before to the quiet chancel
Made their vows in private for each other
Far away, war’s declaration on a brother.
His thoughts were far away this harvest morning
The corncrake singing in the flowery ditch
Struck into his heart like a heavy warning
That life was choked with love, so rich
A fantasy dove-tailing in augured pitch
Be faithful to me, the bird sang, my husband
I never want to wear another’s riband
She wore the oyster dress her sister gave her
It was soft and crumpled like a clotted cream
Her veil was raised when he kissed her
And she thought she was fainting from the dream
What could matter now, but what could seem
His handsome face, his hair so fine and black
There wasn’t one feature where he lacked
Her face was lovely as a golden flower
Her dress, a simple thing with fine kick-pleat
It lay like wisps of cloud upon her tower
Where beauty, youth and kindness all could meet
Such tiny pearls slid on her throat so neat
Their hour of tortured chastity was over
Profusion, perfection, they were like gods in clover.
(c) Rosemarie Rowley from "In Memory of Her", 2004 Dublin
NO TEA PARTY
The lid is rising on the kettle’s song,
Likewise my energy wastes itself in air,
Don’t call me when the tea’s made, I’ll be gone.
I left my true self with your vulgar throng
Now drawn and quartered, they arraign me with a stare,
The lid is rising on the kettle’s song.
To have believed in you, and not in long
Speeches of your drab affair –
Don’t call me when the tea’s made, I’ll be gone.
No one pushed me, but I see that I was wrong,
I’ve said it all, but I won’t bow, so there!
The lid is rising on the kettle’s song.
I should have known it, and the bells can bong
Each Sunday of the year without our heir,
Don’t call me for the christening, I’ll be gone
I did without a wedding, honeymoon, even the pong
Of babies, so there’s no joy for us to share –
The lid is hopping on the kettle’s song –
Don’t call me. When the tea’s made, I’ll be gone.
BY ROSEMARIE ROWLEY
THERE IS NOTHING LIKE A DAME –
and there is no dame like a building society or a bank!
There may be nothing like me, but I assure you
the world would have gone to hell but for organised sex -
if boys and girls were left to nature’s provenance,
a person like me would be nowhere at all.
Oh, I know how to milk attraction
and stabilise what is essentially of short duration:
if boys and girls were left to innocence
there’d be no delighting old men.
If that sounds unfair, I didn’t make the rules -
all this spontaneity leaves everyone very poor,
the Church, the magistrates and the building societies
are all depending on the regulation of love.
It’s the people who won’t smile who bother me,
hard fitted, easy suited, do they think it’s all for free?
(C) Rosemarie Rowley
From IN MEMORY OF HER (2008)
DEMETER AT THE CHINESE OPERA
So, I invited you to the Chinese Opera impulsively
Thinking of masks and dragons and triumphant mystery
I though it was time we threw off our coats
Of mourning, you for your daughter
Stopping one night, on the way home from a party,
So randomly, cruelly, killed by the monster
Who has slain more than all the century’s wars
And my private sorrow for which there is no funeral.
I remember your straying husband also
Loved the Chinese Opera. What will happen
If we all meet between the acts?
Surely forgiveness will come like snow on the mountain
And we will live in a harmony that can never be suppressed
In a slow majestic music that takes account of grief.
(C) Rosemarie Rowley
From IN MEMORY OF HER (2008)
FOR MARY MAGDALENE
Between necessity and freedom I was crucified
Perceiving Himself endlessly on the cross
Yet aware, as an onlooker, petrified
My vision that never was, would be His loss.
I mimed too, as they hammered in the nails
Once more assuaging myself in His deep tears
Once more my heart rallying where my speech fails
To give His lips the vinegar it fears.
Sun eclipsed, I dallied with the vision of day,
A multi-chromed banner the old enemy was twisting,
Till I could no longer read in stone and clay,
My flower-head lopped, topped to the moment’s listing -
I shone for Him like a speck in the glory of the sunrise
Waiting for twilight, the beauty of the stars’ surprise.
by Rosemarie Rowley
from IN MEMORY OF HER, Dublin 2008
FOR SUSANNE
I came in search of skill and I found virtue
In your climb up the stairs you were neat and clear
Making no excuse for the way he hurt you
But you cling to reality with a straight and peer-
Less eye. On lined paper you have set your mark
What could you deviate from, if not from right
And knowing you is quite enough to park
Truth on the lines, the tine your birthright.
In this dark house Jews lived and hoped and dreamed
Of a land where their strangeness was a claim
To universal justice. How in the dark they teemed
Until hope ran like melted butter on the name
They must excise. Born in a country that did them wrong
You forbid yourself the luxury of song.
(c) Rosemarie Rowley
From IN MEMORY OF HER
(2008)
DAMSEL CAUSING DISTRESS
The knight errant sent for me, but I’ve gone missing
For three days now, while he’s composed a ditty:
In the tide of feminism I still haven’t given up kissing
Being what is termed fatalistically pretty -
But I can be the ‘no’ that makes for nice
When his flame burns under his boiler suit,
Then I’m decently torpid like a fish on ice
Where the guts need to go when the runts root -
A pillowing breast, my nightcap a soliloquy
To hell with his billowing sails and pregnant ships
Let him go, this guy who’s got everything but me
With his big thighs, big legs, big hips -
All the things we women should shun
Save satin, silk, squirm, sperm, and …sun.
(c) Rosemarie Rowley
From IN MEMORY OF HER (2008)
ON HIS BIRTHDAY
from Anne Donne to her husband John – supposing she went on record..
Five senses have we, but just one soul
I take you part by part, and then the whole
Your fingertips begin at shadow’s end
And I on each a hundred kisses spend.
Your toes from which radiate your joy
Your soles, your feet, your legs I all enjoy
Your shoulders, arms, are ceaseless comfort trained
Your face, your hair, your lips are thus arraigned.
Sweet tower of enterprise, and honeyed substance found
We share our treasure where we most abound
Our secret selves are now a flame of sense
Where we explode at last in innocence.
Exploring ways to end all life’s regrets
Our joy a million, million tears forgets.
by Rosemarie Rowley
from IN MEMORY OF HER Dublin 2008
BROKEN FLOWERS
i.m. Ann, my sister 1947 – 1997)
Heads of fine purple strewn across cement
And yellowness heaped up in an airless room –
Travesties to which your heart’s golden fire-dust
Is an increment on pain. You asked
If the pretence of caring had now vanished,
Was it real now, under the cracked sky-line,
Like your memories dammed up under the rain.
Surely some vital drops will float
To pull your rootless beauties into holiness
Even as they die in a still vase –
There is no picture to quite stir the heart
As these fallen crowns, noble as the chalice
Of Gethsemane, which yet held the terrifying
Dark secrets of the world’s crime.
As you winter in your youth,
Beheaded flowers your beauty, your truth.
By Rosemarie Rowley
THE POET MEETS THE JOURNO
All right, so I introduced you to each other,
She, sotto voce, with sweet piercing alter
Ego and intransigent integral and inviolate
Laws, you with your collection of newspaper
Cuttings of riots, strikes, and the dialectical
Alternative: mottled eyes and the poor man’s pudding
Of truth, flavoured with salt fish loneliness.
In the dim furls of the watchman’s banner
The night was just ending, so go to it -
Discern why I separately loved you.
As I make my way home by myself,
The pure gold of my honourable gesture
Will shine like an Indian summer on a child,
Be meditation for your spirit on our silent spring.
By Rosemarie Rowley
Published in IN MEMORY OF HER, Dublin, 2008