UDELNAYA MARKET 6:30 PM
6 30 and not yet all gone -
Shadows lengthening,
Suns light in eyes, still
Difficult to see the end .
Flowers of the day now dried petals,
Empty boxes, blowing papers.
Basket-seller struggles
With armfuls of wickerwork;
Cigarette butt ends burn out;
Concertina man collects up
His small coins to leave.
Day-blankets spread on ground
And covered with junketry
Leave their prints in the dust.
……………………………………………………………………………………………………
Note.
This is the day’s end when the busy Udelnaya flower market is closing.
Categories:
wickerwork, flower, introspection, life, sunset,
Form: Imagism
@alons, ce sera pour la derniere fois@
Sophie Blanchard 1819
a metaphor of the sea sings no music,
no swell here, to swing the stern;
nor any pressure to float a kite:
there is no 'flight' to the moon,
no wing can carry me.
At the birth of Napoleon's son I lifted
from the Champ de Mars, and from the basket scattered
a shower of papers to proclaim the birth.
clearing steeple and tree top, opening
a passage into airless geometry
where faith is translated to trajectory,
buoyancy, computation;
weight against lift; gravity versus
the pull of elsewhere.
tilt of a wickerwork floor,
creak of a cable; the flake of my dry lips
at travel's very limit: so vast the distance
that if I raised a finger behind it would vanish
the whole blue jewel of the Earth:
fireflies on an evening porch; a curtain sailing
at a summer window;
my mother bending to her linens, the remembrance of a smile
creased in her skin.
I am on the edge of the sky; I feel excellent,
my eyes filed with moonclouds, and the dark seas.
I am beginning to move away.
Sophie Blanchard, Aeronaut (1778 - 1819)
Categories:
wickerwork, appreciation,
Form: Free verse
For J. C. Alldridge
Piccolo and been-throated pibroch
Dilating dimpled hood
Spreading photometric darkroom eyes
Waxing waxing matching
Venomous lip to music's piping lip
O Queen of stung dragon-mouthed Po
Dancing girl of nuanceless ancient reliefs
The apotheosis Brahman curling on the neck
Must you now sink sink
Dread watched
Spineless
Into the winding womb wickerwork
Watching watching pipe-eyed watching
Until you slip
Over the sill of the pipe and the lip
Anathema!
Amorphous piteous anathema!
Amulet of Siva!
Licking the boneless air companionless
Then slithering to lie on the trodden path
Must you have this one last lick
A lick that
Stills the
Unheeding
Child astray
Or ripple tailless
In the reedy gust
To the squat charmer's
Hypnotical pibroch
©: T. Wignesan - Paris, 1957 (from Tracks of a Tramp. Kuala Lumpur-Singapore: 1961; first pub. in "Forum Academicum", University of Heidelberg, 1957)
Categories:
wickerwork, angst,
Form: Free verse
The noisy and sluggish widgeons came,
scattering the wickerwork of a dame,
once married to a man deaf and lame;
they willfully did it without shame!
Only Krishna could have cheered her up with his flute,
they went too far, and their astuteness she would detect...
to punish them for their mischief with a long bat;
and flee they did with the quickest motion of a cat!
They returned again and again on quieter summer days,
so her crafty hands went to work with a vengeance,
plucking each pretty feather on their lustrous heads...
oh, the widow's madness was derision and a mess!
One last time they tried out their foul act,
she chased them away with her wicker hat,
but too soon she ran out of breath...
and with rage she endured that quack!
Categories:
wickerwork, children, funny,
Form: Monorhyme