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"Landscape As
A Nude"
(Archibald MacLeish)
She lies on her
left side her flank golden:
Her hair is burned
black in the strong sun:
The scent of her
hair is of rain in the dust on her shoulders:
She has brown
breasts and the mouth of no other country:
Ah she is
beautiful here in the sun where she lies--
Not like the soft
girls naked in vineyards
Nor the soft naked
girls of the English islands
Where the rain
comes in with the surf on an east wind:
Hers is the west
wind and the sunlight: the west
Wind is the long
clean wind of the continents--
The wind turning
with earth: the wind descending
Steadily out of
the evening and following on:
The wind here
where she lies is west: the trees
Oak ironwood
cottonwood hickory: standing in
Great groves they
roll on the wind as the sea would:
The grasses of
Iowa Illinois Indiana
Run with the
plunge of the wind as a wave tumbling:
Under her knees
there is no green lawn of the Florentines:
Under her dusty
knees is the corn stubble:
Her belly is
flecked with the flickering light of the corn:
She lies on her
left side her flank golden:
Her hair is burned
black with the strong sun:
The scent of her
hair is of dust and of smoke on her shoulders:
She has brown
breasts and the mouth of no other country.
"Bavarian Gentians"
(D.H.
Lawrence)
Not every man has
gentians in his house
in soft September,
at slow, sad Michaelmas.
Bavarian gentians,
big and dark, only dark
darkening the
day-time torch-like with the smoking blueness of Pluto's gloom,
ribbed and
torch-like, with their blaze of darkness spread blue
down flattening
into points, flattened under the sweep of white day
torch-flower of
the blue-smoking darkness, Pluto's dark-blue daze,
black lamps from
the halls of Dio, burning dark blue,
giving off
darkness, blue darkness, as Demeter's pale lamps give off light,
lead me then, lead
me the way.
Reach me a
gentian, give me a torch!
let me guide
myself with the blue, forked torch of this flower
down the darker
and darker stairs, where blue is darkened on blueness
even where
Persephone goes, just now, from the frosted September
to the sightless
realm where darkness is awake upon the dark
and Persephone
herself is but a voice
or a darkness
invisible enfolded in the deeper dark
of the arms
Plutonic, and pierced with the passion of dense gloom,
among the
splendour of torches of darkness, shedding darkness
on
the lost bride and her groom.
"The Soul
Longs to Return Whence It Came"
(Richard Eberhart)
I drove up to the
graveyard, which
Used to frighten
me as a boy,
When I walked down
the river past it,
And evening was
coming on, I'd make sure
I came home from
the woods early enough.
I drove in, I
found to the place, I
left the motor
running. My eyes hurried,
To recognize the
great oak tree
On the little
slope, among the stones.
It was a high day,
a crisp day,
The cleanest kind
of Autumn day,
With brisk
intoxicating air, a
Little wind that
frisked, yet there was
Old age in the
atmosphere, nostalgia,
The subtle
heaviness of the Fall.
I stilled the
motor, I walked a few paces;
It was good, the
tree; the friendliness of it.
I touched it, I
thought of the roots;
They would have
pierced her seven years.
O all peoples! O
mighty shadows!
My eyes opened
along the avenue
Of tombstones, the
common land of death.
Humiliation of all
loves lost,
That might have
had full meaning in any
Plot of ground,
come, hear the silence,
See the quivering
light. My mind worked
Almost
imperceptibly, I
In the command, I
the wilful ponderer.
I must have stood
silent and thoughtful
There. A host of
dry leaves
Danced on the
ground in the wind.
They startled,
they curved up from the ground,
There was a dry
rustling, rattling.
The sun was
motionless and brittle.
I felt the blood
darken in my cheeks
And burn. Like
running. My eyes
Telescoped on
decay, I out of command.
Fear, tenderness,
they seized me.
My eyes were hot,
I dared not look
At the leaves. A
pagan urge swept me.
Multitudes, O
multitudes in one.
The urge of the
earth, the titan
Wild and primitive
lust, fused
On the ground of
her grave.
I was a being of
feeling alone.
I flung myself
down on the earth
Full length on the
great earth, full length,
I wept out the
dark load of human love.
In pagan adoration
I adored her.
I felt the actual
earth of her.
Victor and victim
of humility,
I closed in the
wordless ecstasy
Of mystery: where
there is no thought
but feeling lost
in itself forever,
Profound, remote,
immediate, and calm.
Frightened, I
stood up, I looked about
Suspiciously,
hurriedly (a rustling),
As if the sun, the
air, the trees
Were human, might
not understand.
I drew breath, it
made a sound,
I stepped gingerly
away. Then
The mind came like
a fire, it
Tortured man, I
thought of madness.
The mind will not
accept the blood.
The sun and sky,
the trees and grasses,
And the whispering
leaves, took on
Their usual
characters. I went away,
Slowly, tingling,
elated, saying, saying
Mother, Great
Being, O Source of Life
To whom in wisdom
we return,
Accept this humble
servant evermore.
"The Holly"
(Walter de la Mare)
The sturdiest of
forest trees
With acorns is inset;
Wan white blossoms
the elder brings
To fruit as black
as jet;
But O, in all
green English woods
Is aught so fair
to view
As the sleek,
sharp, dark-leaved holly tree
And its berries
burning through?
Towers the ash;
and dazzling green
The larch her
tassels wears;
Wondrous sweet are
the clots of may
The tangled
hawthorn bears;
But O, in heath or
meadow or wold
Springs aught
beneath the blue
As brisk and trim
as the holly-tree bole
With its berries
burning through?
When hither,
thither, falls the snow,
And blazes small
the frost,
Naked amid the
winter stars
The elm's vast
boughs are tossed;
But O, of all that
summer showed
What now to
winter's true
As the
prickle-beribbed dark holly tree,
With berries
burning through!
"Keep In The
Heart The Journal"
(Conrad Aiken)
Keep in the heart
the journal nature keeps;
Mark down the limp
nasurtium leaf with frost;
See that the
hawthorn bough is ice-embossed,
And that the
snail, in season, has his grief;
Design the winter
on the window pane;
Admit pale sun
through cobwebs left from autumn;
Remember summer
when the flies are stilled;
Remember spring,
when the cold spider sleeps.
Such diary, too,
set down as this: the heart
Beat twice or
thrice this day for no good reason;
For friends and
sweethearts dead before their season;
For wisdom come
too late, and come to naught.
Put down "the
hand that shakes," "the eye that glazes";
The "step
that falters betwixt thence and hence";
Observe that hips
and haws burn brightest red
When the North
Pole and sun are most apart.
Note that the moon
is here, as cold as ever,
With ages on her
face, and ice and snow;
Such as the
freezing mind alone can know,
When loves and
hates are only twigs that shiver.
Add in a
postscript that the rain is over,
The wind from
southwest backing to the south,
Disasters all
forgotten, hurts forgiven,
And that the North
Star, altered, shines forever.
Then say: I was a
part of nature's plan;
Knew her cold
heart, for I was consciousness;
Came first to hate
her, and at last to bless;
Believed in her;
doubted; believed again.
My love the lichen
had such roots as I,--
The snowflake was
my father; I return,
After this
interval of faith and question,
To nature's heart,
in pain, as I began.
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