barely contained

There may be chaos still around the world,
This little world that in my thinking lies;
For mine own bosom is the paradise
Where all my life’s fair visions are unfurled.
Within my nature’s shell I slumber curled,
Unmindful of the changing outer skies,
Where now, perchance, some new-born Eros flies,
Or some old Cronos from his throne is hurled.
I heed them not; or if the subtle night
Haunt me with deities I never saw,
I soon mine eyelid’s drowsy curtain draw
To hide their myriad faces from my sight.
They threat in vain; the whirlwind cannot awe
A happy snow-flake dancing in the flaw

                    George Santayana

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...

how jaded grows the heart

        LOVE SONG                                                    






My own dear love, he is strong and bold
And he cares not what comes after.
His words ring sweet as a chime of gold,
And his eyes are lit with laughter.
He is jubilant as a flag unfurled --
Oh, a girl, she'd not forget him.
My own dear love, he is all my world, --
And I wish I'd never met him.

My love, he's mad, and my love, he's fleet,
And a wild young wood-thing bore him!
The ways are fair to his roaming feet,
And the skies are sunlit for him.
As sharply sweet to my heart he seems
As the fragrance of acacia.
My own dear love, he is all my dreams, --
And I wish he were in Asia.

My love runs by like a day in June,
And he makes no friends of sorrows.
He'll tread his galloping rigadoon
In the pathway of the morrows.
He'll live his days where the sunbeams start,
Nor could storm or wind uproot him.
My own dear love, he is all my heart, --
And I wish somebody'd shoot him.










                                 Dorothy Parker  ( nee' )  Rothschild


















....

peregrino mysterium

CODA                               










A strong song tows
us, long earsick.
Blind, we follow
rain slant, spray flick
to fields we do not know.

Night, float us.
Offshore wind, shout,
ask the sea
what’s lost, what’s left,
what horn sunk,
what crown adrift.

Where we are who knows
of kings who sup
while day fails? Who,
swinging his axe
to fell kings, guesses
where we go?                         

                       Basil Bunting

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on horses naked astride

The Sisters                                                   












After hot loveless nights, when cold winds stream
Sprinkling the frost and dew, before the light,
Bored with the foolish things that girls must dream
Because their beds are empty of delight,


Two sisters rise and strip. Out from the night
Their horses run to their low-whistled pleas—
Vast phantom shapes with eyeballs rolling white,
That sneeze a fiery stream about their knees:


Through the crisp manes their stealthy prowling hands,
Stronger than curbs, in slow caresses rove,
They gallop down across the milk-white sands
And wade far out into the sleeping cove:


The frost stings sweetly with a burning kiss
As intimate as love, as cold as death:
Their lips, whereon delicious tremours hiss
Fume with the ghostly pollen of their breath.


Far out on the grey silence of the flood
They watch the dawn in smouldering gyres expand
Beyond them: and the day burns through their blood
Like a white candle through a shuttered hand.






                                               Roy Campbell


















....

Why don't I have...

Why don't I have
You? Why
don't I see the trace of Your hand
in the inhumanly rational construction
of a blade of grass. The blackbirds'
song for me is only
ownerless, I can't hear Your
hearing. I don't hear the voice
piercing the day's clamor. And at night,
drowned in its enormous
breath, I feel how everything
takes place from me: between
me and the blind star runs
a frosty road of terror, my measure
of infinity, which ends
with me. I can't see
further. I can't see, since
I believe too little that I see? Or perhaps this
is simply the thirst
to see and there's nothing
beyond this thirst to pierce
suddenly into the day's clamor, the cathedral
of the grass, beneath a star's
dead eye.


                            


                                      Bronislaw Maj
 
                                             tr. Clare Cavanagh
















...

so entwined are we when loved

Unable are the Loved...                   

 Unable are the Loved to die
For Love is Immortality,
Nay, it is Deity—

Unable they that love—to die
For Love reforms Vitality
Into Divinity.

                          Emily Dickinson

....

on hearing in the mind a distant tune

The Green River                                                        

I know a green grass path that leaves the field,

And like a running river, winds along

Into a leafy wood where is no throng

Of birds at noon-day, and no soft throats yield

Their music to the moon. The place is sealed,

An unclaimed sovereignty of voiceless song,

And all the unravished silences belong

To some sweet singer lost or unrevealed.

So is my soul become a silent place.

Oh, may I wake from this uneasy night

To find a voice of music manifold.

Let it be shape of sorrow with wan face,

Or Love that swoons on sleep, or else delight

That is as wide-eyed as a marigold.

                                  Lord Alfred Douglas














...

to find a way

              Mapping                                                                                                 

There are stories to be let loose with comb and water:

Mikushi, my grandmother, who stood among the warriors as the bones on her breastplate jingled and she was proud.

The young niece who drives hastily into ditches and thinks of forgiveness

as the car turns over and over.

A son who will tighten copper bells to thin ankles and then fancy dance

among fluorescent feathers.

The cousin who chose not to cry out when the walls of her Chevy burst

around her in flame.

One nephew who returns from living in the city, only to realize how much

can change, and how little.

We gather these up again on shoulders and around waists where they endure.

This begins and does not end with a secret: we know only this route home.






                                                                Mandy Smoker Broaddus
























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