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November 14th, 2010
08:43 pm
At Baia
I should have thought
in a dream you would have brought
some lovely, perilous thing,
orchids piled in a great sheath,
as who would say (in a dream),
"I send you this,
who left the blue veins
of your throat unkissed."
Why was it that your hands
(that never took mine),
your hands that I could see
drift over the orchid-heads
so carefully,
your hands, so fragile, sure to lift
so gently, the fragile flower-stuff--
ah, ah, how was it
You never sent (in a dream)
the very form, the very scent,
not heavy, not sensuous,
but perilous--perilous--
of orchids, piled in a great sheath,
and folded underneath on a bright scroll,
some word:
"Flower sent to flower;
for white hands, the lesser white,
less lovely of flower-leaf,"
or
"Lover to lover, no kiss,
no touch, but forever and ever this."
--H.D.
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November 8th, 2010
08:25 pm
I am a little world made cunningly
I am a little world made cunningly
Of elements and an angelic sprite,
But black sin hath betray'd to endless night
My world's both parts, and oh both parts must die.
You which beyond that heaven which was most high
Have found new spheres, and of new lands can write,
Pour new seas in mine eyes, that so I might
Drown my world with my weeping earnestly,
Or wash it, if it must be drown'd no more.
But oh it must be burnt; alas the fire
Of lust and envy have burnt it heretofore,
And made it fouler; let their flames retire,
And burn me O Lord, with a fiery zeal
Of thee and thy house, which doth in eating heal.
--You know who wrote this.
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November 6th, 2010
03:34 pm
Whoso list to hunt
Whoso list to hunt, I know where is an hind,
But as for me, alas, I may no more;
The vain travail hath wearied me so sore,
I am of them that furthest come behind.
Yet may I by no means my wearied mind
Draw from the deer, but as she fleeth afore
Fainting I follow; I leave off therefore,
Since in a net I seek to hold the wind.
Who list her hunt, I put him out of doubt,
As well as I, may spend his time in vain.
And graven with diamonds in letters plain,
There is written her fair neck round about,
"Noli me tangere, for Caesar's I am,
And wild for to hold, though I seem tame."
--Sir Thomas Wyatt
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August 12th, 2010
09:54 pm
Letter to a Mute
If I could reach you now, in any way
At all, I would say this to you:
This afternoon I walked into a thicket
Of gold flowers that had no idea
What they were after. They couldn't hear a thing.
I walked among a million small, deaf ears
Breaking their gold into the afternoon.
I think they were like you, golden, golden,
Unable to express a single thing.
I walked among them, thinking of you,
Thinking of what it would be like
To be completely solitary. Once I was alone like that.
All the field was humming, brimming
With some brazen kind of song, and I
Thought that somehow I could disappear
Into the empty hall of your right ear,
Wandering through the slender bones of you.
But I knew that I could never let you know
That it is lame summer here, that I
Can hear the crickets every evening
Hollowing out the darkness at my window,
That you have vanished into a dark tunnel
Where I have tried to reach you with my mouth
Till my mouth ran gold, spilling over everything.
Tonight I looked into your face, tenderly,
Tenderly, but I can never find you there.
I can only touch your quiet lips.
If I could stick my pen into your tongue,
Making it run with gold, making
it speak entirely to me, letting the truth
Slide out of it, I could not be alone.
I wouldn't even touch you, for I know
How you are locked away from me forever.
Tonight I go out looking for you everywhere
As the moon slips out, a slender petal
Offering all its gold to me for nothing.
-Thomas James
*
Thomas James writes these poems, and I'm all like, "Why do I bother writing poems? I'll never be as good as this." You know?
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January 28th, 2010
11:51 am - Lyric essaying it up/ as usual, I like horses
An excerpt from Stephen Kuusisto’s "Night Song" (published in Short Takes: Brief Encounters with Contemporary Nonfiction):
*
A blind kid rarely sleeps. Small blind people hear a hundred sounds and learn early to make analogies,
I hear the trees that surround our New Hampshire house. A spruce sways in the wind and so I think a door is opening, a door with rusted hinges and locks.
At sunup while my parents sleep I dress quickly and slip from the house. I walk through a meadow, blindly following patterns of light and shade until I reach the university’s horse barn. Somewhere in all this cool emptiness a horse is breathing. He sounds like water going down a drain.
I take on step forward into a pyramid of fragrances.
What a thing! To be a young boy smelling hay and leather and turds!
What a thing!
And the horse gurgles like water in the back of a boat.
Mice scurry like beaded curtains distrubed by a hand.
I stand in this magical nowhere and listen to the full range of sounds in a barn.
I am a blind child approaching a horse!
Behind me a cat mews.
Who would guess that horses sometimes hold their breath?
The horse must be eyeing me from his corner.
Now two cats are talking.
Whin pushes forcefully at the high roof.
Somewhere up high a timber creaks.
My horse is still holding his breath.
When will he breathe again?
Come on, boy!
Breathe for me!
Where are you?
I hear him rubbing his flank against a wall.
And now he breathes again with a great deflation!
He sounds like a fat balloon venting in swift circles.
And now I imitate him with my arm pressed to my lips.
I make great flatulent noises by pressing my lips to my forearm.
How do you like that, horse?
He snorts.
I notice the ringing of silence. An insect travels between our bursts of forced air.
Sunlight heats my face because I’m standing in a long sunbeam.
I am in the luminous whereabouts of horse! I am a very small boy and I have wandered about a mile from home. Although I can see colors and shapes in sunlight, in the barn I am completely blind.
But I have made up my mind to touch this horse.
Judging by his breathing, his slow release of air, that sound of a concertina, judging by this, I am nearly beside him. And so I reach out and there is the great wet fruit of his noise, the velvet bone of his enormous face. And we stand there together for a little while, all alive and all alone.
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January 25th, 2010
12:58 pm
*
Jacqueline du Pré is just the best. Watching her play is like watching sun and shadow and wind move across water.
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January 20th, 2010
12:22 pm - Joyce, from Ulysses
... I love flowers I’d love to have the whole place swimming in roses God of heaven there’s nothing like nature the wild mountains then the sea and the waves rushing then the beautiful country with fields of oats and wheat and all kinds of things and all the fine cattle going about that would do your heart good to see rivers and lakes and flowers all sorts of shapes and smells and colours springing up even out of the ditches primroses and violets nature it is as for them saying there’s no God I wouldn’t give a snap of my two fingers for all their learning why don’t they go and create something I often asked him atheists or whatever they call themselves go and wash the cobbles off themselves first then they go howling for the priest and they dying and why why because they’re afraid of hell on account of their bad conscience ah yes I know them well who was the first person in the universe before there was anybody that made it all who ah that they don’t know neither do I so there you are they might as well try to stop the sun from rising tomorrow the sun shines for you he said the day we were lying among the rhododendrons on Howth head in the grey tweed suit and his straw hat the day I got him to propose to me yes first I gave him the bit of seedcake out of my mouth and it was leapyear like now yes 16 years ago my God after that long kiss I near lost my breath yes he said was a flower of the mountain yes so we are flowers all a woman’s body yes that was one true thing he said in his life and the sun shines for you today yes that was why I liked him because I saw he understood or felt what a woman is and I knew I could always get round him and I gave him all the pleasure I could leading him on till he asked me to say yes and I wouldn’t answer first only looked out over the sea and the sky I was thinking of so many things he didn’t know of Mulvey and Mr Stanhope and Hester and father and old captain Groves and the sailors playing all birds fly and I say stoop and washing up dishes they called it on the pier and the sentry in front of the governors house with the thing round his white helmet poor devil half roasted and the Spanish girls laughing in their shawls and their tall combs and the auctions in the morning the Greeks and the Jews and the Arabs and the devil knows who else from all the ends of Europe and Duke street and the fowl market all clucking outside Larby Sharans and the poor donkeys slipping half asleep and the vague fellows in the cloaks asleep in the shade on the steps and the big wheels of the carts of the bulls and the old castle thousands of years old yes and those handsome Moors all in white and turbans like kings asking you to sit down in their little bit of a shop and Ronda with the old windows of the posadas glancing eyes a lattice hid for her lover to kiss the iron and the wineshops half open at night and the castanets and the night we missed the boat at Algeciras the watchman going about serene with his lamp and O that awful deepdown torrent O and the sea the sea crimson sometimes like fire and the glorious sunsets and the figtrees in the Alameda gardens yes and all the queer little streets and pink and blue and yellow houses and the rosegardens and the jessamine and geraniums and cactuses and Gibraltar as a girl where I was a Flower of the mountain yes when I put the rose in my hair like the Andalusian girls used or shall I wear a red yes and how he kissed me under the Moorish wall and I thought well as well him as another and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down Jo me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes.
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January 18th, 2010
11:43 am
This movie: silly in all the right ways.
Oh! Robert Downey, Jr., so sexy in your period clothing. You charm the pants off me!
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December 21st, 2009
11:01 am
(Carrion Comfort)
NOT, I’ll not, carrion comfort, Despair, not feast on thee;
Not untwist—slack they may be—these last strands of man
In me ór, most weary, cry I can no more. I can;
Can something, hope, wish day come, not choose not to be.
But ah, but O thou terrible, why wouldst thou rude on me
Thy wring-world right foot rock? lay a lionlimb against me? scan
With darksome devouring eyes my bruisèd bones? and fan,
O in turns of tempest, me heaped there; me frantic to avoid thee and flee?
Why? That my chaff might fly; my grain lie, sheer and clear.
Nay in all that toil, that coil, since (seems) I kissed the rod,
Hand rather, my heart lo! lapped strength, stole joy, would laugh, chéer.
Cheer whom though? the hero whose heaven-handling flung me, fóot tród
Me? or me that fought him? O which one? is it each one? That night, that year
Of now done darkness I wretch lay wrestling with (my God!) my God.
--Gerard Manley Hopkins
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December 16th, 2009
04:31 pm - the lovely, lovely opening to LIGHT YEARS by James Salter
One
WE DASH THE BLACK RIVER, ITS flats smooth as stone. Not a ship, not a dinghy, not one cry of white. The water lies broken, cracked from the wind. This great estuary is wide, endless. The river is brackish, blue with the cold. It passes beneath us blurring. The sea birds hang above it, they wheel, disappear. We flash the wide river, a dream of the past. The deeps fall behind, the bottom is paling the surface, we rush by the shallows, boats beached for winter, desolate piers. And on wings like the gulls, soar up, turn, look back.
The day is white as paper. The windows are chilled. The quarries lie empty, the silver mine drowned. The Hudson is vast here, vast and unmoving. A dark country, a country of sturgeon and carp. In the fall it was silver with shad. The geese flew overhead in their long, shifting V's. The tide flows in from the sea.
The Indians sought, they say, a river that "ran both ways." Here they found it. The salt wedge penetrates as far in as fifty miles; sometimes it reaches Poughkeepsie. There were huge beds of oysters here, seals in the harbor, in the woods inexhaustible game. This great glacial cut with its nuptial bays, the coves of wild celery and rice, this majestic river. The birds, like punctuation, are crossing in level flight. They seem to approach slowly, accelerate, pass overhead like arrows. The sky has no color. A feeling of rain.
All this was Dutch. Then, like so much else, it was English. The river is a reflection. It bears only silence, a glittering cold. The trees are naked. The eels sleep. The channel is deep enough for ocean liners; they could, if they wished, astonish the inner towns. There are turtles and crabsin the marshes, herons, Bonaparte gulls. The sewage pours from the cities further up. The river is filthy, but cleanses itself. The fish are numbed; they drift with the tide.
Along the banks there are houses of stone, no longer fashionable, and wooden houses, drafty and bare. There are still estates that exist, remnants of the great land parcels of the past. Near the water, a large Victorian, the brick painted white, trees high above it, a walled garden, a decaying greenhouse with ironwork along the roof. A house by the river, too low for the afternoon sun. It was flooded instead with the light of morning, with the eastern light. It was in glory at noon. There are spots where the paint has turned dark, bare spots. The gravel paths are dissolving; birds nest in the sheds.
We strolled in the garden, eating the small, bitter apples. The trees were dry and gnarled. The lights in the kitchen were on.
A car comes up the driveway, back from the city. The driver goes inside, only for a moment until he's heard the news: the pony has gotten loose.
He is furious. "Where is she? Who left the door unlatched?"
"Oh God, Viri. I don't know."
In a room with many plants, a kind of solarium, there is a lizard, a brown snake, a box turtle asleep. The entry step is deep, the turtle cannot leave. He sleeps on the gravel, his feet drawn up close. His nails are the color of ivory, they curl, they are long. The snake sleeps, the lizard sleeps.
Viri has his coat collar up and is trudging uphill. "Ursula!" he calls. He whistles.
The light has gone. The grass is dry; it creaks underfoot. There was no sun all day. Calling the pony's name, he advances toward the far corners, the road, the adjoining fields. A stillness everywhere. It begins to rain. He sees the one-eyed dog that belongs to a neighbor, a kind of husky, his muzzle gray. The eye is closed completely, sealed, covered with fur so long ago was it lost, as if it never existed.
"Ursula!" he cries.
"She's here," his wife says when he returns.
The pony is near the kitchen door, tranquil, dark, eating an apple. He touches her lips. She bites him absent-mindedly on the wrist. Her eyes are black, lustrous, with the long, crazy lashes of a drunken woman. Her coat is thick, her breath very sweet.
"Ursula," he says. Her ears turn slightly, then forget. "Where have you been? Who unlocked your stall?"
She has no interest in him.
"Have you learned to do that?" He touches an ear; it is warm, strong as a shoe. He leads her to the shed, whose door is ajar. Outside the kitchen he stamps dirt from his shoes.
The lights are on everywhere: a vast, illuminated house. Dead flies the size of beans lie behind the velvet curtains, the wallpaper has corner bulges, the window glass distorts. It is an aviary they live in, a honeycomb. The roofs are thick slate, the rooms are like shops. It gives off no sound, this house; in the darkness it is like a ship. Within, if one listens, there is everything: water, faint voices, the slow, measured rending of grain.
In the principal bath, with its stains, sponges, soaps the color of tea, books, water-curled copies of Vogue, he steams in peace. The water is above his knees; it penetrates to the bone. There is carpeting on the floor, a basket of smooth stones, an empty glass of the deepest blue.
"Papa," they call through the door.
"Yes." He is reading the Times.
"Where was Ursula?"
"Ursula?"
"Where was she?"
"I don't know," he says. "She went out for a walk."
They wait for something further. He is a storyteller, a man of wonders. They listen for sounds, expecting the door to open.
"But where was she?"
"Her legs were wet," he announces.
"Her legs?"
"I think she was swimming."
"No, Daddy, really."
"She was trying to get the onions on the bottom."
"There are no onions there."
"Oh, yes."
"There are?"
"That's where they grow."
They explain it to each other outside the door. It's true, they decide. They wait for him, two little girls squatting like beggars.
"Papa, come out," they say. "We want to talk to you."
He puts aside the paper and sinks one last time into the embrace of the bath.
"Papa?"
"Yes."
"Are you coming out?"
The pony fascinates them. It frightens them. They are ready to run if it makes an unexpected sound. Patient, silent, it stands in its stall; a grazing animal, it eats for hours. Its muzzle has a nimbus of fine hair, its teeth are browned.
"Their teeth never stop growing," the man who sold her to them said. He was a drunkard, his clothes were torn. "They keep growing out and getting wore down."
"What would happen if she didn't eat?"
"If she didn't eat?"
"What would happen to her teeth?"
"Make sure she eats," he said.
They often watch her; they listen to her jaws. This mythical beast, fragrant in the darkness, is greater than they are, stronger, more clever. They long to approach her, to win her love.
Current Mood:  I like books
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