Speak in Poetry
 

needs must suck
At the great wound, and could not pluck
My lips away till I had drawn
All venom out.
-----------
All sin was of my sinning, all
Atoning mine, and mine the gall
Of all regret. Mine was the weight
Of every brooded wrong, the hate
That stood behind each envious thrust,
Mine every greed, mine every lust.
And all the while for every grief,
Each suffering, I craved relief
With individual desire

And he himself, as he lay there, relieved, with the sweetness
of the gentle world you had made for him dissolving beneath
his drowsy eyelids, into the foretaste of sleep-:
he seemed protected . . . But inside: who could ward off,
who could divert, the floods of origin inside him?

Ah, there was no trace of caution in that sleeper; sleeping,
yes but dreaming, but flushed with what fevers: how he
threw himself in.
All at once new, trembling, how he was caught up
and entangled in the spreading tendrils of inner event
already twined into patterns, into strangling undergrowth,
prowling
bestial shapes. How he submitted-. Loved.

Then dark with dripping blood it gave a howl
and cried again: 'Our damaged branches ache!
Your pillage maims me! Can't you feel at all?

We who were men are now this barren brake.
You'd grant us your respect and stay your hand
were we a thicket not of souls but snakes.'

As wood still green starts burning at one end
and from its unlit end the burning stick
drips sap, and hisses with escaping wind,

so from the broken stump there oozed a mix
of words and blood: a frothy babbling gore.
I dropped the branch. My fear had made me sick.

'Poor wounded soul, could he have grasped before,'
my sage replied, 'what now he sees is true,
and blindly trusted in poetic lore,

then he need not have so insulted you.
But as there was no other way to learn
I urged him to a test that grieved me too.

Tell us who you were, that he, in turn,
can set your honor freshly back in style
among those he will teach when he returns.'

The trunk: 'Your speech, by raising hope that I'll
regain repute, makes words arise in me.
I mean to talk, if you will stay a while:

I was the one entrusted with the keys
to Federigo's mind, and it was sweet
to share his thought and guard his strategy

for noble ventures secret in my keep —
so faithfully I filled this glorious post,
I gladly sacrificed my health and sleep...'

Dante Alighieri

And you, O my Soul, where you stand,
Surrounded, surrounded, in measureless oceans of space,
Ceaselessly musing, venturing, throwing,--seeking the spheres, to connect them;
Till the bridge you will need, be form'd--till the ductile anchor hold;
Till the gossamer thread you fling, catch somewhere, O my Soul.

if I in my north room
dance naked, grotesquely
before my mirror
waving my shirt round my head
and singing softly to myself
...
If I admire my arms, my face,
my shoulders, flanks, buttocks
against the yellow drawn shades,--

Who shall say I am not
the happy genius of my household?

Love, can you hear me?
I call to thee incessantly,
yet you turn a deaf ear
to all my wretched pleas,
and send only women
who would put me on
my knees,
for shame, oh fate,
to pay me so foully,
what have I done to
deserve this from thee?
Have I not been faithful,
and placed upon your pyre
my heart as solemn sacrifice?
And yet you seek to torment me,
By sending one wench after another,
to break what is unbreakable,
try as you might,
I will love as I will,
heart broken I may be,
But my spirit will never bow down
to your defeat.

You will carry this suture
into the future
the past never passes
it simply amasses

tenderly
 

And I walked into the garden,
Up and down the patterned paths,
In my stiff, correct brocade.
The blue and yellow flowers stood up proudly in the sun,
Each one.
I stood upright too,
Held rigid to the pattern
By the stiffness of my gown.
Up and down I walked,
Up and down.

:)

At once a voice arose among
The bleak twigs overhead
In a full-hearted evensong
Of joy illimited;
An aged thrush, frail, gaunt, and small,
In blast-beruffled plume,
Had chosen thus to fling his soul
Upon the growing gloom.