Speak in Poetry

[Nat]

I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.
I do not think they will sing to me.

No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;
Am an attendant lord, one that will do
To swell a progress, start a scene or two
Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,
Deferential, glad to be of use,
Politic, cautious, and meticulous;
Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;
At times, indeed, almost ridiculous—
Almost, at times, the Fool.

[Enchantress]

Once I spoke the language of the flowers,
Once I understood each word the caterpillar said,
Once I smiled in secret at the gossip of the starlings,
And shared a conversation with the housefly
in my bed.
Once I heard and answered all the questions
of the crickets,
And joined the crying of each falling dying
flake of snow,
Once I spoke the language of the flowers. . .
How did it go?
How did it go?

[Nat]

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

[Semantics]

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.

[TickledPink]

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

[Nat]

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.

[Enchantress]

"The rain came down.
Hard, and soft.
It hit the grass.
Green, and wet.
Wet.
So wet.
It reminded me of you.
You always smelled like the rain."

[Nat]

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?

[Miami]

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.

[Enchantress]

O the transformation
of feeling into what?
Into audible landscape.
Music: you stranger. Passion which
has outgrown us. Our inner most being,
transcending, driven out of us,
holiest of departures:
inner worlds now
the most practiced of distances, as
the other side of thin air:
pure,
immense
no longer habitable...

.

[Enchantress]

this is the garden:colours come and go,
frail azures fluttering from night's outer wing
strong silent greens serenely lingering,
absolute lights like baths of golden snow.
This is the garden pursed lips do blow
upon cool flutes within wide glooms,and sing
(of harps celestial to the quivering string)
invisible faces hauntingly and slow...

[Nat]

I am a feather on the bright sky

The blackbird whirled in the autumn winds.
It was a small part of the pantomime.

I am the evening light, the lustre of meadows
I am the farthest star

I know noble accents
And lucid, inescapable rhythms;
But I know, too,
That the blackbird is involved
In what I know.

I am the long track of the moon in a lake
I am the hunger of a young wolf

I do not know which to prefer,
The beauty of inflections
Or the beauty of innuendoes,
The blackbird whistling
Or just after.

I am the whole dream of these things
You see, I am alive, I am alive
I stand in good relation to the earth
I stand in good relation to the gods
I stand in good relation to all that is beautiful

When the blackbird flew out of sight,
It marked the edge
Of one of many circles.

You see, I am alive, I am alive

(Mashup of The Delight Song of Tsoai-Talee by N. Scott Momaday and Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird by Wallace Stevens)

[Nat]

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

[Enchantress]

Come to me in my dreams, and then
By day I shall be well again.
For then the night will more than pay
The hopeless longing of the day.

[Enchantress]

You, who are all
the gardens I've ever looked upon,
full of promise. An open window
in a country house, and you almost stepped
towards me, thoughtfully. Sidestreets I happened upon,
you had just passed through them,
and sometimes, in the small shops of sellers, the mirrors
were still dizzy with you and gave back, frightened,
my too sudden form. Who is to say if the same
bird did not resound through us both
yesterday, separate, in the evening?

[Passionaria]

"The evening breeze caressed the trees tenderly
The trembling trees embraced the breeze tenderly
Then you and I came wandering by
And lost in a sigh were we
The shore was kissed by sea and mist tenderly
I can't forget how two hearts met breathlessly
Your arms opened wide and closed me inside
You took my lips, you took my love so tenderly"

[Soon]

What is Summer in a fine brocaded gown!
I should like to see it lying in a heap upon the ground.
All the pink and silver crumpled up on the ground.

I would be the pink and silver as I ran along the paths,
And he would stumble after,
Bewildered by my laughter.

[Nat]

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.

[Enchantress]

Nor did I wonder at the lily's white,
Nor praise the deep vermilion in the rose;
They were but sweet, but figures of delight,
Drawn after you, you pattern of all those.
Yet seemed it winter still, and, you away,
As with your shadow I with these did play...

[Nat]

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.