Res ipsa loquitur

This one is very delightful to read aloud.

Summers Ago
by Isabella Gardner

For Edith Sitwell

The Ferryman fairied us out to sea
Gold gold gold sang the apple-tree

Children I told you I tell you our sun was a hail of gold!
I say that sun stoned, that sun stormed our tranquil, our blue bay
bellsweet saltfresh water (bluer than tongue-can-tell, daughter)
and dazed us, darlings, and dazzled us, I say that sun crazed
(that sun clove) our serene as ceramic selves and our noon glazed cove,
and children all that grew wild by the wonderful water shot tall
as tomorrow, reeds suddenly shockingly green had sprouted like sorrow
and crimson explosions of roses arose in that flurry of Danaean glory
while at night we did swoon ah we swanned to a silverer moonlight than listen or lute,
we trysted in gondolas blown from glass and kissed in fluted Venetian bliss.

Sister and brother I your mother
Once was a girl in skirling weather
Though summer and swan must alter, falter,
I waltzed on the water once, son and daughter.

Maire Macrae's Song
by Kathleen Raine

The singer is old and has forgotten
Her girlhood's grief for the young soldier
Who sailed away across the ocean,
Love's brief joy and lonely sorrow;
The song is older than the singer.

The song is older than the singer
Shaped by the love and the long waiting
Of women dead and long forgotten
Who sang before remembered time
To teach the unbroken heart its sorrow.

The girl who waits for her young soldier
Learns from the cadence of the song
How deep her love, how long the waiting.
Sorrow is older than the heart,
Already old when love is young;
The song is older than the sorrow.



(Kathleen Raine is also author of "To My Mountain," which inspired Loving North)

Think of Me in D Major

I know everything I know about dying
      (all doctors do
      is hope and cut)
from what I've been told by my own soft brain
while waiting in a waiting room:
                                    "Dying

seems to be something living organisms
      do naturally.
      You might be next."
I'm waiting for a doctor to check my pulse
and draw blood. I feel sick, not dying,
                                    but scared.

and poor Johann Sebastian Bach is trying
      to comfort me
      in D Major,
soothing with high strings, then coming in low
for a few notes, as if to say,
                                    gravely,

"Maybe you think about dying too much.
      Why, even you
      could live and be
swept away by a dose of baroque music."
The doctor who examines me agrees
                                    with Bach,

reducing all my intimations of mortality
      to medical facts,
      psychosomatic
muscle spasms and gas pains. I am alive,
but the prognosis isn't good: someday I will
                                    be dead,

and even the doctor admits that he can't find
      one cell
      of my soul
with his silver instruments and microscopes.
It's hard to believe that anyone can live
                                    hopefully

if the body is simply a score written in red
      and white counts,
      brainwaves, x-rays.
But harder to believe that anyone can die
when Johann Sebastian Bach argues
                                    for the soul

in D Major, a symphony of goosebumps.
      Maybe what dying
      organisms call
living is learning how to be swept away?
I admit that I feel swept away, somewhat
                                    immortal,

with Johann Sebastian Bach in the air.
      So, if someday
      I disappear,
just think of me as a goosebump, or a note
that disappears in D Major, swept away,
                                    but still here.



John Engman

Hm, I think I overwrote an entry. Will fix that later. Meanwhile:

summerstorm - top 5 poems?

Not the top five, but five poems I've taken a lot of pleasure from:

( Moon and Panorama of Insects -- Gabriel Garcia Lorca )

( Portrait By a Neighbor - Edna St. Vincent Millay )


( Angels Among the Servants -- Nancy Willard )

( At the Feast in the Great Hall -- Ursula K. Le Guin )


( Ballad of the Paths in Västmanland -- Lars Gustafsson )


Upcoming prompts below the cut.


( Read more... )

Thank goodness for the internet - I read this in a chapbook in the '80s and was shocked to be able to find it again.

June 78
Karen Brodine

it's like being sick all the time, I think,
coming home from work, sick in that
low-grade continuous way that makes
you forget what it's like to be well. we
have never in our lives known what it is
to be well. what if I were coming home,
I think, from doing work that I loved and
that was for us all, what if I looked at
the houses and the air and the streets,
knowing they were in accord, not set
against us, what if we knew the powers
of this country moved to provide for us
and for all people--how would that
be--how would we feel and think
and what would we create?

realpestilence prompted: favorite poem and favorite poet.

My favorite poet right now is Walt Whitman. This changes from time to time, but Whitman is meaning a lot to me right now.

I've also always had a soft spot for my adolescent favorite, Edna St. Vincent Millay, and for Don Marquis' Archy and Mehitabel poems. And I loved the early work of Marilyn Hacker, but her stuff spoke less to me once she stopped using poetic forms.

I couldn't really say I have one favorite poem, per se, but here's one I've been finding particularly meaningful for some years.

( Angels Among the Servants )

I want to read some smut and there is none.
I think the universe is very rude.
I thought this evening would be much more fun;
I want to read some smut and there is none.
Am I reduced to knitting like a nun?
Or reading things where people don't get nude?!
I want to read some smut and there is none.
I think the universe is very rude.

Who has seen the cat?
Neither I nor you.
But when you fall and break your leg,
The cat is passing through.

Who has seen the cat?
Neither you nor I.
But when you tumble down the stairs,
The cat is passing by.

I'm looking for a sestina by Marilyn Hacker called "Nimue to Merlin." It was in an early collection of hers, one which I think had the word "city" in the title, and may also have been in some collected-works volume, though it isn't in the one I have.

If anyone has this poem, and could type it in for me, I would be eternally (or at least until Thursday) grateful.