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Edna St. Vincent Millay |
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Edna St. Vincent Millay |
Copyright © 1970 by Big Sky Music; renewed 1998 by Big Sky Music
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N.D.G. Winter Carnaval, February 19, 1955; photo taken at NDG Park (Girouard Park); St. Augustine Roman Catholic Church in the background. |
January 2012 |
The famously crimson glow fills my living room,
a backdrop of red-pepper flames. Wall to wall,
crimson ribs, crimson rugs, the potted plants
smoking, Chagall prints bleeding, lamps like explosions
in miniature action films. How careless I look
in all this flicker, the Devil and I
exchanging handshakes like hunks of raw steak.
A palette apart from golden shimmers of goodness
where even spiders go down on their tiny knees.
Tonight, God sleeps somewhere secret, like a celebrity.
It's just me and the horned one, red and redder,
two roses rubbing up against each other's thorns.
You can smell the envy and lust in the air.
You can look into the sizzle of his eyes
and recognize the grimace on my shrunken face.
We argue for awhile, both of us completely wrong.
We throw ourselves into scalding pits of hate.
Have never felt this free before, flying
into fury and smashing all the shadows on the wall.
Stripped of everything but his steaming socks,
Devil does a lurid dance, the Chagall goats
falling from the sky half-roasted. I throw my head back,
swallowing a snake plant whole. Party hearty,
one of us shouts, bursting into a karaoke
version of The Hallelujah Chorus.
Imagine how I feel in the morning,
a field of poppies popping my eyeballs.
Tippy-toeing like a two-year old, I toddle
towards a trickle of sunlight, hoping
for an unconscious blessing. Hell, what a mess.
The rugs and lamps are still fuming, a pair of
underpants skewered on an aloe vera plant.
How do I make up for this? Unworthy, is all
I can manage to say, the tip of my tongue a blister.
The next time I see God, I'm going to wave harder
than all the other fans, make angel eyes at him,
maybe even toss him a flower, something white
like a suffering child's hand. Who knows,
maybe he'll hire me as a houseboy
to carry guests' coats or fetch pretty snacks
from his yellow kitchen.
Maybe I can even learn to turn the Devil down
before he whispers his inklings in my ear,
flee through those alluring clouds of smoke.
Some say horsemen, some say warriors,
Some say a fleet of ships is the loveliest
Vision in this dark world, but I say it’s
What you love.
It’s easy to make this clear to everyone,
Since Helen, she who outshone
All others in beauty, left
A fine husband,
And headed for Troy
Without a thought for
Her daughter, her dear parents…
Led astray…
And I recall Anaktoria, whose sweet step
Or that flicker of light on her face,
I’d rather see than Lydian chariots
Or the armed ranks of the hoplites.
The tulips are too excitable, it is winter here.
Look how white everything is, how quiet, how snowed-in
I am learning peacefulness, lying by myself quietly
As the light lies on these white walls, this bed, these hands.
I am nobody; I have nothing to do with explosions.
I have given my name and my day-clothes up to the nurses
And my history to the anaesthetist and my body to surgeons.
They have propped my head between the pillow and the sheet-cuff
Like an eye between two white lids that will not shut.
Stupid pupil, it has to take everything in.
The nurses pass and pass, they are no trouble,
They pass the way gulls pass inland in their white caps,
Doing things with their hands, one just the same as another,
So it is impossible to tell how many there are.
My body is a pebble to them, they tend it as water
Tends to the pebbles it must run over, smoothing them gently.
They bring me numbness in their bright needles, they bring me sleep.
Now I have lost myself I am sick of baggage ——
My patent leather overnight case like a black pillbox,
My husband and child smiling out of the family photo;
Their smiles catch onto my skin, little smiling hooks.
I have let things slip, a thirty-year-old cargo boat
Stubbornly hanging on to my name and address.
They have swabbed me clear of my loving associations.
Scared and bare on the green plastic-pillowed trolley
I watched my teaset, my bureaus of linen, my books
Sink out of sight, and the water went over my head.
I am a nun now, I have never been so pure.
I didn't want any flowers, I only wanted
To lie with my hands turned up and be utterly empty.
How free it is, you have no idea how free ——
The peacefulness is so big it dazes you,
And it asks nothing, a name tag, a few trinkets.
It is what the dead close on, finally; I imagine them
Shutting their mouths on it, like a Communion tablet.
The tulips are too red in the first place, they hurt me.
Even through the gift paper I could hear them breathe
Lightly, through their white swaddlings, like an awful baby.
Their redness talks to my wound, it corresponds.
They are subtle: they seem to float, though they weigh me down,
Upsetting me with their sudden tongues and their colour,
A dozen red lead sinkers round my neck.
Nobody watched me before, now I am watched.
The tulips turn to me, and the window behind me
Where once a day the light slowly widens and slowly thins,
And I see myself, flat, ridiculous, a cut-paper shadow
Between the eye of the sun and the eyes of the tulips,
And I have no face, I have wanted to efface myself.
The vivid tulips eat my oxygen.
Before they came the air was calm enough,
Coming and going, breath by breath, without any fuss.
Then the tulips filled it up like a loud noise.
Now the air snags and eddies round them the way a river
Snags and eddies round a sunken rust-red engine.
They concentrate my attention, that was happy
Playing and resting without committing itself.
The walls, also, seem to be warming themselves.
The tulips should be behind bars like dangerous animals;
They are opening like the mouth of some great African cat,
And I am aware of my heart: it opens and closes
Its bowl of red blooms out of sheer love of me.
The water I taste is warm and salty, like the sea,
And comes from a country far away as health.
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Veeto in 2015 |
Come to me here from Crete,
To this holy temple, where
Your lovely apple grove stands,
And your altars that flicker
With incense.
And below the apple branches, cold
Clear water sounds, everything shadowed
By roses, and sleep that falls from
Bright shaking leaves.
And a pasture for horses blossoms
With the flowers of spring, and breezes
Are flowing here like honey:
Come to me here,
Here, Cyprian, delicately taking
Nectar in golden cups
Mixed with a festive joy,
And pour.
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Elizabeth Smart |
That day i finished
A small piece
For an obscure magazine
I popped it in the box
And such a starry elation
Came over me
That I got whistled at in the street
For the first time in a long time.
I was dirty and roughly dressed
And had circles under my eyes
And far far from flirtation
But so full of completion
Of a deed duly done
An act of consummation
That the freedom and force it engendered
Shone and spun
Out of my old raincoat.
It must have looked like love
Or a fabulous free holiday
To the young men sauntering
Down Berwick Street.
I still think this is most mysterious
For while I was writing it
It was gritty it felt like self-abuse
Constipation, desperately unsocial.
But done done done
Everything in the world
Flowed back
Like a huge bonus.
We have lost even this twilight.
No one saw us this evening hand in hand
while the blue night dropped on the world.
I have seen from my window
the fiesta of sunset in the distant mountain tops.
Sometimes a piece of sun
burned like a coin in my hand.
I remembered you with my soul clenched
in that sadness of mine that you know.
Where were you then?
Who else was there?
Saying what?
Why will the whole of love come on me suddenly
when I am sad and feel you are far away?
The book fell that always closed at twilight
and my blue sweater rolled like a hurt dog at my feet.
Always, always you recede through the evenings
toward the twilight erasing statues.