I thought, as I wiped my eyes on the corner of my apron: Penelope did this too. And more than once: you can’t keep weaving all day And undoing it all through the night; Your arms get tired, and the back of your neck gets tight; And along towards morning, when you think it will [...]
Tag Archives | etext
Sonnet 106
When in the chronicle of wasted timeI see descriptions of the fairest wights,And beauty making beautiful old rhymeIn praise of ladies dead, and lovely knights,Then, in the blazon of sweet beauty’s best,Of hand, of foot, of lip, of eye, of brow,I see their antique pen would have expressedEven such a beauty as you master now.So [...]
Only Breath
Not Christian or Jew or Muslim, not Hindu,Buddhist, sufi, or zen. Not any religionor cultural system. I am not from the Eastor the West, not out of the ocean or upfrom the ground, not natural or ethereal, notcomposed of elements at all. I do not exist,am not an entity in this world or the next,did [...]
Evening Song
Full moon rising on the waters of my heart,Lakes and moon and fires,Cloine tires,Holding her lips apart. Promises of slumber leaving shore to charm the moon,Miracle made vesper-keeps,Cloine sleeps,And I’ll be sleeping soon. Cloine, curled like the sleepy waters where the moonwaves start,Radiant, resplendently she gleams,Cloine dreams,Lips pressed against my heart. —Jean Toomer
Chamber Music XIII
Go seek her out all courteously, And say I come,Wind of spices whose song is ever EpithalamionO, hurry over the dark lands And run upon the seaFor seas and land shall not divide us My love and me. Now, wind, of your good courtesy I pray you go,And come into her little garden And sing at her window;Singing: The bridal wind [...]
The Science of the Night
I touch you in the night, whose gift was you,My careless sprawler,And I touch you cold, unstirring, star-bemused,That have become the land of your self-strangeness.What long seduction of the bone has led youDown the imploring roads I cannot takeInto the arms of ghosts I never knew,Leaving my manhood on a rumpled fieldTo guard you where [...]
I Don’t Feel at Home Where I Am
I don’t feel at home where I am,or where I spend time; only where,beyond counting, there’s freedom and calm,that is, waves, that is, space where, when there,you consist of pure freedom, which, seen,turns that Gorgon, the crowd, to stone,to pebbles and sand … where life’s mean-ing lies buried, that never let onecome within cannon shot [...]