Poetry: The Podcast: Recent Episodes
Dallas
Destiny
There was a star that lit my life
It hath set to rise no more,
For Heaven, in mercy, withdrew the light
I fain would have knelt before.
There was a flower I pluck' d in my dreams
Fragrant and fair to see;
Oh, would I had never awoke and found
Such bloom not here for me.
There was a harp, whose magic tone,
Echoed my faintest words
But Destiny's hand, with a ruthless touch,,
Hath rent the golden chords.
There was a path like Eden's vale,
In which I was spell'd to stray,
But Destiny rose with a flaming sword
To guard that path alway.
I've looked on eves were like the star
Their light is quench'd for me;
And a soul I have known like the golden harp
That breath'd but melody.
And moments bright as that dream-land
Where bloomed the radiant flower.
Oh! would I had died ere I felt the gloom
Of this dark, joyless hour.
Fatal the time I rais'd mine eyes
To eyes whose light hath blasted
Yet ere I could turn from their glance away,
Life had with gazing wasted.
Bitter the thought that years may pass
Yet thus it must be ever,
To look on thy form, to hear thy voice
But nearer never, never.
Could I but love as I love the stars,
Or the gush of the twilight breeze,
Or the pale light of the wandering moon
Glancing through forest trees;
With a sinless, calm, untroubled love,
Look upwards and adore
Could I but thus gaze life away,,
Without the wish to soar.
In vain! in vain! I hope, I weep,
I kneel the long nights in prayer
Ohl better to die in the noon of life,
Than love, and yet despair.
- Lady Jane Wilde
First, are you our sort of a person?
Do you wear
A glass eye, false teeth or a crutch,
A brace or a hook,
Rubber breasts or a rubber crotch,
Stitches to show something's missing? No, no? Then
How can we give you a thing?
Stop crying.
Open your hand.
Empty? Empty. Here is a hand
To fill it and willing
To bring teacups and roll away headaches
And do whatever you tell it.
Will you marry it?
It is guaranteed
To thumb shut your eyes at the end
And dissolve of sorrow.
We make new stock from the salt.
I notice you are stark naked.
How about this suit——
Black and stiff, but not a bad fit.
Will you marry it?
It is waterproof, shatterproof, proof
Against fire and bombs through the roof.
Believe me, they'll bury you in it.
Now your head, excuse me, is empty.
I have the ticket for that.
Come here, sweetie, out of the closet.
Well, what do you think of that?
Naked as paper to start
But in twenty-five years she'll be silver,
In fifty, gold.
A living doll, everywhere you look.
It can sew, it can cook,
It can talk, talk, talk.
It works, there is nothing wrong with it.
You have a hole, it's a poultice.
You have an eye, it's an image.
My boy, it's your last resort.
Will you marry it, marry it, marry it.
Every day you play with the light of the universe.
Subtle visitor, you arrive in the flower and the water.
You are more than this white head that I hold tightly
as a cluster of fruit, every day, between my hands.
You are like nobody since I love you.
Let me spread you out among yellow garlands.
Who writes your name in letters of smoke among the stars of the south?
Oh let me remember you as you were before you existed.
Suddenly the wind howls and bangs at my shut window.
The sky is a net crammed with shadowy fish.
Here all the winds let go sooner or later, all of them.
The rain takes off her clothes.
The birds go by, fleeing.
The wind. The wind.
I can contend only against the power of men.
The storm whirls dark leaves
and turns loose all the boats that were moored last night to the sky.
You are here. Oh, you do not run away.
You will answer me to the last cry.
Cling to me as though you were frightened.
Even so, at one time a strange shadow ran through your eyes.
Now, now too, little one, you bring me honeysuckle,
and even your breasts smell of it.
While the sad wind goes slaughtering butterflies
I love you, and my happiness bites the plum of your mouth.
How you must have suffered getting accustomed to me,
my savage, solitary soul, my name that sends them all running.
So many times we have seen the morning star burn, kissing our eyes,
and over our heads the gray light unwind in turning fans.
My words rained over you, stroking you.
A long time I have loved the sunned mother-of-pearl of your body.
I go so far as to think that you own the universe.
I will bring you happy flowers from the mountains, bluebells,
dark hazels, and rustic baskets of kisses.
I want
to do with you what spring does with the cherry trees.
The age demanded that we sing
And cut away our tongue.
The age demanded that we flow
And hammered in the bung.
The age demanded that we dance
And jammed us into iron pants.
And in the end the age was handed
The sort of shit that it demanded.
--Ernest Hemingway