"bronzes" poems
You came from the Aztecs
With a copper on your fore-arms
Tawnier than a sunset
Saying good-by to an even river.
And I said, you remember,
Those fore-arms of yours
Were finer than bronzes
And you were glad.
It was tears
And a path west
and a home-going
when I asked
Why there were scars of worn gold
Where a man's ring was fixed once
On your third finger.
And I call you
To come back
before the days are longer.
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Out beyond the edge of reason,
beyond where my senses can claim
I cannot sleep or wake…
nor dream.
In a state of
nondescript stillness. Bereft of
unnecessary memories.
I am not loved,
I do not love
in ways I can any longer
understand. Stark states of
stalemate.
Melpomene and Thalia
hunched over game pieces
a drunken heart
laments all a sober mind must
reason.
When liquid gold
and golden light
take to loving,
we as humans,
are no match. Either of
these elixirs in their limpidness,
bronzes our throats and
smothers our breath,
consumes our vision
with that last still drift of
sulphur, struck…
My flickering writhe
is a lambent match flame
Leaning in
to kiss a wild bonfire.
Oct 24, 2014
Oct 24, 2014 at 3:24 PM UTC
i.
the grey ghosts
water to the sky,
pond to the
breaking air,
the blues are
cloudy
islands and
stars, lily pad
gold-green
dream of monet-
light.
ii.
love drifts,
scurries over
the water like
a dragonfly,
her wings the light
flowing, melting
in its breathful
streams
falling
falling
in the delicate
colours of
spring with
its tide-like
ebb and flow.
iii.
i held you
close and you
were the
aching spring,
the bright
opals of the moon,
i held you close
and all i could see
where the blues of
the pond, the
snake-silver
stream of starlight
and flower,
you were the
aching bronzes
of the rivery
pools, the still
water's paradise
of blue and white.
iv.
capture me
in the cloudy
isles of
the bright
lilies,
i am the melting
light, the frail
bloom with its
zen-like peace,
church of quiet
air, hopeful stream
of ache and light.
v.
ghost-enamels
of impression,
silently, the sun
sinks and the golds
of spring blossom
like a spell.
Mar 22, 2017
Mar 22, 2017 at 4:08 PM UTC
A thousand god-eating plates in a summer wind
Listen, china-white, to the audible inaudible that flanks
The paint-chip, earth-red bridges. Susurrations weave
Through grass with spider fingers; following curves in seashells
As a voluble electric screen who Speaks as dew and taste.
Water is depth beyond what can be acquainted with memory
Or fancy. Watches turn delicate, May-lace and wedding night
Music: Vertical, Veiled, Very. Dust in the stream lisps
Headily to shore, rests by a forgotten child’s shoe,
Bronzes it like mother’s finger and burns like daybreak.
Feb 7, 2010
Feb 7, 2010 at 2:46 PM UTC
I WALKED among the streets of an old city and the streets were lean as the throats of hard seafish soaked in salt and kept in barrels many years.
How old, how old, how old, we are:-the walls went on saying, street walls leaning toward each other like old women of the people, like old midwives tired and only doing what must be done.
The greatest the city could offer me, a stranger, was statues of the kings, on all corners bronzes of kings-ancient bearded kings who wrote books and spoke of God's love for all people-and young kings who took forth armies out across the frontiers splitting the heads of their opponents and enlarging their kingdoms.
Strangest of all to me, a stranger in this old city, was the murmur always whistling on the winds twisting out of the armpits and fingertips of the kings in bronze:-Is there no loosening? Is this for always?
In an early snowflurry one cried:-Pull me down where the tired old midwives no longer look at me, throw the bronze of me to a fierce fire and make me into neckchains for dancing children.
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THE bronze General Grant riding a bronze horse in Linc-
oln Park
Shrivels in the sun by day when the motor cars whirr
by in long processions going somewhere to keep ap-
pointment for dinner and matinees and buying and
selling
Though in the dusk and nightfall when high waves are
piling
On the slabs of the promenade along the lake shore near
by
And make to ride his bronze horse out into the hoofs
and guns of the storm.
I cross Lincoln Park on a winter night when the snow
is falling.
Lincoln in bronze stands among the white lines of snow,
his bronze forehead meeting soft echoes of the new-
sies crying forty thousand men are dead along the
Yser, his bronze ears listening to the mumbled roar
of the city at his bronze feet.
A lithe Indian on a bronze pony, Shakespeare seated with
long legs in bronze, Garibaldi in a bronze cape, they
hold places in the cold, lonely snow to-night on their
pedestals and so they will hold them past midnight
and into the dawn.
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I’m sitting above some soil,
Is this my backyard?
No, my neighborhood is
Many miles from here.
Scores of sounds
Jump down
At different decibels
To my excited ears.
A Mexican Sun bronzes arms,
And the sky continues to stay clear.
Am I grateful for the sky?
I am grateful for the sky.
Trees plus breeze
Equals a faint whisper
Amid muggy heat.
I wish I could translate each leaf,
For the forest keeps
A language of her own.
I would like to leave my mark on this earth -
More lastingly than the Red River Maple tree,
Who leaves only a passing shadow on the ground.
And my favorite twisted Acacia talks about how long
it's been around, but I’m not so naïve,
So it's noise dies down.
Just long enough
To hear my thoughts
Echo, and echo,
And stop somewhere.
Sweat beads drip down
Onto a parched porch.
Soon, the moisture is gone,
And a taciturn timber terrace
Smiles as if to say;
“I am the Sahara. I am dry.”
Shifting my gaze
Back to nature,
I center my senses,
On these different woods,
Which breathe without fences.
A gray catbird picks away at the ground,
Searching for some nourishment.
An Inca Dove ***** by noisily,
For stealth has never been his game.
A cardinal flits across the landscape,
Not staying long enough for me
To fully appreciate his crimson splendor.
A motor car rumbles by,
But soon the forest’s natural
Symphony drowns that sound.
A strand of a spider’s web
Drifts by, stealing my eyes,
For moments.
Signs of spring, of summer, of September,
Live in this place. I wonder if
My yard is blooming, too.
Aug 31, 2011
Aug 31, 2011 at 1:46 AM UTC
About a year has passed. I've returned to the place of the battle,
to its birds that have learned their unfolding of wings
from a subtle
lift of a surprised eyebrow, or perhaps from a razor blade
- wings, now the shade of early twilight, now of state
bad blood.
Now the place is abuzz with trading
in your ankles's remnants, bronzes
of sunburnt breastplates, dying laughter, bruises,
rumors of fresh reserves, memories of high treason,
laundered banners with imprints of the many
who since have risen.
All's overgrown with people. A ruin's a rather stubborn
architectural style. And the hearts's distinction
from a pitch-black cavern
isn't that great; not great enough to fear
that we may collide again like blind eggs somewhere.
At sunrise, when nobody stares at one's face, I often,
set out on foot to a monument cast in molten
lengthy bad dreams. And it says on the plinth "commander
in chief." But it reads "in grief," or "in brief,"
or "in going under."
Joseph Brodsky
Jan 24, 2013
Jan 24, 2013 at 6:52 PM UTC
“where summer’s bronzes dull and sink”
the trees are like
wet coat hangers,
holding up the leaves,
my cat is frosty like
an october morn,
sleeping on the sill,
everything is dripping
like a wet pair of
jeans taken out of the wash,
the sky wears its greys
of cloud, dim and dramatic
it opens summer eyes.
Jul 24, 2022
Jul 24, 2022 at 12:06 PM UTC
When foliage take their leave
From crowning summer branches,
After turning into myriads
Of earth adorning bronzes.
Thick and luscious burnished carpet
In rust and gold and richest umber,
Autumn ushers covetous Winter
Into Summer’s glorious slumber.
Nov 6, 2014
Nov 6, 2014 at 4:49 PM UTC
C'est plutôt le sabbat du second Faust que l'autre.
Un rhythmique sabbat, rhythmique, extrêmement
Rhythmique. - Imaginez un jardin de Lenôtre,
Correct, ridicule et charmant.
Des ronds-points ; au milieu, des jets d'eau ; des allées
Toutes droites ; sylvains de marbre ; dieux marins
De bronze ; çà et là, des Vénus étalées ;
Des quinconces, des boulingrins ;
Des châtaigniers ; des plants de fleurs formant la dune ;
Ici, des rosiers nains qu'un goût docte effila ;
Plus **** des ifs taillés en triangles. La lune
D'un soir d'été sur tout cela.
Minuit sonne, et réveille au fond du parc aulique
Un air mélancolique, un sourd, lent et doux air
De chasse : tel, doux, lent, sourd et mélancolique,
L'air de chasse de Tannhauser.
Des chants voilés de cors lointains où la tendresse
Des sens étreint l'effroi de l'âme en des accords
Harmonieusement dissonnants dans l'ivresse ;
Et voici qu'à l'appel des cors
S'entrelacent soudain des formes toutes blanches,
Diaphanes, et que le clair de lune fait
Opalines parmi l'ombre verte des branches,
- Un Watteau rêvé par Raffet ! -
S'entrelacent parmi l'ombre verte des arbres
D'un geste alangui, plein d'un désespoir profond ;
Puis, autour des massifs, des bronzes et des marbres
Très lentement dansent en rond.
- Ces spectres agités, sont-ce donc la pensée
Du poète ivre, ou son regret, ou son remords,
Ces spectres agités en tourbe cadencée,
Ou bien tout simplement des morts ?
Sont-ce donc ton remords, ô rêvasseur qu'invite
L'horreur, ou ton regret, ou ta pensée, - hein ? - tous
Ces spectres qu'un vertige irrésistible agite,
Ou bien des morts qui seraient fous ? -
N'importe ! ils vont toujours, les fébriles fantômes,
Menant leur ronde vaste et morne et tressautant
Comme dans un rayon de soleil des atomes,
Et s'évaporent à l'instant
Humide et blême où l'aube éteint l'un après l'autre
Les cors, en sorte qu'il ne reste absolument
Plus rien - absolument - qu'un jardin de Lenôtre,
Correct, ridicule et charmant.
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Automn opens her eyes ever so
Slightly; earth toned irises within
The green mirror of a summer
Dozing off, her awakening reflected
In human breath now visible upon
Chilled evening air, and
Lovers' fingers seeking closer
Shelter within the shared
Pockets of each other.
You ask what the doctor said,
But I have sweeter fish to fry
Than worry; such sensations
As the way your skin is the
Softest I have ever felt against
My own surface of scars and hair,
And how I'm looking forward to
October auburns, bronzes, yellows
And sepias. All in contrast to the
Whites and magnolias of the
Winter that follows their blossom,
And the excuses the coldness
In their wake presents to lean
Closer. Huddle up. Warm hands
Under garments, share blankets
With the least innocent of
Intentions. I love the subzeros.
Frost. Goosebumps receding under
A kiss. And another. And another.
Sep 16, 2014
Sep 16, 2014 at 10:58 AM UTC
Once hailed poets were like little gods of society,
built on pedestals of bronzes with praises.
Now, a few hundred years later, poets are seen as
moody idle under-achievers, who can't even commit
long enough to write something of little worth.
May 30, 2014
May 30, 2014 at 5:38 AM UTC
she strode past us with a strangely humble presence,
short dark curls matching a flawlessly and painfully casual outfit.
It must've taken her at least three trips from the shelf to the counter -
there was a stack of maybe 11 canvases in front of her, all varying in shape and size.
she was an effortless kind of beautiful,
the kind that boasts without saying anything.
you could tell so much about her just by looking at her appearance,
but at the same time all her movements seemed to be keeping secrets.
Her conversation with the woman at the cashier reflected her lightweight personality,
and I liked the way she used the word "surfaces" for the blank canvases -
that word was a large mouthful of potential.
I really hope she'll paint them in all the different shades of European blues and greens and bronzes that I had caught a glimpse of in her eyes.
Jul 2, 2014
Jul 2, 2014 at 8:53 AM UTC
Au secours ! A l 'aide !
Désirée Anadyomène !
Ton chevalier poète se noie !
Il braie il hennit il aboie
Son cri aux armes et à la rescousse
Sauve-moi ! Je suis aux abois !
Tu es une oeuvre d'art
Un tableau grandeur nature
Une baigneuse éparpillée en mille morceaux
Façon puzzle géant
J'ai réussi au bout d'une nuit blanche
A force de gymnastique
A reconstituer ta tête, tes ongles d'un pied
Et d'une main et une paire de lunettes de soleil.
Maigre performance et pourtant
ce n 'est pas faute de m'être appliqué.
J'ai contourné encore et encore ce corps
Comme si c était un triangle d'or en trois dimensions
Une sorte de sculpture de pierre en ronde-bosse
Plongée dans les eaux d'un océan tiède émeraude
Et à force de me pencher comme un mort de faim
Pour tâcher d'entrevoir ta silhouette de naïade
J 'ai perdu pied
J'ai chaviré cul par-dessus tête
Je suis tombé par-dessus bord
Avec monture, armure, lance et épée
Seule ma bannière flotte encore
Et toi tu ne bouges toujours pas
Tu bronzes en pleine baie du Tombeau
En déclamant mes poèmes à ta gloire
Tandis que je m'enfonce seconde après seconde
Je me débats comme un désespéré
Je ne sais pas nager
Et même sous l 'eau je n 'arrive pas
A distinguer tes formes sculpturales.
Excuse-moi si je t'éclabousse
Si je patauge, si je te marche sur le pied
Si je m'agrippe désespérément à ta tête
Et à tes lunettes comme à un arc-en-ciel
J 'en suis aux dernières extrémités
Pourrais-tu me rendre un tout petit service
Ramène-moi hors de l 'eau sur le rivage
Et si tu le peux emmène-nous dans une crique bien abritée
Saisis ma tête et réanime-moi.
Aug 24, 2019
Aug 24, 2019 at 2:02 AM UTC