"cypresses" poems
—and not simply by the fact that this shading of
forest cannot show the fragrance of balsam,
the gloom of cypresses,
is what I wish to prove.
When you and I were first in love we drove
to the borders of Connacht
and entered a wood there.
Look down you said: this was once a famine road.
I looked down at ivy and the scutch grass
rough-cast stone had
disappeared into as you told me
in the second winter of their ordeal, in
1847, when the crop had failed twice,
Relief Committees gave
the starving Irish such roads to build.
Where they died, there the road ended
and ends still and when I take down
the map of this island, it is never so
I can say here is
the masterful, the apt rendering of
the spherical as flat, nor
an ingenious design which persuades a curve
into a plane,
but to tell myself again that
the line which says woodland and cries hunger
and gives out among sweet pine and cypress,
and finds no horizon
will not be there.
9.2k
All Greece hates
the still eyes in the white face,
the lustre as of olives
where she stands,
and the white hands.
All Greece reviles
the wan face when she smiles,
hating it deeper still
when it grows wan and white,
remembering past enchantments
and past ills.
Greece sees, unmoved,
God's daughter, born of love,
the beauty of cool feet
and slenderest knees,
could love indeed the maid,
only if she were laid,
white ash amid funereal cypresses.
6.4k
Over the horizon, lost in confusion,
came the sad night, pregnant with stars.
I, like the bearded mage of the tales,
knew the language of stones and flowers.
I learned the secrets of melancholy,
told by cypresses, nettles and ivy;
I knew the dream from lips of nard,
sang serene songs with the irises.
In the old forest, filled with its blackness,
all of them showed me the souls they have;
the pines, drunk on aroma and sound;
the old olives, burdened with knowledge;
the dead poplars, nests for the ants;
the moss, snowy with white violets.
All spoke tenderly to my heart
trembling in threads of rustling silk
where water involves motionless things,
like a web of eternal harmony.
The roses there were sounding the lyre,
oaks weaving the gold of legends,
and amidst their virile sadness
the junipers spoke of rustic fears.
I knew all the passion of woodland;
rhythms of leaves, rhythms of stars.
But tell me, oh cedars, if my heart
will sleep in the arms of perfect light!
I know the lyre you prophesy, roses:
fashioned of strings from my dead life.
Tell me what pool I might leave it in,
as former passions are left behind!
I know the mystery you sing of, cypress;
I am your brother of night and pain;
we hold inside us a tangle of nests,
you of nightingales, I of sadness!
I know your endless enchantment, old olive tree,
yielding us blood you extract from the Earth,
like you, I extract with my feelings
the sacred oil
held by ideas!
You all overwhelm me with songs;
I ask only for my uncertain one;
none of you will quell the anxieties
of this chaste fire
that burns in my breast.
O laurel divine, with soul inaccessible,
always so silent,
filled with nobility!
Pour in my ears your divine history,
all your wisdom, profound and sincere!
Tree that produces fruits of the silence,
maestro of kisses and mage of orchestras,
formed from Daphne's roseate flesh
with Apollo's potent sap in your veins!
O high priest of ancient knowledge!
O solemn mute, closed to lament!
All your forest brothers speak to me;
only you, harsh one, scorn my song!
Perhaps, oh maestro of rhythm, you muse
on the pointlessness of the poet's sad weeping.
Perhaps your leaves, flecking by the moonlight,
forgo all the illusions of spring.
The delicate tenderness of evening,
that covered the path with black dew,
holding out a vast canopy to night,
came solemnly, pregnant with stars.
2.5k
To the last street sweeper on the eve of the apocalypse
Whose life partner is beauty
Who makes more sense in a minute of listening
Then we do in a lifetime of talking
Who paints olive trees and cypresses
And now knows it's not called crazy
It's called pain, and it will pass
To the last street sweeper on the eve of the apocalypse
Who wakes up an hour before he falls asleep
And yet, never stops dreaming
Who rewrites morality with every fraction of information intake
And remixes truth until we're left bobbing our heads
With no other choice than to just feel it
To the last street sweeper on the eve of the apocalypse
Whose children are freedom
Who walks in the rain while we plain get wet
Who wants nothing more than to want nothing more
Who only makes routine out of celebration
And love
To the last street sweeper on the eve of the apocalypse
Who ties masterpieces to rogue kites
And whispers nonsense into researcher's ears
Who knows that nobody is perfect
And takes the words "meant to be" very very seriously
Who exists
And is **** proud of that
To the last street sweeper on the eve of the apocalypse
Who revises his rewrites of morality
When information intake is remixed by reality
Until we're left shaking our heads
With no other choice than to think
Wait for me
And save me a glass
Nov 19, 2011
Nov 19, 2011 at 11:05 PM UTC
everything i feel is a Molotov cocktail
then, here, and now
and i don't love him,
but his tongue is full of violets and he says he could blow my mind when we're on a different frequency than this
and i carve his spine into a crescent moon and etch my initials under his tongue
does it make a difference?
a belly full of flowers, missing love.
go back to your first love, tell her you never want to leave her, rid her of the longings that brought her to her knees; was i that to you?
and i don't love him, but he's here and you're not
i have turned him from a prayer into prey, a box of cypresses split in two
but does it make a difference to you?
i'm only a few hundred miles away, sticking my fingers in electrical outlets to remind me of what your lips felt like on my hands.
i don't love him, but he's dark energy, a mindfuck.
i don't love him but i bet if i turned off all the lights in the room he'd glow in the absence of it; and i'm trying not to think.
they say vampires can't see themselves in mirrors- is this what i've done?
the monsters slide back beneath my bed, and even though they stay quiet when we touch, it still hurts me too much.
May 15, 2015
May 15, 2015 at 1:21 AM UTC
Durgan
for J.M.
At Durgan waves are black as cypresses,
clear as the water of a wishing well,
caressing the stones with smooth palms, looking
into the pools as enigmatic eyes
peer into mirrors, or music echoes
out of a wood the waking dreams of day,
blind eyelids lifting to a coloured world.
Now with averted head your living ghost
walks in my mind, your shadow leans
over the half-door of dream; your footprint lies
where gulls alight; shade of a shade, you laugh.
But separate, apart, you are alive:
you have not died, therefore I am alone.
Like birds, cottages white and grey
alert on rocks are gathered, or low
under branches, dark but not desolate;
shells move over sand, or seaweed gleams
with their clear yellow, as tides recede.
Serene in storm or eloquent in sunlight
sombre Durgan where no strangers come
awaits us always, but is always lost:
we are separate, sharing no secrets, each alone;
you will listen no more, now, to the sounding sea.
Dec 25, 2015
Dec 25, 2015 at 4:26 PM UTC
I wear minnows on my wrist –
they came from my eyes
but at least they swim
and I am not alone when I cry.
I am guilty of emptying
my loved ones
into picture frames
so they will last forever, and
I have thought about
tattooing makeup to my face.
Everything
I try to hang onto releases me
like rainfall salt from
cypresses, leaving a bad taste
or nothing to trace at all.
I want to leave rose petals
in everyone’s pocket
to attract hungry bumblebees
because I feel
my least lonesome when
something’s being slid
into me, even if it stings a little.
Jul 31, 2013
Jul 31, 2013 at 9:15 PM UTC
like men in parks
let us
greet the oriole-filled
morning with an ineluctable smile
and go merrily with argenteous waters and their rustling freedom,
be as flowers are, thirsty
for life, quenched by sweet ambrosia from the Earth's
hermetic vessels,
sojourn and watch slender fulminations of dawn ******
against the oleanders, the cypresses, the children tawny
with laughter, and the sparrow swift in wind's deepening hush
sing with the string of birds
and wait for women for us to
gaze at in their lush pelisses
as the heavens gather a mound
to graying, reckoning rain through
sills imperatively shut
as rain slowly announces its arrival
like men in parks
treading gently are
the passing flight of herons,
their unnamable wings
truncating their
journey as the day closes
its wide eyes and sleeps!
Sep 21, 2015
Sep 21, 2015 at 12:49 PM UTC
Emma Lazarus (1849-1887)
A brackish lake is there with bitter pools
Anigh its margin, brushed by heavy trees.
A piping wind the narrow valley cools,
Fretting the willows and the cypresses.
Gray skies above, and in the gloomy space
An awful presence hath its dwelling-place.
I saw a youth pass down that vale of tears;
His head was circled with a crown of thorn,
His form was bowed as by the weight of years,
His wayworn feet by stones were cut and torn.
His eyes were such as have beheld the sword
Of terror of the angel of the Lord.
He passed, and clouds and shadows and thick haze
Fell and encompassed him. I might not see
What hand upheld him in those dismal ways,
Wherethrough he staggered with his misery.
The creeping mists that trooped and spread around,
The smitten head and writhing form enwound.
Then slow and gradual but sure they rose,
Those clinging vapors blotting out the sky.
The youth had fallen not, his viewless foes
Discomfited, had left the victory
Unto the heart that fainted not nor failed,
But from the hill-tops its salvation hailed.
I looked at him in dread lest I should see,
The anguish of the struggle in his eyes;
And lo, great peace was there! Triumphantly
The sunshine crowned him from the sacred skies.
'From strength to strength he goes,' he leaves beneath
The valley of the shadow and of death.
'Thrice blest who passing through that vale of Tears,
Makes it a well,'-and draws life-nourishment
From those death-bitter drops. No grief, no fears
Assail him further, he may scorn the event.
For naught hath power to swerve the steadfast soul
Within that valley broken and made whole.
Jul 30, 2014
Jul 30, 2014 at 7:49 PM UTC
#*Through silken waters
My gondola glides—
And the bridge... it sighs*
Bryan Ferry
Oh for Transcendence to sit on my face
Refreshing my vision with her pure grace.
For that bright vista I’d gladly go blind
Beholding her glory: my daily grind.
I’ll talk to her forests in feline tongues,
Mouth-to-mouth lip service, heart, soul and lungs.
Tropical therapy; her countryside
Where medicinal landscapes open wide…
Then poling my gondola into port
On the waterway of love’s last resort.
Apr 27, 2023
Apr 27, 2023 at 11:53 AM UTC
Something in the way that . . .
something that was said.
I don't know if I ever knew a way to not feel dead,
but everything is swirling.
Everything at once.
I lost my mind a couple times just to rise up from the swamps.
These reeds do leave their marks.
This mud has ****** the color.
I'll sleep beneath the cypresses to feel closer to mother.
She speaks to me in dreams of things that only once were hinted.
How shall I ever get along after being so afflicted?
Apr 29, 2014
Apr 29, 2014 at 3:16 AM UTC
#*Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying,
And answer, echoes, answer, dying, dying, dying*.
Alfred Lord Tennyson
Grieve the fallen warriors of diversity.
A trumpet’s mournful sound now casts its pall . . .
Southern rumors: prophets of perversity
Non-profiting from Liberal wherewithal:
Poverty’s pimps. Their bold hypocrisy
Weinsteins loudly, colliding with our news;
Southern Law: poor as our democracy
Purporting to promote progressive views.
His name rang sweet in all progressive ears
But now the cypresses sigh out their song;
For scams must be exposed—though it wring tears
We hear the dirge; night’s shadows looming long.
Weep, oh armchair zealots of the cause
For Morris Dees, a victim of his laws.
Apr 5, 2019
Apr 5, 2019 at 12:44 PM UTC
All of out questions,
Their trembling hands comes out
Of its fury of
Wanting to know it all
To simply see again:
Grandma, one slipper on,
Hair a mess,
Both dogs by her lop-sided side,
Watering dead plants
In the afternoon sun.
Father, stirring grease-thick bacon
With a fork on a cast iron pan,
About to get his stomach tucked
For reasons of a few more years,
A few more days,
A few more breaths before the last.
Uncle, lost uncle, long-haired
****** willow tree legs to short and
Stumpy to reach the pavement
On the motorcycle you stole,
You couldn't afford, you borrowed,
Uncle, lost and never found Uncle.
Mother, world traveler, both eyes set
On the outstretched hand of the Southern Pacific,
The Solomon and the Coral,
Clouds your new children, roll, and rocks
Between your tanned feet,
Your sunburnt, too-tough-to-die-yet, toes.
Sister sorrow, sojourner of the mind,
Ok, see, hear this:
There will never be enough time.
North, South, West, and now the East
Is calling you again - listen;
Cypresses and Red Maples are as good
As any brother who knows your real name.
I, I,
I
Is for
Another time.
Feb 9, 2022
Feb 9, 2022 at 1:54 PM UTC
bright phoebus trails a hand in the brush to feel the flowers catch and snag between slender fingers;
fields of grass wrap themselves over the rounded hills;
violets stretch in the hot sun;
the enormous oak tree behind reaches out and skims the surface of the heavens;
the wasps make nest in its branches, darting out and around the occasional plummeting acorn;
the air ripples with the sweetness of hyacinths;
the cypresses line the horizon, a herd of deer graze in their shadows;
the man [who is not a man] rests against the trunk, sighing, eyeing the budding laurel tree that shivers in the warm breeze;
the Cyrean hives hum pleasantly;
twin calves plod towards the man [who is not a man], and a palm is reached out to caress their young heads;
everything is sweet;
everything is lush;
everything is warm.
Jun 9, 2019
Jun 9, 2019 at 9:14 PM UTC
I wanted to write a poem with its own
self-contained harmonies, like the counterpoint of Bach,
half a dozen instruments playing at once,
each one retaining its own
purity while contributing to a pure whole;
or one that should summon up Provence,
with its olive trees, cypresses, and sunflowers
(after van Gogh), and somehow convey the heat
and the perfumed air and the sound
of cicadas;
or one that, like a jewel,
small but perfectly formed,
refracting the light of experience
through each cunningly crafted facet,
might return it in flash after dazzling flash
of inspiration.
I have no ambition to write
the poetical equivalent of the Sistine Chapel,
but I have envied Michelangelo
(Superman of the Renaissance)
his X-ray vision. He could see
the statue inside the stone.
Why must I so often fail to see
the poem for the words?
Mar 29, 2020
Mar 29, 2020 at 9:44 AM UTC