A Poem for Three Voices

Setting:  A Maternity Ward and round about

FIRST VOICE:
I am slow as the world.  I am very patient,
Turning through my time, the suns and stars
Regarding me with attention.
The moon's concern is more personal:
She passes and repasses, luminous as a nurse.
Is she sorry for what will happen?  I do not think so.
She is simply astonished at fertility.

When I walk out, I am a great event.
I do not have to think, or even rehearse.
What happens in me will happen without attention.
The pheasant stands on the hill;
He is arranging his brown feathers.
I cannot help smiling at what it is I know.
Leaves and petals attend me.  I am ready.

SECOND VOICE:
When I first saw it, the small red seep, I did not believe it.
I watched the men walk about me in the office.  They were so flat!
There was something about them like cardboard, and now I had caught it,
That flat, flat, flatness from which ideas, destructions,
Bulldozers, guillotines, white chambers of shrieks proceed,
Endlessly proceed--and the cold angels, the abstractions.
I sat at my desk in my stockings, my high heels,

And the man I work for laughed:  'Have you seen something awful?
You are so white, suddenly.'  And I said nothing.
I saw death in the bare trees, a deprivation.
I could not believe it.  Is it so difficult
For the spirit to conceive a face, a mouth?
The letters proceed from these black keys, and these black keys proceed
From my alphabetical fingers, ordering parts,

Parts, bits, cogs, the shining multiples.
I am dying as I sit.  I lose a dimension.
Trains roar in my ears, departures, departures!
The silver track of time empties into the distance,
The white sky empties of its promise, like a cup.
These are my feet, these mechanical echoes.
Tap, tap, tap, steel pegs.  I am found wanting.

This is a disease I carry home, this is a death.
Again, this is a death.  Is it the air,
The particles of destruction I **** up?  Am I a pulse
That wanes and wanes, facing the cold angel?
Is this my lover then?  This death, this death?
As a child I loved a lichen-bitten name.
Is this the one sin then, this old dead love of death?

THIRD VOICE:
I remember the minute when I knew for sure.
The willows were chilling,
The face in the pool was beautiful, but not mine--
It had a consequential look, like everything else,
And all I could see was dangers:  doves and words,
Stars and showers of gold--conceptions, conceptions!
I remember a white, cold wing

And the great swan, with its terrible look,
Coming at me, like a castle, from the top of the river.
There is a snake in swans.
He glided by; his eye had a black meaning.
I saw the world in it--small, mean and black,
Every little word hooked to every little word, and act to act.
A hot blue day had budded into something.

I wasn't ready.  The white clouds rearing
Aside were dragging me in four directions.
I wasn't ready.
I had no reverence.
I thought I could deny the consequence--
But it was too late for that.  It was too late, and the face
Went on shaping itself with love, as if I was ready.

SECOND VOICE:
It is a world of snow now.  I am not at home.
How white these sheets are.  The faces have no features.
They are bald and impossible, like the faces of my children,
Those little sick ones that elude my arms.
Other children do not touch me:  they are terrible.
They have too many colors, too much life.  They are not quiet,
Quiet, like the little emptinesses I carry.

I have had my chances.  I have tried and tried.
I have stitched life into me like a rare *****,
And walked carefully, precariously, like something rare.
I have tried not to think too hard.  I have tried to be natural.
I have tried to be blind in love, like other women,
Blind in my bed, with my dear blind sweet one,
Not looking, through the thick dark, for the face of another.

I did not look.  But still the face was there,
The face of the unborn one that loved its perfections,
The face of the dead one that could only be perfect
In its easy peace, could only keep holy so.
And then there were other faces.  The faces of nations,
Governments, parliaments, societies,
The faceless faces of important men.

It is these men I mind:
They are so jealous of anything that is not flat!  They are jealous gods
That would have the whole world flat because they are.
I see the Father conversing with the Son.
Such flatness cannot but be holy.
'Let us make a heaven,' they say.
'Let us flatten and launder the grossness from these souls.'

FIRST VOICE:
I am calm.  I am calm.  It is the calm before something awful:
The yellow minute before the wind walks, when the leaves
Turn up their hands, their pallors.  It is so quiet here.
The sheets, the faces, are white and stopped, like clocks.
Voices stand back and flatten.  Their visible hieroglyphs
Flatten to parchment screens to keep the wind off.
They paint such secrets in Arabic, Chinese!

I am dumb and brown.  I am a seed about to break.
The brownness is my dead self, and it is sullen:
It does not wish to be more, or different.
Dusk hoods me in blue now, like a Mary.
O color of distance and forgetfulness!--
When will it be, the second when Time breaks
And eternity engulfs it, and I drown utterly?

I talk to myself, myself only, set apart--
Swabbed and lurid with disinfectants, sacrificial.
Waiting lies heavy on my lids.  It lies like sleep,
Like a big sea.  Far off, far off, I feel the first wave tug
Its cargo of agony toward me, inescapable, tidal.
And I, a shell, echoing on this white beach
Face the voices that overwhelm, the terrible element.

THIRD VOICE:
I am a mountain now, among mountainy women.
The doctors move among us as if our bigness
Frightened the mind.  They smile like fools.
They are to blame for what I am, and they know it.
They hug their flatness like a kind of health.
And what if they found themselves surprised, as I did?
They would go mad with it.

And what if two lives leaked between my thighs?
I have seen the white clean chamber with its instruments.
It is a place of shrieks.  It is not happy.
'This is where you will come when you are ready.'
The night lights are flat red moons.  They are dull with blood.
I am not ready for anything to happen.
I should have murdered this, that murders me.

FIRST VOICE:
There is no miracle more cruel than this.
I am dragged by the horses, the iron hooves.
I last.  I last it out.  I accomplish a work.
Dark tunnel, through which hurtle the visitations,
The visitations, the manifestations, the startled faces.
I am the center of an atrocity.
What pains, what sorrows must I be mothering?

Can such innocence **** and ****?  It milks my life.
The trees wither in the street.  The rain is corrosive.
I taste it on my tongue, and the workable horrors,
The horrors that stand and idle, the slighted godmothers
With their hearts that tick and tick, with their satchels of instruments.
I shall be a wall and a roof, protecting.
I shall be a sky and a hill of good:  O let me be!

A power is growing on me, an old tenacity.
I am breaking apart like the world.  There is this blackness,
This ram of blackness.  I fold my hands on a mountain.
The air is thick.  It is thick with this working.
I am used.  I am drummed into use.
My eyes are squeezed by this blackness.
I see nothing.

SECOND VOICE:
I am accused.  I dream of massacres.
I am a garden of black and red agonies.  I drink them,
Hating myself, hating and fearing.  And now the world conceives
Its end and runs toward it, arms held out in love.
It is a love of death that sickens everything.
A dead sun stains the newsprint.  It is red.
I lose life after life.  The dark earth drinks them.

She is the vampire of us all.  So she supports us,
Fattens us, is kind.  Her mouth is red.
I know her.  I know her intimately--
Old winter-face, old barren one, old time bomb.
Men have used her meanly.  She will eat them.
Eat them, eat them, eat them in the end.
The sun is down.  I die.  I make a death.

FIRST VOICE:
Who is he, this blue, furious boy,
Shiny and strange, as if he had hurtled from a star?
He is looking so angrily!
He flew into the room, a shriek at his heel.
The blue color pales.  He is human after all.
A red lotus opens in its bowl of blood;
They are stitching me up with silk, as if I were a material.

What did my fingers do before they held him?
What did my heart do, with its love?
I have never seen a thing so clear.
His lids are like the lilac-flower
And soft as a moth, his breath.
I shall not let go.
There is no guile or warp in him.  May he keep so.

SECOND VOICE:
There is the moon in the high window.  It is over.
How winter fills my soul!  And that chalk light
Laying its scales on the windows, the windows of empty offices,
Empty schoolrooms, empty churches.  O so much emptiness!
There is this cessation.  This terrible cessation of everything.
These bodies mounded around me now, these polar sleepers--
What blue, moony ray ices their dreams?

I feel it enter me, cold, alien, like an instrument.
And that mad, hard face at the end of it, that O-mouth
Open in its gape of perpetual grieving.
It is she that drags the blood-black sea around
Month after month, with its voices of failure.
I am helpless as the sea at the end of her string.
I am restless.  Restless and useless.  I, too, create corpses.

I shall move north.  I shall move into a long blackness.
I see myself as a shadow, neither man nor woman,
Neither a woman, happy to be like a man, nor a man
Blunt and flat enough to feel no lack.  I feel a lack.
I hold my fingers up, ten white pickets.
See, the darkness is leaking from the cracks.
I cannot contain it.  I cannot contain my life.

I shall be a heroine of the peripheral.
I shall not be accused by isolate buttons,
Holes in the heels of socks, the white mute faces
Of unanswered letters, coffined in a letter case.
I shall not be accused, I shall not be accused.
The clock shall not find me wanting, nor these stars
That rivet in place abyss after abyss.

THIRD VOICE:
I see her in my sleep, my red, terrible girl.
She is crying through the glass that separates us.
She is crying, and she is furious.
Her cries are hooks that catch and grate like cats.
It is by these hooks she climbs to my notice.
She is crying at the dark, or at the stars
That at such a distance from us shine and whirl.

I think her little head is carved in wood,
A red, hard wood, eyes shut and mouth wide open.
And from the open mouth issue sharp cries
Scratching at my sleep like arrows,
Scratching at my sleep, and entering my side.
My daughter has no teeth.  Her mouth is wide.
It utters such dark sounds it cannot be good.

FIRST VOICE:
What is it that flings these innocent souls at us?
Look, they are so exhausted, they are all flat out
In their canvas-sided cots, names tied to their wrists,
The little silver trophies they've come so far for.
There are some with thick black hair, there are some bald.
Their skin tints are pink or sallow, brown or red;
They are beginning to remember their differences.

I think they are made of water; they have no expression.
Their features are sleeping, like light on quiet water.
They are the real monks and nuns in their identical garments.
I see them showering like stars on to the world--
On India, Africa, America, these miraculous ones,
These pure, small images.  They smell of milk.
Their footsoles are untouched.  They are walkers of air.

Can nothingness be so prodigal?
Here is my son.
His wide eye is that general, flat blue.
He is turning to me like a little, blind, bright plant.
One cry.  It is the hook I hang on.
And I am a river of milk.
I am a warm hill.

SECOND VOICE:
I am not ugly.  I am even beautiful.
The mirror gives back a woman without deformity.
The nurses give back my clothes, and an identity.
It is usual, they say, for such a thing to happen.
It is usual in my life, and the lives of others.
I am one in five, something like that.  I am not hopeless.
I am beautiful as a statistic.  Here is my lipstick.

I draw on the old mouth.
The red mouth I put by with my identity
A day ago, two days, three days ago.  It was a Friday.
I do not even need a holiday; I can go to work today.
I can love my husband, who will understand.
Who will love me through the blur of my deformity
As if I had lost an eye, a leg, a tongue.

And so I stand, a little sightless.  So I walk
Away on wheels, instead of legs, they serve as well.
And learn to speak with fingers, not a tongue.
The body is resourceful.
The body of a starfish can grow back its arms
And newts are prodigal in legs.  And may I be
As prodigal in what lacks me.

THIRD VOICE:
She is a small island, asleep and peaceful,
And I am a white ship hooting:  Goodbye, goodbye.
The day is blazing.  It is very mournful.
The flowers in this room are red and tropical.
They have lived behind glass all their lives, they have been cared for
        tenderly.
Now they face a winter of white sheets, white faces.
There is very little to go into my suitcase.

There are the clothes of a fat woman I do not know.
There is my comb and brush.  There is an emptiness.
I am so vulnerable suddenly.
I am a wound walking out of hospital.
I am a wound that they are letting go.
I leave my health behind.  I leave someone
Who would adhere to me:  I undo her fingers like bandages:  I go.

SECOND VOICE:
I am myself again.  There are no loose ends.
I am bled white as wax, I have no attachments.
I am flat and virginal, which means nothing has happened,
Nothing that cannot be erased, ripped up and scrapped, begun again.
There little black twigs do not think to bud,
Nor do these dry, dry gutters dream of rain.
This woman who meets me in windows--she is neat.

So neat she is transparent, like a spirit.
how shyly she superimposes her neat self
On the inferno of African oranges, the heel-hung pigs.
She is deferring to reality.
It is I.  It is I--
Tasting the bitterness between my teeth.
The incalculable malice of the everyday.

FIRST VOICE:
How long can I be a wall, keeping the wind off?
How long can I be
Gentling the sun with the shade of my hand,
Intercepting the blue bolts of a cold moon?
The voices of loneliness, the voices of sorrow
Lap at my back ineluctably.
How shall it soften them, this little lullaby?

How long can I be a wall around my green property?
How long can my hands
Be a bandage to his hurt, and my words
Bright birds in the sky, consoling, consoling?
It is a terrible thing
To be so open:  it is as if my heart
Put on a face and walked into the world.

THIRD VOICE:
Today the colleges are drunk with spring.
My black gown is a little funeral:
It shows I am serious.
The books I carry wedge into my side.
I had an old wound once, but it is healing.
I had a dream of an island, red with cries.
It was a dream, and did not mean a thing.

FIRST VOICE:
Dawn flowers in the great elm outside the house.
The swifts are back.  They are shrieking like paper rockets.
I hear the sound of the hours
Widen and die in the hedgerows.  I hear the moo of cows.
The colors replenish themselves, and the wet
Thatch smokes in the sun.
The narcissi open white faces in the orchard.

I am reassured.  I am reassured.
These are the clear bright colors of the nursery,
The talking ducks, the happy lambs.
I am simple again.  I believe in miracles.
I do not believe in those terrible children
Who injure my sleep with their white eyes, their fingerless hands.
They are not mine.  They do not belong to me.

I shall meditate upon normality.
I shall meditate upon my little son.
He does not walk. &n

II. TO DEMETER (495 lines)

(ll. 1-3) I begin to sing of rich-haired Demeter, awful goddess
-- of her and her trim-ankled daughter whom Aidoneus rapt away,
given to him by all-seeing Zeus the loud-thunderer.

(ll. 4-18) Apart from Demeter, lady of the golden sword and
glorious fruits, she was playing with the deep-bosomed daughters
of Oceanus and gathering flowers over a soft meadow, roses and
crocuses and beautiful violets, irises also and hyacinths and the
narcissus, which Earth made to grow at the will of Zeus and to
please the Host of Many, to be a snare for the bloom-like girl --
a marvellous, radiant flower.  It was a thing of awe whether for
deathless gods or mortal men to see: from its root grew a hundred
blooms and is smelled most sweetly, so that all wide heaven above
and the whole earth and the sea's salt swell laughed for joy.
And the girl was amazed and reached out with both hands to take
the lovely toy; but the wide-pathed earth yawned there in the
plain of Nysa, and the lord, Host of Many, with his immortal
horses sprang out upon her -- the Son of Cronos, He who has many
names (5).

(ll. 19-32) He caught her up reluctant on his golden car and bare
her away lamenting.  Then she cried out shrilly with her voice,
calling upon her father, the Son of Cronos, who is most high and
excellent.  But no one, either of the deathless gods or of mortal
men, heard her voice, nor yet the olive-trees bearing rich fruit:
only tender-hearted Hecate, bright-coiffed, the daughter of
Persaeus, heard the girl from her cave, and the lord Helios,
Hyperion's bright son, as she cried to her father, the Son of
Cronos.  But he was sitting aloof, apart from the gods, in his
temple where many pray, and receiving sweet offerings from mortal
men.  So he, that Son of Cronos, of many names, who is Ruler of
Many and Host of Many, was bearing her away by leave of Zeus on
his immortal chariot -- his own brother's child and all
unwilling.

(ll. 33-39) And so long as she, the goddess, yet beheld earth and
starry heaven and the strong-flowing sea where fishes shoal, and
the rays of the sun, and still hoped to see her dear mother and
the tribes of the eternal gods, so long hope calmed her great
heart for all her trouble....
((LACUNA))
....and the heights of the mountains and the depths of the sea
rang with her immortal voice: and her queenly mother heard her.

(ll. 40-53) Bitter pain seized her heart, and she rent the
covering upon her divine hair with her dear hands: her dark cloak
she cast down from both her shoulders and sped, like a wild-bird,
over the firm land and yielding sea, seeking her child.  But no
one would tell her the truth, neither god nor mortal men; and of
the birds of omen none came with true news for her.  Then for
nine days queenly Deo wandered over the earth with flaming
torches in her hands, so grieved that she never tasted ambrosia
and the sweet draught of nectar, nor sprinkled her body with
water.  But when the tenth enlightening dawn had come, Hecate,
with a torch in her hands, met her, and spoke to her and told her
news:

(ll. 54-58) 'Queenly Demeter, bringer of seasons and giver of
good gifts, what god of heaven or what mortal man has rapt away
Persephone and pierced with sorrow your dear heart?  For I heard
her voice, yet saw not with my eyes who it was.  But I tell you
truly and shortly all I know.'

(ll. 59-73) So, then, said Hecate.  And the daughter of rich-
haired Rhea answered her not, but sped swiftly with her, holding
flaming torches in her hands.  So they came to Helios, who is
watchman of both gods and men, and stood in front of his horses:
and the bright goddess enquired of him: 'Helios, do you at least
regard me, goddess as I am, if ever by word or deed of mine I
have cheered your heart and spirit.  Through the fruitless air I
heard the thrilling cry of my daughter whom I bare, sweet scion
of my body and lovely in form, as of one seized violently; though
with my eyes I saw nothing.  But you -- for with your beams you
look down from the bright upper air Over all the earth and sea --
tell me truly of my dear child, if you have seen her anywhere,
what god or mortal man has violently seized her against her will
and mine, and so made off.'

(ll. 74-87) So said she.  And the Son of Hyperion answered her:
'Queen Demeter, daughter of rich-haired Rhea, I will tell you the
truth; for I greatly reverence and pity you in your grief for
your trim-ankled daughter.  None other of the deathless gods is
to blame, but only cloud-gathering Zeus who gave her to Hades,
her father's brother, to be called his buxom wife.  And Hades
seized her and took her loudly crying in his chariot down to his
realm of mist and gloom.  Yet, goddess, cease your loud lament
and keep not vain anger unrelentingly: Aidoneus, the Ruler of
Many, is no unfitting husband among the deathless gods for your
child, being your own brother and born of the same stock: also,
for honour, he has that third share which he received when
division was made at the first, and is appointed lord of those
among whom he dwells.'

(ll. 88-89) So he spake, and called to his horses: and at his
chiding they quickly whirled the swift chariot along, like long-
winged birds.

(ll. 90-112) But grief yet more terrible and savage came into the
heart of Demeter, and thereafter she was so angered with the
dark-clouded Son of Cronos that she avoided the gathering of the
gods and high Olympus, and went to the towns and rich fields of
men, disfiguring her form a long while.  And no one of men or
deep-bosomed women knew her when they saw her, until she came to
the house of wise Celeus who then was lord of fragrant Eleusis.
Vexed in her dear heart, she sat near the wayside by the Maiden
Well, from which the women of the place were used to draw water,
in a shady place over which grew an olive shrub.  And she was
like an ancient woman who is cut off from childbearing and the
gifts of garland-loving Aphrodite, like the nurses of king's
children who deal justice, or like the house-keepers in their
echoing halls.  There the daughters of Celeus, son of Eleusis,
saw her, as they were coming for easy-drawn water, to carry it in
pitchers of bronze to their dear father's house: four were they
and like goddesses in the flower of their girlhood, Callidice and
Cleisidice and lovely Demo and Callithoe who was the eldest of
them all.  They knew her not, -- for the gods are not easily
discerned by mortals -- but standing near by her spoke winged
words:

(ll. 113-117) 'Old mother, whence and who are you of folk born
long ago?  Why are you gone away from the city and do not draw
near the houses?  For there in the shady halls are women of just
such age as you, and others younger; and they would welcome you
both by word and by deed.'

(ll. 118-144) Thus they said.  And she, that queen among
goddesses answered them saying: 'Hail, dear children, whosoever
you are of woman-kind.  I will tell you my story; for it is not
unseemly that I should tell you truly what you ask.  Doso is my
name, for my stately mother gave it me.  And now I am come from
Crete over the sea's wide back, -- not willingly; but pirates
brought be thence by force of strength against my liking.
Afterwards they put in with their swift craft to Thoricus, and
there the women landed on the shore in full throng and the men
likewise, and they began to make ready a meal by the stern-cables
of the ship.  But my heart craved not pleasant food, and I fled
secretly across the dark country and escaped by masters, that
they should not take me unpurchased across the sea, there to win
a price for me.  And so I wandered and am come here: and I know
not at all what land this is or what people are in it.  But may
all those who dwell on Olympus give you husbands and birth of
children as parents desire, so you take pity on me, maidens, and
show me this clearly that I may learn, dear children, to the
house of what man and woman I may go, to work for them cheerfully
at such tasks as belong to a woman of my age.  Well could I nurse
a new born child, holding him in my arms, or keep house, or
spread my masters' bed in a recess of the well-built chamber, or
teach the women their work.'

(ll. 145-146) So said the goddess.  And straightway the *****
maiden Callidice, goodliest in form of the daughters of Celeus,
answered her and said:

(ll. 147-168) 'Mother, what the gods send us, we mortals bear
perforce, although we suffer; for they are much stronger than we.

But now I will teach you clearly, telling you the names of men
who have great power and honour here and are chief among the
people, guarding our city's coif of towers by their wisdom and
true judgements: there is wise Triptolemus and Dioclus and
Polyxeinus and blameless Eumolpus and Dolichus and our own brave
father.  All these have wives who manage in the house, and no one
of them, so soon as she has seen you, would dishonour you and
turn you from the house, but they will welcome you; for indeed
you are godlike.  But if you will, stay here; and we will go to
our father's house and tell Metaneira, our deep-bosomed mother,
all this matter fully, that she may bid you rather come to our
home than search after the houses of others.  She has an only
son, late-born, who is being nursed in our well-built house, a
child of many prayers and welcome: if you could bring him up
until he reached the full measure of youth, any one of womankind
who should see you would straightway envy you, such gifts would
our mother give for his upbringing.'

(ll. 169-183) So she spake: and the goddess bowed her head in
assent.  And they filled their shining vessels with water and
carried them off rejoicing.  Quickly they came to their father's
great house and straightway told their mother according as they
had heard and seen.  Then she bade them go with all speed and
invite the stranger to come for a measureless hire.  As hinds or
heifers in spring time, when sated with pasture, bound about a
meadow, so they, holding up the folds of their lovely garments,
darted down the hollow path, and their hair like a crocus flower
streamed about their shoulders.  And they found the good goddess
near the wayside where they had left her before, and led her to
the house of their dear father.  And she walked behind,
distressed in her dear heart, with her head veiled and wearing a
dark cloak which waved about the slender feet of the goddess.

(ll. 184-211) Soon they came to the house of heaven-nurtured
Celeus and went through the portico to where their queenly mother
sat by a pillar of the close-fitted roof, holding her son, a
tender scion, in her *****.  And the girls ran to her.  But the
goddess walked to the threshold: and her head reached the roof
and she filled the doorway with a heavenly radiance.  Then awe
and reverence and pale fear took hold of Metaneira, and she rose
up from her couch before Demeter, and bade her be seated.  But
Demeter, bringer of seasons and giver of perfect gifts, would not
sit upon the bright couch, but stayed silent with lovely eyes
cast down until careful Iambe placed a jointed seat for her and
threw over it a silvery fleece.  Then she sat down and held her
veil in her hands before her face.  A long time she sat upon the
stool (6) without speaking because of her sorrow, and greeted no
one by word or by sign, but rested, never smiling, and tasting
neither food nor drink, because she pined with longing for her
deep-bosomed daughter, until careful Iambe -- who pleased her
moods in aftertime also -- moved the holy lady with many a quip
and jest to smile and laugh and cheer her heart.  Then Metaneira
filled a cup with sweet wine and offered it to her; but she
refused it, for she said it was not lawful for her to drink red
wine, but bade them mix meal and water with soft mint and give
her to drink.  And Metaneira mixed the draught and gave it to the
goddess as she bade.  So the great queen Deo received it to
observe the sacrament.... (7)

((LACUNA))

(ll. 212-223) And of them all, well-girded Metaneira first began
to speak: 'Hail, lady!  For I think you are not meanly but nobly
born; truly dignity and grace are conspicuous upon your eyes as
in the eyes of kings that deal justice.  Yet we mortals bear
perforce what the gods send us, though we be grieved; for a yoke
is set upon our necks.  But now, since you are come here, you
shall have what I can bestow: and nurse me this child whom the
gods gave me in my old age and beyond my hope, a son much prayed
for.  If you should bring him up until he reach the full measure
of youth, any one of womankind that sees you will straightway
envy you, so great reward would I give for his upbringing.'

(ll. 224-230) Then rich-haired Demeter answered her: 'And to you,
also, lady, all hail, and may the gods give you good!  Gladly
will I take the boy to my breast, as you bid me, and will nurse
him.  Never, I ween, through any heedlessness of his nurse shall
witchcraft hurt him nor yet the Undercutter (8): for I know a
charm far stronger than the Woodcutter, and I know an excellent
safeguard against woeful witchcraft.'

(ll. 231-247) When she had so spoken, she took the child in her
fragrant ***** with her divine hands: and his mother was glad in
her heart.  So the goddess nursed in the palace Demophoon, wise
Celeus' goodly son whom well-girded Metaneira bare.  And the
child grew like some immortal being, not fed with food nor
nourished at the breast: for by day rich-crowned Demeter would
anoint him with ambrosia as if he were the offspring of a god and
breathe sweetly upon him as she held him in her *****.  But at
night she would hide him like a brand in the heard of the fire,
unknown to his dear parents.  And it wrought great wonder in
these that he grew beyond his age; for he was like the gods face
to face.  And she would have made him deathless and unageing, had
not well-girded Metaneira in her heedlessness kept watch by night
from her sweet-smelling chamber and spied.  But she wailed and
smote her two hips, because she feared for her son and was
greatly distraught in her heart; so she lamented and uttered
winged words:

(ll. 248-249) 'Demophoon, my son, the strange woman buries you
deep in fire and works grief and bitter sorrow for me.'

(ll. 250-255) Thus she spoke, mourning.  And the bright goddess,
lovely-crowned Demeter, heard her, and was wroth with her.  So
with her divine hands she snatched from the fire the dear son
whom Metaneira had born unhoped-for in the palace, and cast him
from her to the ground; for she was terribly angry in her heart.
Forthwith she said to well-girded Metaneira:

(ll. 256-274) 'Witless are you mortals and dull to foresee your
lot, whether of good or evil, that comes upon you.  For now in
your heedlessness you have wrought folly past healing; for -- be
witness the oath of the gods, the relentless water of Styx -- I
would have made your dear son deathless and unaging all his days
and would have bestowed on him everlasting honour, but now he can
in no way escape death and the fates.  Yet shall unfailing honour
always rest upon him, because he lay upon my knees and slept in
my arms.  But, as the years move round and when he is in his
prime, the sons of the Eleusinians shall ever wage war and dread
strife with one another continually.  Lo!  I am that Demeter who
has share of honour and is the greatest help and cause of joy to
the undying gods and mortal men.  But now, let all the people
build be a great temple and an altar below it and beneath the
city and its sheer wall upon a rising hillock above Callichorus.
And I myself will teach my rites, that hereafter you may
reverently perform them and so win the favour of my

There's this little thing who was born in the sewer
Her name, they all say, is Society
Pretends she's all that, but she's really nothing newer
They say she never once spoke the truth.

Society likes to pick in the brains of young girls
Likes to meanly whisper in their ears,
"You're fat, you're worthless, you're the ugliest there is!"
What good does that do? It brings them to tears.

Society likes to mess with the minds of young boys
Likes to torment them by teasing,
"You're skinny, you cry, you aren't manly enough!"
Society makes sure it sure isn't pleasing.

Society likes to mess with the minds of in-betweens or not-at-alls
Likes to belittle, judge, and taunt
"Why can't you be normal? No one likes you!"
It goes on and on. Society likes to daunt.

Society herself doesn't have a care in the world
She never thought once about anyone's feelings
All day she picks at everyone she can find
All night she waits for them to wake, on their ceilings.

A monster came out from under my bed,
all hairy and ugly and oh so red.
He ran to my closet and ate all my clothes
then back to my bed he was tickling my toes.
I was so afraid he might suddenly eat me,
There was nowhere to go where he couldn’t see.
He threw all my toys in a great big sack
And told me meanly they’d never be back.
Then he looked at my desk and suddenly smiled
And seemed to be happy or maybe beguiled.
He looked in my eyes and pointed at me,
“give me your laptop and I will let you be”
I loved my laptop a gift from my mom
I stared in his eyes feeling so dumb.
I was no longer scared now I was mad,
Monsters aren’t fun when they behave so bad.
So I took out my bat and put on my new shoes
and said to the monster, “guess what you lose”.
One swat on the noggin and he was out cold
I keep my toys because I was bold.
It pays to be brave and never have fear
But be careful at night when a monster is near.

HAPPY LATE HALLOWEEN
to my Grandaughters
Copyright Jan/2014
WHC

Then Mercury of Cyllene summoned the ghosts of the suitors, and in
his hand he held the fair golden wand with which he seals men’s eyes
in sleep or wakes them just as he pleases; with this he roused the
ghosts and led them, while they followed whining and gibbering
behind him. As bats fly squealing in the hollow of some great cave,
when one of them has fallen out of the cluster in which they hang,
even so did the ghosts whine and squeal as Mercury the healer of
sorrow led them down into the dark abode of death. When they had
passed the waters of Oceanus and the rock Leucas, they came to the
gates of the sun and the land of dreams, whereon they reached the
meadow of asphodel where dwell the souls and shadows of them that
can labour no more.
  Here they found the ghost of Achilles son of Peleus, with those of
Patroclus, Antilochus, and Ajax, who was the finest and handsomest man
of all the Danaans after the son of Peleus himself.
  They gathered round the ghost of the son of Peleus, and the ghost of
Agamemnon joined them, sorrowing bitterly. Round him were gathered
also the ghosts of those who had perished with him in the house of
Aeisthus; and the ghost of Achilles spoke first.
  “Son of Atreus,” it said, “we used to say that Jove had loved you
better from first to last than any other hero, for you were captain
over many and brave men, when we were all fighting together before
Troy; yet the hand of death, which no mortal can escape, was laid upon
you all too early. Better for you had you fallen at Troy in the
hey-day of your renown, for the Achaeans would have built a mound over
your ashes, and your son would have been heir to your good name,
whereas it has now been your lot to come to a most miserable end.”
  “Happy son of Peleus,” answered the ghost of Agamemnon, “for
having died at Troy far from Argos, while the bravest of the Trojans
and the Achaeans fell round you fighting for your body. There you
lay in the whirling clouds of dust, all huge and hugely, heedless
now of your chivalry. We fought the whole of the livelong day, nor
should we ever have left off if Jove had not sent a hurricane to
stay us. Then, when we had borne you to the ships out of the fray,
we laid you on your bed and cleansed your fair skin with warm water
and with ointments. The Danaans tore their hair and wept bitterly
round about you. Your mother, when she heard, came with her immortal
nymphs from out of the sea, and the sound of a great wailing went
forth over the waters so that the Achaeans quaked for fear. They would
have fled panic-stricken to their ships had not wise old Nestor
whose counsel was ever truest checked them saying, ‘Hold, Argives, fly
not sons of the Achaeans, this is his mother coming from the sea
with her immortal nymphs to view the body of her son.’
  “Thus he spoke, and the Achaeans feared no more. The daughters of
the old man of the sea stood round you weeping bitterly, and clothed
you in immortal raiment. The nine muses also came and lifted up
their sweet voices in lament—calling and answering one another; there
was not an Argive but wept for pity of the dirge they chaunted. Days
and nights seven and ten we mourned you, mortals and immortals, but on
the eighteenth day we gave you to the flames, and many a fat sheep
with many an ox did we slay in sacrifice around you. You were burnt in
raiment of the gods, with rich resins and with honey, while heroes,
horse and foot, clashed their armour round the pile as you were
burning, with the ***** as of a great multitude. But when the flames
of heaven had done their work, we gathered your white bones at
daybreak and laid them in ointments and in pure wine. Your mother
brought us a golden vase to hold them—gift of Bacchus, and work of
Vulcan himself; in this we mingled your bleached bones with those of
Patroclus who had gone before you, and separate we enclosed also those
of Antilochus, who had been closer to you than any other of your
comrades now that Patroclus was no more.
  “Over these the host of the Argives built a noble tomb, on a point
jutting out over the open Hellespont, that it might be seen from far
out upon the sea by those now living and by them that shall be born
hereafter. Your mother begged prizes from the gods, and offered them
to be contended for by the noblest of the Achaeans. You must have been
present at the funeral of many a hero, when the young men gird
themselves and make ready to contend for prizes on the death of some
great chieftain, but you never saw such prizes as silver-footed Thetis
offered in your honour; for the gods loved you well. Thus even in
death your fame, Achilles, has not been lost, and your name lives
evermore among all mankind. But as for me, what solace had I when
the days of my fighting were done? For Jove willed my destruction on
my return, by the hands of Aegisthus and those of my wicked wife.”
  Thus did they converse, and presently Mercury came up to them with
the ghosts of the suitors who had been killed by Ulysses. The ghosts
of Agamemnon and Achilles were astonished at seeing them, and went
up to them at once. The ghost of Agamemnon recognized Amphimedon son
of Melaneus, who lived in Ithaca and had been his host, so it began to
talk to him.
  “Amphimedon,” it said, “what has happened to all you fine young men-
all of an age too—that you are come down here under the ground? One
could pick no finer body of men from any city. Did Neptune raise his
winds and waves against you when you were at sea, or did your
enemies make an end of you on the mainland when you were
cattle-lifting or sheep-stealing, or while fighting in defence of
their wives and city? Answer my question, for I have been your
guest. Do you not remember how I came to your house with Menelaus,
to persuade Ulysses to join us with his ships against Troy? It was a
whole month ere we could resume our voyage, for we had hard work to
persuade Ulysses to come with us.”
  And the ghost of Amphimedon answered, “Agamemnon, son of Atreus,
king of men, I remember everything that you have said, and will tell
you fully and accurately about the way in which our end was brought
about. Ulysses had been long gone, and we were courting his wife,
who did not say point blank that she would not marry, nor yet bring
matters to an end, for she meant to compass our destruction: this,
then, was the trick she played us. She set up a great tambour frame in
her room and began to work on an enormous piece of fine needlework.
‘Sweethearts,’ said she, ‘Ulysses is indeed dead, still, do not
press me to marry again immediately; wait—for I would not have my
skill in needlework perish unrecorded—till I have completed a pall
for the hero Laertes, against the time when death shall take him. He
is very rich, and the women of the place will talk if he is laid out
without a pall.’ This is what she said, and we assented; whereupon
we could see her working upon her great web all day long, but at night
she would unpick the stitches again by torchlight. She fooled us in
this way for three years without our finding it out, but as time
wore on and she was now in her fourth year, in the waning of moons and
many days had been accomplished, one of her maids who knew what she
was doing told us, and we caught her in the act of undoing her work,
so she had to finish it whether she would or no; and when she showed
us the robe she had made, after she had had it washed, its splendour
was as that of the sun or moon.
  “Then some malicious god conveyed Ulysses to the upland farm where
his swineherd lives. Thither presently came also his son, returning
from a voyage to Pylos, and the two came to the town when they had
hatched their plot for our destruction. Telemachus came first, and
then after him, accompanied by the swineherd, came Ulysses, clad in
rags and leaning on a staff as though he were some miserable old
beggar. He came so unexpectedly that none of us knew him, not even the
older ones among us, and we reviled him and threw things at him. He
endured both being struck and insulted without a word, though he was
in his own house; but when the will of Aegis-bearing Jove inspired
him, he and Telemachus took the armour and hid it in an inner chamber,
bolting the doors behind them. Then he cunningly made his wife offer
his bow and a quantity of iron to be contended for by us ill-fated
suitors; and this was the beginning of our end, for not one of us
could string the bow—nor nearly do so. When it was about to reach the
hands of Ulysses, we all of us shouted out that it should not be given
him, no matter what he might say, but Telemachus insisted on his
having it. When he had got it in his hands he strung it with ease
and sent his arrow through the iron. Then he stood on the floor of the
cloister and poured his arrows on the ground, glaring fiercely about
him. First he killed Antinous, and then, aiming straight before him,
he let fly his deadly darts and they fell thick on one another. It was
plain that some one of the gods was helping them, for they fell upon
us with might and main throughout the cloisters, and there was a
hideous sound of groaning as our brains were being battered in, and
the ground seethed with our blood. This, Agamemnon, is how we came
by our end, and our bodies are lying still un-cared for in the house
of Ulysses, for our friends at home do not yet know what has happened,
so that they cannot lay us out and wash the black blood from our
wounds, making moan over us according to the offices due to the
departed.”
  “Happy Ulysses, son of Laertes,” replied the ghost of Agamemnon,
“you are indeed blessed in the possession of a wife endowed with
such rare excellence of understanding, and so faithful to her wedded
lord as Penelope the daughter of Icarius. The fame, therefore, of
her virtue shall never die, and the immortals shall compose a song
that shall be welcome to all mankind in honour of the constancy of
Penelope. How far otherwise was the wickedness of the daughter of
Tyndareus who killed her lawful husband; her song shall be hateful
among men, for she has brought disgrace on all womankind even on the
good ones.”
  Thus did they converse in the house of Hades deep down within the
bowels of the earth. Meanwhile Ulysses and the others passed out of
the town and soon reached the fair and well-tilled farm of Laertes,
which he had reclaimed with infinite labour. Here was his house,
with a lean-to running all round it, where the slaves who worked for
him slept and sat and ate, while inside the house there was an old
Sicel woman, who looked after him in this his country-farm. When
Ulysses got there, he said to his son and to the other two:
  “Go to the house, and **** the best pig that you can find for
dinner. Meanwhile I want to see whether my father will know me, or
fail to recognize me after so long an absence.”
  He then took off his armour and gave it to Eumaeus and Philoetius,
who went straight on to the house, while he turned off into the
vineyard to make trial of his father. As he went down into the great
orchard, he did not see Dolius, nor any of his sons nor of the other
bondsmen, for they were all gathering thorns to make a fence for the
vineyard, at the place where the old man had told them; he therefore
found his father alone, hoeing a vine. He had on a ***** old shirt,
patched and very shabby; his legs were bound round with thongs of
oxhide to save him from the brambles, and he also wore sleeves of
leather; he had a goat skin cap on his head, and was looking very
woe-begone. When Ulysses saw him so worn, so old and full of sorrow,
he stood still under a tall pear tree and began to weep. He doubted
whether to embrace him, kiss him, and tell him all about his having
come home, or whether he should first question him and see what he
would say. In the end he deemed it best to be crafty with him, so in
this mind he went up to his father, who was bending down and digging
about a plant.
  “I see, sir,” said Ulysses, “that you are an excellent gardener-
what pains you take with it, to be sure. There is not a single
plant, not a fig tree, vine, olive, pear, nor flower bed, but bears
the trace of your attention. I trust, however, that you will not be
offended if I say that you take better care of your garden than of
yourself. You are old, unsavoury, and very meanly clad. It cannot be
because you are idle that your master takes such poor care of you,
indeed your face and figure have nothing of the slave about them,
and proclaim you of noble birth. I should have said that you were
one of those who should wash well, eat well, and lie soft at night
as old men have a right to do; but tell me, and tell me true, whose
bondman are you, and in whose garden are you working? Tell me also
about another matter. Is this place that I have come to really Ithaca?
I met a man just now who said so, but he was a dull fellow, and had
not the patience to hear my story out when I was asking him about an
old friend of mine, whether he was still living, or was already dead
and in the house of Hades. Believe me when I tell you that this man
came to my house once when I was in my own country and never yet did
any stranger come to me whom I liked better. He said that his family
came from Ithaca and that his father was Laertes, son of Arceisius.
I received him hospitably, making him welcome to all the abundance
of my house, and when he went away I gave him all customary
presents. I gave him seven talents of fine gold, and a cup of solid
silver with flowers chased upon it. I gave him twelve light cloaks,
and as many pieces of tapestry; I also gave him twelve cloaks of
single fold, twelve rugs, twelve fair mantles, and an equal number
of shirts. To all this I added four good looking women skilled in
all useful arts, and I let him take his choice.”
  His father shed tears and answered, “Sir, you have indeed come to
the country that you have named, but it is fallen into the hands of
wicked people. All this wealth of presents has been given to no
purpose. If you could have found your friend here alive in Ithaca,
he would have entertained you hospitably and would have required
your presents amply when you left him—as would have been only right
considering what you have already given him. But tell me, and tell
me true, how many years is it since you entertained this guest—my
unhappy son, as ever was? Alas! He has perished far from his own
country; the fishes of the sea have eaten him, or he has fallen a prey
to the birds and wild beasts of some continent. Neither his mother,
nor I his father, who were his parents, could throw our arms about him
and wrap him in his shroud, nor could his excellent and richly dowered
wife Penelope bewail her husband as was natural upon his death bed,
and close his eyes according to the offices due to the departed. But
now, tell me truly for I want to know. Who and whence are you—tell me
of your town and parents? Where is the ship lying that has brought you
and your men to Ithaca? Or were you a passenger on some other man’s
ship, and those who brought you here have gone on their way and left
you?”
  “I will tell you everything,” answered Ulysses, “quite truly. I come
from Alybas, where I have a fine house. I am son of king Apheidas, who
is the son of Polypemon. My own name is Eperitus; heaven drove me
off my course as I was leaving Sicania, and I have been carried here
against my will. As for my ship it is lying over yonder, off the
open country outside the town, and this is the fifth year since
Ulysses left my country. Poor fellow, yet the omens were good for
him when he left me. The birds all flew on our right hands, and both
he and I rejoiced to see them as we parted, for we had every hope that
we should have another friendly meeting and exchange presents.”
  A dark cloud of sorrow fell upon Laertes as he listened. He filled
both hands with the dust from off the ground and poured it over his
grey head, groaning heavily as he did so. The heart of Ulysses was
touched, and his nostrils quivered as he looked upon his father;
then he sprang towards him, flung his arms about him and kissed him,
saying, “I am he, father, about whom you are asking—I have returned
after having been away for twe

My Claudia, it is long since we have met,
So kissed, so held each other heart to heart!
I thought to greet thee as a conqueror comes,
Bearing the trophies of his prowess home,
But Jove hath willed it should be otherwise­
Jove, say I? Nay, some mightier stranger-god
Who thus hath laid his heavy hand on me,
No victor, Claudia, but a broken man
Who seeks to hide his weakness in thy love.

How beautiful thou art! The years have brought
An added splendor to thy loveliness,
With passion of dark eye and lip rose-red
Struggling between its dimple and its pride.
And yet there is somewhat that glooms between
Thy love and mine; come, girdle me about
With thy true arms, and pillow on thy breast
This aching and bewildered head of mine;
Here, where the fountain glitters in the sun
Among the saffron lilies, I will tell­
If so that words will answer my desire­
The shameful fate that hath befallen me.

Down in Jerusalem they slew a man,
Or god­it may be that he was a god­
Those mad, wild Jews whom Pontius Pilate rules.
Thou knowest Pilate, Claudia­ -- a vain man,
Too weak to govern such a howling horde
As those same Jews. This man they crucified.
I knew nought of him­had not heard his name
Until the day they dragged him to his death;
Then all tongues wagged about him and his deeds;
Some said that he had claimed to be their King,
Some that he had blasphemed their deity
'Twas certain he was poor and meanly born,
No warrior he, nor hero; and he taught
Doctrines that surely would upset the world;
And so they killed him to be rid of him­
Wise, very wise, if he were only man,
Not quite so wise if he were half a god!

I know that strange things happened when he died­
There was a darkness and an agony,
And some were vastly frightened­not so I!
What cared I if that mob of reeking Jews
Had brought a nameless curse upon their heads ?
I had no part in that blood-guiltiness.
At least he died; and some few friends of his­
I think he had not very many friends­
Took him and laid him in a garden tomb.
A watch was set about the sepulchre,
Lest these, his friends, should hide him and proclaim
That he had risen as he had fore-told.
Laugh not, my Claudia. I laughed when I heard
The prophecy. I would I had not laughed!

I, Maximus, was chosen for the guard
With all my trusty fellows. Pilate knew
I was a man who had no foolish heart
Of softness all unworthy of a man!
My eyes had looked upon a tortured slave
As on a beetle crushed beneath my tread;
I gloried in the splendid strife of war,
Lusting for conquest; I had won the praise
Of our stern general on a scarlet field;
Red in my veins the warrior passion ran,
For I had sprung from heroes, Roman born!

That second night we watched before the tomb;
My men were merry; on the velvet turf,
Bestarred with early blossoms of the Spring,
They diced with jest and laughter; all around
The moonlight washed us like a silver lake,
Save where that silent, sealed sepulchre
Was hung with shadow as a purple pall.
A faint wind stirred among the olive boughs­
Methinks I hear the sighing of that wind
In all sounds since, it was so dumbly sad;
But as the night wore on it died away
And all was deadly stillness; Claudia,
That stillness was most awful, as if some
Great heart had broken and so ceased to beat!
I thought of many things, but found no joy
In any thought, even the thought of thee;
The moon waned in the west and sickly grew
Her light ****** from her in the breaking dawn­
Never was dawn so welcome as that pale,
Faint glimmer in the cloudless, brooding sky!

Claudia, how may I tell what came to pass?
I have been mocked at when I told the tale
For a crazed dreamer punished by the gods
Because he slept on guard; but mock not thou!
I could not bear it if thy lips should mock
The vision dread of that Judean morn.

Sudden the pallid east was all aflame
With radiance that beat upon our eyes
As from noonday sun; and then we saw
Two shapes that were as the immortal gods
Standing before the tomb; around me fell
My men as dead; but I, though through my veins
Ran a cold tremor never known before,
Withstood the shock and saw one shining shape
Roll back the stone; the whole world seemed ablaze,
And through the garden came a rushing wind
Thundering a paeon as of victory.

Then that dead man came forth! Oh, Claudia,
If thou coulds't but have seen the face of him!
Never was such a conqueror! Yet no pride
Was in it­nought but love and tenderness,
Such as we Romans scoff at; and his eyes
Bespake him royal. Oh, my Claudia,
Surely he was no Jew but very god!

Then he looked full upon me. I had borne
Much staunchly, but that look I could not bear!
What man may front a god and live? I fell
Prone, as if stricken by a thunderbolt;
And, though I died not, somewhat of me died
That made me man. When my long stupor passed
I was no longer Maximus­I was
A weakling with a piteous woman-soul,
All strength and pride, joy and ambition gone­
My Claudia, dare I tell thee what foul curse
Is mine because I looked upon a god?

I care no more for glory; all desire
For conquest and for strife is gone from me,
All eagerness for war; I only care
To help and heal bruised beings, and to give
Some comfort to the weak and suffering.
I cannot even hate those Jews; my lips
Speak harshly of them, but within my heart
I feel a strange compassion; and I love
All creatures, to the vilest of the slaves
Who seem to me as brothers! Claudia,
Scorn me not for this weakness; it will pass­
Surely 'twill pass in time and I shall be
Maximus strong and valiant once again,
Forgetting that slain god! and yet­and yet­
He looked as one who could not be forgot!

It was the Winter wilde,
While the Heav’n-born-childe,
  All meanly wrapt in the rude manger lies;
Nature in aw to him
Had doff’t her gawdy trim,
  With her great Master so to sympathize:
It was no season then for her
To wanton with the Sun her ***** Paramour.

Only with speeches fair
She woo’s the gentle Air
  To hide her guilty front with innocent Snow,
And on her naked shame,
Pollute with sinfull blame,
  The Saintly Vail of Maiden white to throw,
Confounded, that her Makers eyes
Should look so neer upon her foul deformities.

But he her fears to cease,
Sent down the meek-eyd Peace,
  She crown’d with Olive green, came softly sliding
Down through the turning sphear
His ready Harbinger,
  With Turtle wing the amorous clouds dividing,
And waving wide her mirtle wand,
She strikes a universall Peace through Sea and Land.

No War, or Battails sound
Was heard the World around,
  The idle spear and shield were high up hung;
The hookèd Chariot stood
Unstain’d with hostile blood,
  The Trumpet spake not to the armèd throng,
And Kings sate still with awfull eye,
As if they surely knew their sovran Lord was by.

But peacefull was the night
Wherin the Prince of light
  His raign of peace upon the earth began:
The Windes with wonder whist,
Smoothly the waters kist,
  Whispering new joyes to the milde Ocean,
Who now hath quite forgot to rave,
While Birds of Calm sit brooding on the charmeèd wave.

The Stars with deep amaze
Stand fixt in stedfast gaze,
  Bending one way their pretious influence,
And will not take their flight,
For all the morning light,
  Or Lucifer that often warn’d them thence;
But in their glimmering Orbs did glow,
Untill their Lord himself bespake, and bid them go.

And though the shady gloom
Had given day her room,
  The Sun himself with-held his wonted speed,
And hid his head for shame,
As his inferiour flame,
  The new enlightn’d world no more should need;
He saw a greater Sun appear
Then his bright Throne, or burning Axletree could bear.

The Shepherds on the Lawn,
Or ere the point of dawn,
  Sate simply chatting in a rustick row;
Full little thought they than,
That the mighty Pan
  Was kindly com to live with them below;
Perhaps their loves, or els their sheep,
Was all that did their silly thoughts so busie keep.

When such musick sweet
Their hearts and ears did greet,
  As never was by mortall finger strook,
Divinely-warbled voice
Answering the stringèd noise,
  As all their souls in blisfull rapture took
The Air such pleasure loth to lose,
With thousand echo’s still prolongs each heav’nly close.

Nature that heard such sound
Beneath the hollow round
  Of Cynthia’s seat, the Airy region thrilling,
Now was almost won
To think her part was don,
  And that her raign had here its last fulfilling;
She knew such harmony alone
Could hold all Heav’n and Earth in happier union.

At last surrounds their sight
A Globe of circular light,
  That with long beams the shame-fac’t night array’d,
The helmèd Cherubim
And sworded Seraphim,
  Are seen in glittering ranks with wings displaid,
Harping in loud and solemn quire,
With unexpressive notes to Heav’ns new-born Heir.

Such musick (as ’tis said)
Before was never made,
  But when of old the sons of morning sung,
While the Creator Great
His constellations set,
  And the well-ballanc’t world on hinges hung,
And cast the dark foundations deep,
And bid the weltring waves their oozy channel keep.

Ring out ye Crystall sphears,
Once bless our human ears,
  (If ye have power to touch our senses so)
And let your silver chime
Move in melodious time;
  And let the Base of Heav’ns deep ***** blow
And with your ninefold harmony
Make up full consort to th’Angelike symphony.

For if such holy Song
Enwrap our fancy long,
  Time will run back, and fetch the age of gold,
And speckl’d vanity
Will sicken soon and die,
  And leprous sin will melt from earthly mould,
And Hell it self will pass away,
And leave her dolorous mansions to the peering day.

Yea Truth, and Justice then
Will down return to men,
  Th’enameld Arras of the Rain-bow wearing,
And Mercy set between,
Thron’d in Celestiall sheen,
  With radiant feet the tissued clouds down stearing,
And Heav’n as at som festivall,
Will open wide the Gates of her high Palace Hall.

But wisest Fate sayes no,
This must not yet be so,
  The Babe lies yet in smiling Infancy,
That on the bitter cross
Must redeem our loss;
  So both himself and us to glorifie:
Yet first to those ychain’d in sleep,
The wakefull trump of doom must thunder through the deep,

With such a horrid clang
As on mount Sinai rang
  While the red fire, and smouldring clouds out brake:
The agèd Earth agast
With terrour of that blast,
  Shall from the surface to the center shake;
When at the worlds last session,
The dreadfull Judge in middle Air shall spread his throne.

And then at last our bliss
Full and perfect is,
  But now begins; for from this happy day
Th’old Dragon under ground
In straiter limits bound,
  Not half so far casts his usurpèd sway,
And wrath to see his Kingdom fail,
Swindges the scaly Horrour of his foulded tail.

The Oracles are dumm,
No voice or hideous humm
  Runs through the archèd roof in words deceiving.
Apollo from his shrine
Can no more divine,
  With hollow shreik the steep of Delphos leaving.
No nightly trance, or breathèd spell,
Inspire’s the pale-ey’d Priest from the prophetic cell.

The lonely mountains o’re,
And the resounding shore,
  A voice of weeping heard, and loud lament;
From haunted spring, and dale
Edg’d with poplar pale,
  The parting Genius is with sighing sent,
With flowre-inwov’n tresses torn
The Nimphs in twilight shade of tangled thickets mourn.

In consecrated Earth,
And on the holy Hearth,
  The Lars, and Lemures moan with midnight plaint,
In Urns, and Altars round,
A drear, and dying sound
  Affrights the Flamins at their service quaint;
And the chill Marble seems to sweat,
While each peculiar power forgoes his wonted seat

Peor, and Baalim,
Forsake their Temples dim,
  With that twise-batter’d god of Palestine,
And moonèd Ashtaroth,
Heav’ns Queen and Mother both,
  Now sits not girt with Tapers holy shine,
The Libyc Hammon shrinks his horn,
In vain the Tyrian Maids their wounded Thamuz mourn.

And sullen Moloch fled,
Hath left in shadows dred,
  His burning Idol all of blackest hue,
In vain with Cymbals ring,
They call the grisly king,
  In dismall dance about the furnace blue;
The brutish gods of Nile as fast,
Isis and Orus, and the Dog Anubis hast.

Nor is Osiris seen
In Memphian Grove, or Green,
  Trampling the unshowr’d Grasse with lowings loud:
Nor can he be at rest
Within his sacred chest,
  Naught but profoundest Hell can be his shroud,
In vain with Timbrel’d Anthems dark
The sable-stolèd Sorcerers bear his worshipt Ark.

He feels from Juda’s Land
The dredded Infants hand,
  The rayes of Bethlehem blind his dusky eyn;
Nor all the gods beside,
Longer dare abide,
  Not Typhon huge ending in snaky twine:
Our Babe to shew his Godhead true,
Can in his swadling bands controul the damnèd crew.

So when the Sun in bed,
Curtain’d with cloudy red,
  Pillows his chin upon an Orient wave,
The flocking shadows pale,
Troop to th’infernall jail,
  Each fetter’d Ghost slips to his severall grave,
And the yellow-skirted Fayes,
Fly after the Night-steeds, leaving their Moon-lov’d maze.

But see the ****** blest,
Hath laid her Babe to rest.
  Time is our tedious Song should here have ending,
Heav’ns youngest teemèd Star,
Hath fixt her polisht Car,
  Her sleeping Lord with Handmaid Lamp attending:
And all about the Courtly Stable,
Bright-harnest Angels sit in order serviceable.

I

It was the Winter wilde,
While the Heav’n-born-childe,
All meanly wrapt in the rude manger lies;
Nature in aw to him
Had doff’t her gawdy trim,
With her great Master so to sympathize:
It was no season then for her
To wanton with the Sun her ***** Paramour.

II

Only with speeches fair
She woo’d the gentle Air
To hide her guilty front with innocent Snow,
And on her naked shame,
Pollute with sinfull blame,
The Saintly Vail of Maiden white to throw,
Confounded, that her Makers eyes
Should look so near upon her foul deformities.

III

But he her fears to cease,
Sent down the meek-eyd Peace,
She crown’d with Olive green, came softly sliding
Down through the turning sphear
His ready Harbinger,
With Turtle wing the amorous clouds dividing,
And waving wide her mirtle wand,
She strikes a universall Peace through Sea and Land.

IV

No War, or Battails sound
Was heard the World around,
The idle spear and shield were high up hung;
The hooked Chariot stood
Unstain’d with hostile blood,
The Trumpet spake not to the armed throng,
And Kings sate still with awfull eye,
As if they surely knew their sovran Lord was by.

V

But peacefull was the night
Wherin the Prince of light
His raign of peace upon the earth began:
The Windes with wonder whist,
Smoothly the waters kist,
Whispering new joyes to the milde Ocean,
Who now hath quite forgot to rave,
While Birds of Calm sit brooding on the charmed wave.

VI

The Stars with deep amaze
Stand fit in steadfast gaze,
Bending one way their pretious influence,
And will not take their flight,
For all the morning light,
Or Lucifer that often warned them thence;
But in their glimmering Orbs did glow,
Until their Lord himself bespake, and bid them go.

VII

And though the shady gloom
Had given day her room,
The Sun himself with-held his wonted speed,
And hid his head for shame,
As his inferior flame,
The new enlightened world no more should need;
He saw a greater Sun appear
Then his bright Throne, or burning Axletree could bear.

VIII

The Shepherds on the Lawn,
Or ere the point of dawn,
Sate simply chatting in a rustic row;
Full little thought they than,
That the mighty Pan
Was kindly com to live with them below;
Perhaps their loves, or els their sheep,
Was all that did their silly thoughts so busie keep.

IX

When such Musick sweet
Their hearts and ears did greet,
As never was by mortal finger strook,
Divinely-warbled voice
Answering the stringed noise,
As all their souls in blisfull rapture took:
The Air such pleasure loth to lose,
With  thousand echo’s still prolongs each heav’nly close.

X

Nature that heard such  sound
Beneath  the hollow round
of Cynthia’s seat the Airy region thrilling,
Now was almost won
To think her part was don
And that her raign had here its last fulfilling;
She knew such harmony alone
Could hold all Heav’n and Earth in happier union.

XI

At last surrounds their sight
A globe of circular light,
That with long beams the shame faced night arrayed
The helmed Cherubim
And sworded Seraphim,
Are seen in glittering ranks with wings displaid,
Harping in loud and solemn quire,
With unexpressive notes to Heav’ns new-born Heir.

XII

Such Musick (as ’tis said)
Before was never made,
But when of old the sons of morning sung,
While the Creator Great
His constellations set,
And the well-ballanc’t world on hinges hung,
And cast the dark foundations deep,
And bid the weltring waves their oozy channel keep.

XIII

Ring out ye Crystall sphears,
Once bless our human ears,
(If ye have power to touch our senses so)
And let your silver chime
Move in melodious time;
And let the Base of Heav’ns deep ***** blow,
And with your ninefold harmony
Make up full consort to th’Angelike symphony.

XIV

For if such holy Song
Enwrap our fancy long,
Time will run back, and fetch the age of gold,
And speckl’d vanity
Will sicken soon and die,
And leprous sin will melt from earthly mould,
And Hell it self will pass away
And leave her dolorous mansions to the peering day.

XV

Yea Truth, and Justice then
Will down return to men,
Th’enameld Arras of the Rain-bow wearing,
And Mercy set between
Thron’d in Celestiall sheen,
With radiant feet the tissued clouds down stearing,
And Heav’n as at som festivall,
Will open wide the gates of her high Palace Hall.

XVI

But wisest Fate sayes  no,
This must not yet be so,
The Babe lies yet in smiling Infancy,
That on the bitter cross
Must redeem our loss;
So both himself and us to glorifie:
Yet first to those ychain’d in sleep,
The Wakeful trump of doom must thunder through the deep,

XVII

With such a horrid clang
As on Mount Sinai rang
While the red fire, and smouldring clouds out brake:
The aged Earth agast
With terrour of that blast,
Shall from the surface to the center shake;
When at the worlds last session,
The dreadfull Judge in middle Air shall spread his throne.

XVIII

And then at last  our bliss
Full and perfect is,
But now begins; for from this happy day
Th’old Dragon under ground
In straiter limits bound,
Not half so far casts his usurped sway,
And wrath to see his Kingdom fail,
Swindges the scaly Horrour of his foulded tail.

XIX

The Oracles are dumm,
No voice or hideous humm
Runs through the arched roof in words deceiving.
Apollo from his shrine
Can no more divine,
With hollow shreik the steep of Delphos leaving.
No nightly trance, or breathed spell,
Inspire’s the pale-ey’d Priest from the prophetic cell.

**

The lonely mountains o’re,
And the resounding shore,
A voice of weeping heard, and loud lament;
From haunted spring, and dale
Edg’d with poplar pale
The parting Genius is with sighing sent,
With flowre-inwov’n tresses torn
The Nimphs in twilight shade of tangled thickets mourn.

XXI

In consecrated Earth,
And on the holy Hearth,
The Lars, and Lemures moan with midnight plaint,
In Urns, and Altars round,
A drear, and dying sound
Affrights the Flamins at their service quaint;
And the chill Marble seems to sweat,
While each peculiar power forgoes his wonted seat.

XXII

Peor, and Baalim,
Forsake their Temples dim,
With that twise-batter’d god of Palestine,
And mooned Ashtaroth,
Heav’ns Queen and Mother both,
Now sits not girt with Tapers holy shine,
The Libyc Hammon shrinks his horn,
In vain the Tyrian Maids their wounded Thamuz mourn.

XXIII

And sullen Moloch fled,
Hath left in shadows dred,
His burning Idol all of blackest hue,
In vain with Cymbals ring,
They call the grisly king,
In dismall dance about the furnace Blue;
And Brutish gods of Nile as fast,
lsis and Orus, and the Dog Anubis hast.

"No no I don't hate really thank u for this I just want you to know I really dont believe in putting optimistic twists on unhappy things. I honor and respect agony despite loathing it and I find pain in change so I just dont like it to be glamorized thats all. And then, you know, the best friends thing but I talked with u about that already privately"

Ember lashes out on tiffany on comments on a peom of hers i say this is so meanly harsh enber is not a dying out burning flame but we wish she was then she wouldn't get bad sided with tiff

Another thing is ember was downright discouraged tiffany kust want wanted a person to go too.I think you let er down Ember E. Diwnright harsh

I'll get back to you
In a second, in a minute, in a day, in a month
I'll return your call
Remind me ten times, five times, two times, once
I'm not safe for the public
Not today, not tomorrow, not two days from now
I'm not good at friendship
Ask me when, ask me where, ask me why, ask me how.

But in half a decade
I'll want you once, want you twice, want you a hundred times
Wait on me six years
I'll be loving, I'll be sweet, I'll be adoring, I'll be kind.
Forget me completely
I'll chase you ten, twenty, five hundred miles
Treat me meanly
I'll grovel, I'll plead, I'll beg for a smile.

Ignore my words
I'll panic, I'll shudder, I'll crave your attention
Shower me in love
I'll sneer, I'll scoff, I'll hate your affection.
Beg me home
You may bite my dust, kiss my ***, send me west
Leave me alone
I'll ***** myself out, love you down, bite your neck.

I sit and I lay in my cage. I can see that many of us are apes that have been trained. But I know underneath we humans truly don't act this why.  Meanly because this system is driving us insane. Fighting and *** are so repressed but they feel so good so we come back to them any way. Then we are punished and put back in owner place, regardless of your *** or race. But I will not deny that rush of life when someone clocks me in the face. What I am saying is we are still apes still animals still human. Hour ideas twisted and values out of place.

He and I go up to the roof, the narrow stairs and low door. The tiles on the terrace are orange clay and slick with rainwater. He opens a new beer from the six-pack he's been carrying.
"Do you know the story of the Lady In Red." He slams back the cerveza and doesn't give me a chance to answer, but then, it's not a question.
"So you know, in Aladdin. When the genie's offering him everything, anything he could ever want. And those three **** girls appear, in red dresses, tempting him. And in the Matrix, they're walking down the hallway. Neo stops to look at the lady in the red dress and when he turns around there's a gun in his face.
"This city is my Lady In Red.
"She's so beautiful, so passionate, you don't even see. I don't even see it until it's too late.
"This city is killing me", he says. "She's given me everything I thought I wanted, and taken everything I have."
He finishes the can and kicks it across the rooftop. He laughs meanly.
"I'm a ******* alcoholic." He laughs again. Opens another can.
"Twenty-one years old." He shakes his head and coughs harshly, hacking up spit and sending it off the edge of the roof. "I am actually ill because of her."
"She's so perfect, but it's not real at all."
He looks so ******. So lost. I look out around us.
The skyline is so beautiful.

A poem, that's not a poem
but gets 2 thousands reads
lands on the Daily
and makes my heart bleed
So much fighting, back biting,
such inverted sense
of there own
proliferate nonsense
Drowning out the artful voices
of the souls that bleed
poetic choices
Sitting in their towers
built from dung
measuring  how meanly
they are hung
while many other voices
chime in and you can't hear the truth
crowing inside the din
it's like an ache in a tooth!

Some truly beautiful poems
that will hold your heart,
most bearing their souls
and simply enjoying the art!
Connecting on a level
that cares little for 'hearts'
just waiting for someone to say
'Hi, I feel what you wrote'
Not caring about figures, or charts

Be you one voice under one name
or one voice under many
If one is a vitriolic persona
rest assured the others are just as ugly

I'd have to give HP
a 2/10 this week

Sadly it's impossible to articulate
while being drowned when trying to speak.

A sweet, chirping grey jungle tree;
Stirring up bloodied doses within me,
I hath been abducted by morose darkness;
And its fetal, yet obnoxious messes,
For t'is flowered cave smelling just like death!
And to me, death is more like an obsession
In a glaze this phony, and dripping wet
Cold that I hath met about, in person.
One that hath fascinated me; with wronged tears
A single soul is not yet there to hear;
And lurking pools of fears, all blended
Into the versatile skin of the unfriended
Moon, being the beige universe, and evil—
Although he knows not how I should feel.

I, had been enslaved by the worst sun;
And tied to the post of unwanted salvation.
I, not being the privilege of Life now;
I shall go tonight, and not return tomorrow.
I had enough love, but with no love to be,
I shall not halt to see this side of me.
And hark! By the solitary lights of the moon;
The Earth was once my saluted destination;
But who could fight for a savage battle
In an attempt to experience rebirth,
Born with no contempt for the world;
But with Remorse bludgeoned, and hurt,
As though I had committed but treason;
And living was just to hold a vain reason.

For such reasons would be censured venom;
To them, who raved not at my longest poems,
And my guilt’s blood would be their songs,
They had committed justice, and no wrong;
Which a dour soul could adore at a lonely night,
Whilst being mute towards the shifting trees,
Torture and denial were the nail of Sunlight,
Waking me up to the enchantment of ragged bliss.
Had I, another day, woken up to another peril;
I acknowledged my embedded fate as an Evil,
To recite the spells that had infuriated me,
An indolent vice that had but been meant to be.
An insult, that such straggled **** may hate;
But so, forgiveness is far a threat too late.

Such fortuities, I hath not cornered to embrace;
And I shall not be back to sing conned waste,
And by being gratuitous and to *******,
I want to be the handsome rebellion to my fate;
Had I found myself trapped on the defunct floors;
I could not escape marked death at Midnight's door,
And at that sick moment I had been flawed,
Frightened, slackened to my rawest flesh,
By the metal edge of a cut sword, and then;
I was but Death at the rotten night, my friend!
Such fiends, such rage—were far in their summer bliss,
And yet I but grew as a faint shadow in peace;
I watched their flaked nostrils from inside my tomb,
My tomb, and its scraped walls—my quiet home,
I could not breathe now, nor bend towards a kiss;
I was the soul the Earth had forgot, had missed;

I, roused again now as a darling apparition;
I wear a black mask and utter repetitions,
No soul shall want to collapse in my steps—and bolt!
I hath entrapped many daydreaming in sloth,
Those with looser complacency, and breath
In their nostrils lives such straggly wrath;
And in such hair so ricocheted and unkempt,
How canst one but find a stranded scarf, a lamp?
With the odour of blood I can taste, and yet
Makes my hungered mouth groaning wet,
I hath drunk from too many souls, and I
That shan’t live any more, nor shall I die;
Ah! Now I shall ****, and begin with the dirt—
Cleansing such Earth off of malignant worlds!

What a disgrace, a scraggly—yet resilient disgrace!
A bend in the road had I been, and was I mean
To the world but sought not to know me?
And at times of need, their race but leaned to me;
And their fair promises, and royals, had not been true—
Unlike the verity of the justice I had found, and knew.
Unlike my bosoms, that had faced too much sorrow,
These ghastly sighs and temptations shall know now;
I hath found the world to lay my head silently,
With no love to be, and cut my love reverently;
That the stars should watch us meanly, but sure
They would not be a stale aura to my picture.
But to die, to cease demurely without a certain name
Shall be one that feels not my pool of shame;
And t’is crime is no exception, o my lover—
I am exempt now, from the insolent love, forever!

What an imbecile, that we embraced to softly!
What a butterfly that cannot fly in me;
Not a life that holds my chest, nor my blossom
Not a purity that holds clear my poem, o thee!
An ink on the page, but yet ‘tis my story
That I want freedom to writ my fierce destiny.
What a blurred visage to my vision such is,
What a menacing world to want a kneeling kiss!
With no love to see, and with no called name,
They hath no trifling tales nor misspelled shame;
That I had perhaps been too morally confused,
That Death was ethereal, but coldly infused;
Ah, thou, so to thee Death is no exception—
Having not thought of my hurt, my inflammation!

For a living fate can be unassuming, and uncertain;
For humans can die, and be nauseous;
For such lives are a demerit; and for a friend;
For a destiny that can be true, but tedious.
From a love that I am already free,
From a love so ubiquitous; and in unison,
I am obliged to no merits, nor tragic beauty;
I shall seek and give no compassion, nor reason.
And in a vain attempt had I hastily tried;
And in a vain triumph had I sullenly dried;
And in bewitching the silky skies had I died;
So shan’t I return to the boisterous Heavens,
The Lord bitterly misplaced me, and lied
To me behind the graves, and rained gardens.

For in the days that followed my death, hath I sworn
To kidnap back the life that had been blown;
And be the Black Spirit they would find pertinent
To hear the trespassing of death, and their moments
To crunch the life of the ones before me;
Amicable as they were in their apposite defence,
But not as the lush presentation of their beauty;
That I should entrance and ****** them, hence.
Who couldst defend my murdered youth but me;
Who couldst strongly step on my bursts of anger;
Who couldst restore my prone poetry but ******;
Who couldst live but I, who lives forever;
Who couldst separate my from my agony;
Who couldst live but with ill fate, and be?

For the age that I hath lost, and thoughtless’ burnt
And of being grace, and kind hath I not heard;
And with delight, shan’t I stop and turn;
For no obvious reason, for no maddened alert.
I am stronger in my rebirth, and with sharp, strident
Steps, hath I grown more braced and confident;
For no reason, for no further light hath I doubted;
For no marks, nor discourse hath I faulted;
For such apologies, and humility are obsolete,
For my imagination of such is clear, and yet;
I hath no more obligations so, to be met—
And with such unwavering strength crystal clear,
And everlasting sleep to me so near,
I am to grow out of the vines of my grave;
And descend carefully on the midnight’s cape.
And yet, who is sleeping sweetly in his wife’s bed;
I shall soon send him into delicious death.

For the life that had been obediently drawn;
For the miraculous night that turned to dawn,
For the life that had belonged to me, and so
I am to be above the stars, and ever in the know
All my victims so sternly, thoughtfully, and deeply
I am to **** reverently, and by sweetness, vigilantly:
“I am to drink the redness, and be the Sun’s equal”
My voice singing through the forest’s damp halls.
And now yet, with the futile man dead in my arm,
I fling myself into another chained woman’s charms!
With her blood so capricious dripping down my throat;
I can feel myself furiously sweat, and sweetly float;
I am to rouse in transparency through the roof;
And be the midnight, no more aloof!

And to be the Spear of the universe, and hell;
I would like to wish every fault and demerit well;
Soon, there shan’t be the raucous singing of jingle bells,
Death is in everyone—eating off of their shells.
Ah! My lover’s flesh, that I am devouring eagerly;
Now is but a piece of provision so sweet to me;
In which I canst indulge in but a locked pain;
Feeding off of his blood and its red rain;
Ah, I am so hungry, and those eyes are for me!
He gasps, and I am free now, as the flannel sky;
I am free to haunt and grasp all about me,
I can feel their smell descend about so nigh.
My lover, and his vain woman of the scorched past
Are now in death, far from their sly voices and hearts!

And to be the Sword of the Space, and devils;
I feel honoured to be part of the evils;
And be the taunt and haunting to all men,
To all this Earth’s visions, emblazoned fiends!
To me, all of their deaths hath been inscribed;
Ever since I was grown from dead, and my lungs
Hath been imbibed with more pronounced vibes,
And choruses more awesomely sung;
I am to assimilate those humans, now, ha-ha!—
And be a creature of the night, the Hailed One,
They shall bow to me in flash, and in my old Stanza;
All murders are to be spoken, to be done!
My enemy, and his once powerful screeching speech;
Gunned down into his last breath, the gospel’s ditch!

And the vitriolic dream, now, that is too high;
I shall not stop until all petrified souls shall die,
There, above me, the afterlife writing in agony,
Justified in every sense, and be the last poem
That I shall write in my dated prose of destiny;
I hath become the Satan to destroy, and numb
All the rhymed births and breaths of life, ah!
I hath been ****** into this fate, of my own;
And be I never a praised, nor a soft wife—
Yet I am impressed already, by closed immortality;
And my youth forever, with its endless passion
And latest bursts that happen in eternity,
I am to counter and cure all my halted questions;
I shall go and return, I hath all the time in me!

And Ruthlessness, then, that is too holy;
I hath admired thee with all the blood in me,
And to restore the humanity in me prominently;
I shall **** all, and make their deaths permanently!
For all deaths are idyll to me, and my abode,
An abundance as I roam, and float about!
What hath happened to my human, and bold songs,
For they hath not been a sky to me, all along;
What a condescending spirit a human is,
For they think what a fierce not is;
Whilst all that is thin is bold, and a rose;
What a singing displeasure to my prose!
Ah, to **** all, and cherish all their dyings,
I shall cut and devour with my heart singing!

Then, into the skies, as I ascend I hear
All flowered flesh is but towering so near;
They hath heartbeats and clueless rainbow;
They are not to fight me with violence,
They hath no tyranny, nor are above my shadow;
They hath no abode—but my impertinence!
Ah, and blessed am I, so meekly blessed;
This is but the best day I hath ever had,
For so anger and betrayal are not unwise at all;
And so holy are miseries, and miseries are ******.
I am to **** more, and bring my joys to Fall,
I am to eat, and devour more in summer.
I am to drink more, and bleed in winter;
To celebrate deaths, and merry more in my walls!

Then, into the Earth, as I descend I see
That I descend with a later moon, and be
For all who loved me, there shall still be death;
For I shall arise amidst these unhearing walls,
For the many teardrops that were shed,
For the shrieking pains I shared, and their toll;
For the world, that hath not been too exquisite,
For the crowds, that hath all along lacked such wit,
For the Sun, that hath ne’er been a soul sweet;
For a love that ne’er had a single beat!
For a love that I hath fragrantly cursed,
For a love I hath determined to make worst.
I am to eat, as though I am the Sun, the West;
I shall put its whole black pit to sleep, to eternal rest!

With all good cheer hath I spoken, and thus I turned
To see further stomachs and chests lying down, churned
And eating off of them is a swarm of butterflies
That were stirred to life by my own puke of frights;
And I, spitting out but flames and fires from within me
And my mouth that hath burnt thousands of thee,
I am not afraid to claim my rights, as I please;
And to destruct far more indeed, as I wish—
Which I celebrate as an ordinary gift, and yet
Hath made and shall render all conscious souls mad!
And all about me hath gone to precious sleep
In their admiration of my prominence, and weep;
And all about me hath turned to obstinate death;
Ripped down of breath, and any traces of life, of late.

With sainted grand glory hath I writ, and rejoiced
The merry and cordial pleasures of deathly bliss;
For such splendour, are not lovingly present every day,
And the vanished worlds have become dear to me today;
That now, as I devour another’s wrist, and arms
I am absorbed within death’s knocking charms;
And his limbs offer farther delicacy than the stars,
And his soul be a playful drink two worlds apart;
Another one, that tastes like those fine vines,
And grapes, and the fruits smelling like Truths.
Ah! I sit there, leaning softly against the Cedar Mine;
Sipping his blood by the humming Eolian lute;
His veins dry and graze me, sickly, too fast;
I hath not had a drink and feast too vast!

And with deadening love hath I lived, and existed
In the world into which Faith hath not fitted;
Like the ode in me, trying to tie the Moon
Whilst such dimmed favours laid in the Sun;
I had been crafted only, but in vain
I had been transmitted also, but in pain
And all despaired, with my talents, to death
To be woken again in renewed hate;
What a fault of thine, o thee, and perhaps mine;
At times a rustic stupor to me, and yet is fine!
I am the Evil to be, and Satan so free,
At peaceful hours shall I come to thee;
Finding my ecstasy in Death and ******;
My civilian songs to the Earth, forever.

Long the land watches for death or harvest
amongst the lulling black mounds
a slumber in piles,
huddled so neatly
without blankets
from the shivering wind blowing meanly
under the sway of the killing night’s climb.

Underneath are all bones,
life clutching the long tilled soil,
the farmer’s harlot oft despoiled,
denied wages, seeds scattered, an ever
cursing field,
demanding her coin,
the child
torn, sold from her womb.

I heard
And my voice
Broke-
That was the end:
“Kennedy
Fell
From a criminal hand… ”
And
My hair
Stood on end.
I gave
A hostile reception
To that
News
on my own way.
I did understand
Kennedy is
A kind
And nice chap. And
He is
Reform’s
Eternal adherent.
In the morn
He lived
During lunch
He died.
Everybody
Lost comfort
At that instant.
“Kennedy!”
Pipes
Blew loudly
“Jo-o-o-hn!”
Dead marsh repeated
The word
Democracy’s
Pillar
Was cut down
Meanly.
Johny
Is quitting
The boundary
Of our world.
We will remember
These heroes!
Johny is
America’s glorious son.
He is among
Home foundations’ adherents,
Descendants
Will be proud
Of him
Under the sun.
{22.11.2015}

СЫН АМЕРИКИ

Услышал –
и мой
оборвался
голос –
«Кеннеди
пал
от преступной
руки…»
Дыбом
вставали
за волосом
волос,
По-своему
новость
восприняв
в штыки.
Кеннеди –
добрый
и славный
малый,
Вечный
сторонник
больших
реформ.
Утром
он жил,
а в обед –
не стало.
Все
потеряли
в тот миг
комфорт.
«Кеннеди!» –
громко
трубили
трубы,
«Джо-о-о-о-н!» –
повторял
похоронный
марш.
Столп
демократии
подло
срублен,
Джонн­и
предел
покидает
наш.
Будем
мы помнить
таких
героев!
Джонни –
Америки
славный
сын:
Ярый
сторонник
родных
устоев –
Будут
потомки
гордиться
им!
{22.11.2015}

Translator - I. Toporov

[we live]
these
days
eyes, raw ringed: mauve.
dustcurtains. lung-still
and                 dry



cover gasping-
fingers sanded down, dusted away
to later be inlaid
with something
else.
grappling clever-
broken bird feet.
the gaping is wide enough down here
even
for you


wanting to be a victim of something good-
lapping up *** of(f) belly hair
entangled.

and

as every human speck
fights for selfpreservation- without clairvoyance or beauty.
as the mud pumps.
as carmen plays.
as we die again in less than convenient specificities.


we will be replaced.


like furniture.

and those who seek to optimize everything
right down the efficiency of shampoo in the shower-
will leave with nothing  
                           more than a clean head of hair


to fall from these, slowly
or quicker than that- depending on the mood of it. and things like
cancer.


and when the chemicals
find you
laying there alone. and sleepy
they will know to carry you outside into the yard. where the grass is
waiting
and the road is waiting
and the rain.
and the sound of cars.
and of   trees.

big-*******-trees.
roots gnarled meanly into the dark.rotty droppings of their boughs.
cold. mighty- dragging their bruisey knuckles against the
dirt
trees with ghosts
bigger than your thumbnails.
older than the grossest things in your
waste-basket.
tree-er than
tree.

and when the car swerves
and hits
i will be there.


sinking with you
into the the reservoir
doors closed.
belted.
and good


.but
i will be

and we
fall apart
don't speak
for days.


learn of the other too late.

Hey !
what are you laughing at?
Are you laughing at that girl
With freezey hair,
Baggy, over sized clothes?
You're Giggling meanly from behind
Because of those?

Her ragged dress is all you can see,
Her messy hair is all you notice,
Can't u see the pain in her eyes?

No she's not fortunate like you
To get the love of her mother
Or be pampered by her father

You  laugh at her *****,hardened hands?
Yeah those are the same hands
she puts on her lips
And cry every night silently.
As silent as the moon above her head.

Although just 13,
the little girl  is not fortunate like you
To run & complaint to anyone
When she's mercilessly beaten up
By those, supposed to take care of her.

She waits for the nights
To lay awake under the stars
and remember her past
Her father, her mother
Those happy days.

What happened to life?
Why her world turned upside down?
Why is she so helpless and feeble
In this ever known town?

With a dust storm in her heart
She wakes up.
Yet another day to cope.
But she has her will and her strong hope.

You think she's weird,
cz she doesn't gigle in small jokes?
Oh she doesn't find them funny.
They don't amuse her anymore.
What's more amusing than this life?
What's more laughable
than her will of still going on?
Walking miles after miles
With blisters in her feet,
Along the desserted street.
Wearing
An worn out, torn out, old muddy sandle.
Yeah go on. Laugh at that too.

You think she didn't hear what you said?
She might be thick skinned
But sister she's not deaf.
And she knows it's ok to be different.

Struck by untimely age
That old soul, although 13
But feels like she has seen a lot
Lived a hundred lives
And left them behind one by one.

Now she has learnt to let go.
She has taught herself to grow.
She's taught herself to live alone.

Not look for a helping hand
Or reside in a castle of sand.
Though she has none to speak to
About her grims
She writes them down
About All her hopes and all her dreams.

One day she'll
stand by her friend
Who was bullided in school for being a boy and still having long hair.
One day She'll stand up for her friend  against unwanted stare.

She'll know,
No one should be subjected to torment.
Cz She knows it's ok to be different.

So go on.
Laugh and gigle at anyone you want.
Throw your hatred and your tont.
A bullie is all you'll ever see
While looking at the mirror.
And it'll make the poor little girl stronger.
Stronger than you can ever be.

Alas Dear Madam

Alas, dear Madam, have I thee wronged
by gesture, savage word, or deed,
thus giving thee cause for sorrow,
importuning your heart to bleed?

Have I, dear Madam, given thee
injury so rank and so low
as to merit your cool design
to suffer me the status quo?

Dear Madam, have I deceived thee
and showered thee with silken lies,
or primed thee with honeyed words
that cloak dark purpose in disguise?

Nay, dear Madam, no wrong to thee
did I meanly perpetrate.
no grievous sin did I commit,
nor cold insult dedicate.

My grossest error, dear Madam,
was to unknowingly explore
the pride sleeping in your *****
and its delicacy ignore.

So, dear Madam, please forgive me
for the numb bruises I thee gave
to that one part of a woman
which no man should ever brave.

end and start
how meanly

YOU THİNK
possible probably

He will wander through his life
A traveler with no destination
Mean man meanly occupied
Lacking vision to establish aspiration

A stranger in a strange land
Inviting and awaiting calamity
Means to an end and nothing more
Lacking the strength of character to uphold his virtue

Vacillating will of a traveler
Obsessed with what is trivial
Meaningless things meaning more
And all his ideals meaning less

He will wander through this life
A traveler with no destination

Not in the grave
So why did you pray?
You said you were waiting for that rainy day
I noticed a few days with sun
That burnt meanly worse than the wetness of rain

Fluid through the song
Every move clean to the beat
You know how tough some beats can be
But you never stopped
The stamping of your dancing feet

Kings laugh underneath their heavy golden crowns
I see the jester never shows a frown
The Queen wore that wedding gown
She now feels as the Jester
Her crown feels like the bell
Just bangs less loud

Taking everything
Everything that was free
Taking the flowers,
Flowers from the open cemetery
Mean as ebineezer scrooge
A man with a terrible curse
He once pinched fifty pounds
Out of mother Teresa's
Purse
Nothing phased him
He was Mean as he could be
Even took a shilling
Of child who was only three
This mean old bar steward
Destined to expire all alone
Even God wiped all his memories
And left him,well bared to the bone
Didn't deserve an epitaph
For it would have surely read
Hear lies one mean bar steward
Everyone's quite happy now he's
Meanly dead

The reason I’m so determined
Is because I want to reach that
Point in life where I love myself for being
Strong and beautiful and
Persistent and relentless and
Passionate and determined
I want to be the happiest version of me and you don’t get there by never doing
I look in the mirror meanly
I angrily tell myself I’m  fat
So I would start doing push-ups
Burpees and planks and crunches
Even when I was too tired
To keep my eyes open
Waking up on the floor
To my abs and legs and arms feeling so sore and hungry
I remember runs at 1:00 in the morning
Because I was board
I remember how slow each mile passed
But how fast time went by
By 2:30 I ran/walked 15 miles
But it wasn’t me moving my legs
I just ran
Lost whatever food was in my stomach
My body shook and itched
I couldn’t calm my asthma down
And then all at once
Air rushed into my lungs
And I just laid in the grass
I wasn’t shaking any more
I didn’t itch
And all was quite
I was determined

Ignorance is ****
In the wind
However, it changes direction
Again, and again

A wish, a whirl
A kiss, on the pearl

Polished perfectly for years
To ***, distracting all fears
Like a drum rumbling from the Woulds
**** the If’s, ****, leave the Coulds

Luck like a Lady, and the maybe Shoulds
Spike dope a meanly cost of doing Goods

Death dances round me,
A specter, a shadow,
Always just past the corner of my eye.

She weaves a tapestry thread through my life,
Taunting me meanly,
As all I know and love dies.

She arrives unexpected.
She arrives unannounced,
But sometimes her calling card comes in advance.
Surprise or no,
She still sparks a shock,
Whenever she enters the room.

Death dances round me and round me...
And round me still again,
Til the band strikes up my song,
And curtseying politely,
She insists I join her in a waltz.

“Oh, she is a feminist

You know what I mean”.

They call me out

On being one.

As if it is a disease like AIDS

You know what I mean 😉

As if I was bitten by a mosquito and got the condition overnight?


Remember at a wedding when you were only nine

And that uncle kept staring and purposely brushed past all the time

Or in the bus, that old man kept touching between your legs

And you were only six.



Remember when you bought a very expensive watch

And in a great excitement

Showed it to your best friend

And she meanly asked,

Who gifted?



When a friend says you know what

You must compromise a bit to be married.

Whereas the same friend tells a male friend

“Oh, he’s just not liking anyone.”



When your parents tell you to act dumb

So, the guy does not feel intimated.

Or they tell you to laugh low

So, he can feel high.



Stop doing it

Stop asking your friend who she is dating

When she already told you, multiple times, that she’s single.

Do you know how it feels?

To be second judged on every opinion

Only because you don’t have one of those things

Between your legs

Or more so

Because you proudly say

That you are a feminist.

So, stop

Just stop calling yourselves feminists
Because it's not just about rapes, equal pays, and glass ceilings
It’s also about these little things.
And may you realize someday
That it's not about man and woman
It is just about being human.

I wonder as I write
are they your eyes that scan,
that pan across the screen, meanly
assessing what was unseen,
caressing the language,
tenderly, ******* this
author from behind her
shroud of words, clouds
waved away expertly, heard
nakedly, mistakenly (but not).
there is intention here,
queer as I am and this may be,
I flee not from this tangled
nest of support and rest and
tension, suspension, and
disbelief, for behind the
scrutiny there is a fire
to be stoked,
a wet cheek to be stroked,
then slapped and squeezed,
pleased over and over again;
desperate to serve to be
broken, submission awoken
by challenge and dispute,
refuting not by habit but
necessity that I be seen,
I'd never say please until
it's pinched out of me,
take me, break me, rake
nails across my stubborn back,
have the patience to wrack my brain,
give loving pain and let
me learn to serve and receive,
believe in me (but never
say you do), who would you
be to give me praise
(please give me praise)?
I'm getting ahead of myself
while falling behind, watching
your steps and countering
all I find, call me
old soul if you choose,
but I lose to naivety, every
time, spend some with me
and see, what all I have to give--
may you finally
see me live.

They say I must have sorrow
the type they own and carry always
but I do not know where to find or buy it
would it be in an unblemished past left pristine
or perhaps in hard toil and gainful honest endeavors
perhaps in meetings and partings well made and gratifying
or the laughter and light shared sincerely, unstintingly with others
could it be hiding in my open generosity or help rendered to pals
maybe it lurks in my mannerly and respectful ways with all I know
Ah! all those random kids and animals that always seem to like me
do you think, perhaps they all had sorrow and I missed it all along

I don't know, I really don't know
I even searched within, looked into secret places
but they all just contain smiles, laughter, warm memories
some had records of jobs well done, of sounding deeds and love
of enduring achievements, laudable out-lays and pats and thumbs up
one or two places held honest mistakes made but also had apologies
a place had anger but it also contained justifiable before it, I'm human
Ah you're stuck they say, that's sorrowful and sad they cackle meanly
but I live and breathe, see, hear, feel and taste, some others don't, see!
Yes, but you're lonely and friendless, how about that, tell us Sunshine
No! lonely not, for I have family, I have God and I have books, music

They say they'll cause me sorrow
Sages say you have sorrow to cause others sorrow
so look within yourself and know you carry more burden
The truth its known, will set you free but hide from it and fester
Truth and justice are the edifying spine and laws of social order
where does truth lives when lies are hurl  to fling sorrow to others
more sorrow merely fills the emptiness of sorrowfuls'  an they hurt
I cannot find sorrow, my conscience unaffected, my mind joyous so
pray the Creator offers solace to those in pain and help all afflicted
remove the logs in damaged eyes as they seek to remove the speck
their sorrows see in those still unable to find that elusive sorrow