"narcissi" poems
You said you would **** it this morning.
Do not **** it. It startles me still,
The jut of that odd, dark head, pacing
Through the uncut grass on the elm's hill.
It is something to own a pheasant,
Or just to be visited at all.
I am not mystical: it isn't
As if I thought it had a spirit.
It is simply in its element.
That gives it a kingliness, a right.
The print of its big foot last winter,
The trail-track, on the snow in our court
The wonder of it, in that pallor,
Through crosshatch of sparrow and starling.
Is it its rareness, then? It is rare.
But a dozen would be worth having,
A hundred, on that hill-green and red,
Crossing and recrossing: a fine thing!
It is such a good shape, so vivid.
It's a little cornucopia.
It unclaps, brown as a leaf, and loud,
Settles in the elm, and is easy.
It was sunning in the narcissi.
I trespass stupidly. Let be, let be.
11.5k
Spry, wry, and gray as these March sticks,
Percy bows, in his blue peajacket, among the narcissi.
He is recuperating from something on the lung.
The narcissi, too, are bowing to some big thing :
It rattles their stars on the green hill where Percy
Nurses the hardship of his stitches, and walks and walks.
There is a dignity to this; there is a formality --
The flowers vivid as bandages, and the man mending.
They bow and stand : they suffer such attacks!
And the octogenarian loves the little flocks.
He is quite blue; the terrible wind tries his breathing.
The narcissi look up like children, quickly and whitely.
6.6k
I wandered through Scoglietto’s far retreat,
The oranges on each o’erhanging spray
Burned as bright lamps of gold to shame the day;
Some startled bird with fluttering wings and fleet
Made snow of all the blossoms; at my feet
Like silver moons the pale narcissi lay:
And the curved waves that streaked the great green bay
Laughed i’ the sun, and life seemed very sweet.
Outside the young boy-priest passed singing clear,
‘Jesus the son of Mary has been slain,
O come and fill His sepulchre with flowers.’
Ah, God! Ah, God! those dear Hellenic hours
Had drowned all memory of Thy bitter pain,
The Cross, the Crown, the Soldiers and the Spear.
1.8k
onslaughts of parasitic butterflies devour her liver each eve
sparing just enough to grow back the next day
her night clothes are torn under razor beaks
then mended each morning by the nimble-fingered Narcissi
who do not lament her predicament,
but sing mellow little tunes in C minor,
a statement: there is no latent compassion for Pandora
nor for her descendants in Greece or in Rome.
Sep 5, 2023
Sep 5, 2023 at 3:49 PM UTC
The sun never shines, the moon never sleeps,
Beneath the sky's blanket the earth is still.
Irises blossom and irises weep
And narcissi thrive in the uncertain chill.
Radiant colours have painted the fields,
Green of the gammas and epsilon black.
Change is a force only nature can wield,
Grief is a certainty nature brings back.
The sun never shines, the sky's never rich.
Cursed with a greyness of which it won't shed.
Monchromatic and bleak and eldritch,
Stitched to horizons with lavender thread.
Spring, in my youth, was a beautiful sight,
Desolate land would be painted anew.
Now that I've aged I can see through its sleight,
Engulfed by despair as the grass is by dew.
Aug 21, 2018
Aug 21, 2018 at 8:45 AM UTC
Mother Edge
You walk with me
To Petri dishes
And light my silver lungs
With a screaming match
Drink the earth with
Me until dawn.
Father Red
I’ve run to your thunderous
Carpet in these shoes that
Can’t breathe through
The narcissi on which
You asked me to balance:
The electric taste.
Sister Shard
Sit like we did on the
Ship’s stomach
Memory has a hole in his lip
And my key broke
Smoke accidental
While you were gone.
Brother Trail
I grew in your shadow
Simple sentence cell
And dreamed, oh, dreamed
Of my black fingers green fingers
Sharpening
Coins for your eyes.
Apr 9, 2010
Apr 9, 2010 at 1:41 PM UTC
I've had time
to look around
at all the folks I've met
Searching for the perfect
And I haven't found one
like
me
yet
Aug 29, 2015
Aug 29, 2015 at 6:10 PM UTC
1
Shivering, I stand alone
inside a sleepy railway station,
looking for a train that never comes,
watching as my spirit comes undone
From the ceaseless clicking of the clock,
the senseless ticking of the watch
that weighs my body down.
Behold how the mortal earns his fate:
There is always time to wait.
2
No sooner does time expire,
than it rises up to sire
its progeny again.
Shamelessly self-seeking,
it wrecks our days reeking of narcissi.
Gaze into its plate of polished glass
and watch your phantoms pass.
They punched their tickets late.
There is always time to wait.
3
The Flame of Life arrives on a second-class coach.
He eyes me, careful not to reproach my sensibilities.
He comes to cauterize my wounds of time,
but worries I might swoon or mind
the excessive heat.
Perhaps he’s right; I’ll change the date.
There is always time to wait.
Sep 10, 2018
Sep 10, 2018 at 10:44 PM UTC
A dusting of snow
Under a pink sky
A flash of gold
Where the narcissi
Bloom
Too early.
Jan 18, 2023
Jan 18, 2023 at 6:35 AM UTC
Little dull birdies . . .
Love own songs by mirror pond,
. . . Graceful swan sails by.
Feb 7, 2014
Feb 7, 2014 at 7:57 PM UTC
My garden's full of daffodils.
Each border is a-groan with them.
And so are all my windowsills!
This sea of yellow flows and spills
Around, about each stalk and stem.
My garden's full of daffodils
Up to their ears in yellow frills!
The garden's quite an anadem.
And so are all my windowsills!
Not narcissi! No! Nor jonquils!
Or flower as dignified as them
My gardens full of daffodils
Each tidy border overspills
Blazing with ochre meristem
And so are all my windowsills!
The twentieth vase this arm full fills
I shall not plant this bulb again!
Mat garden's full of daffodils
And so are all my windowsills!
Lal Lewis (c) 2000
Mar 4, 2025
Mar 4, 2025 at 8:15 AM UTC