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(PIANO DI SORRENTO.)

Fortu, Frotu, my beloved one,
Sit here by my side,
On my knees put up both little feet!
I was sure, if I tried,
I could make you laugh spite of Scirocco;
Now, open your eyes—
Let me keep you amused till he vanish
In black from the skies,
With telling my memories over
As you tell your beads;
All the memories plucked at Sorrento
—The flowers, or the weeds,
Time for rain! for your long hot dry Autumn
Had net-worked with brown
The white skin of each grape on the bunches,
Marked like a quail’s crown,
Those creatures you make such account of,
Whose heads,—specked with white
Over brown like a great spider’s back,
As I told you last night,—
Your mother bites off for her supper;
Red-ripe as could be.
Pomegranates were chapping and splitting
In halves on the tree:
And betwixt the loose walls of great flintstone,
Or in the thick dust
On the path, or straight out of the rock side,
Wherever could ******
Some burnt sprig of bold hardy rock-flower
Its yellow face up,
For the prize were great butterflies fighting,
Some five for one cup.
So, I guessed, ere I got up this morning,
What change was in store,
By the quick rustle-down of the quail-nets
Which woke me before
I could open my shutter, made fast
With a bough and a stone,
And look through the twisted dead vine-twigs,
Sole lattice that’s known!
Quick and sharp rang the rings down the net-poles,
While, busy beneath,
Your priest and his brother tugged at them,
The rain in their teeth:
And out upon all the flat house-roofs
Where split figs lay drying,
The girls took the frails under cover:
Nor use seemed in trying
To get out the boats and go fishing,
For, under the cliff,
Fierce the black water frothed o’er the blind-rock
No seeing our skiff
Arrive about noon from Amalfi,
—Our fisher arrive,
And pitch down his basket before us,
All trembling alive
With pink and grey jellies, your sea-fruit,
—You touch the strange lumps,
And mouths gape there, eyes open, all manner
Of horns and of humps.
Which only the fisher looks grave at,
While round him like imps
Cling screaming the children as naked
And brown as his shrimps;
Himself too as bare to the middle—
—You see round his neck
The string and its brass coin suspended,
That saves him from wreck.
But today not a boat reached Salerno,
So back to a man
Came our friends, with whose help in the vineyards
Grape-harvest began:
In the vat, half-way up in our house-side,
Like blood the juice spins,
While your brother all bare-legged is dancing
Till breathless he grins
Dead-beaten, in effort on effort
To keep the grapes under,
Since still when he seems all but master,
In pours the fresh plunder
From girls who keep coming and going
With basket on shoulder,
And eyes shut against the rain’s driving,
Your girls that are older,—
For under the hedges of aloe,
And where, on its bed
Of the orchard’s black mould, the love-apple
Lies pulpy and red,
All the young ones are kneeling and filling
Their laps with the snails
Tempted out by this first rainy weather,—
Your best of regales,
As tonight will be proved to my sorrow,
When, supping in state,
We shall feast our grape-gleaners (two dozen,
Three over one plate)
With lasagne so tempting to swallow
In slippery ropes,
And gourds fried in great purple slices,
That colour of popes.
Meantime, see the grape-bunch they’ve brought you,—
The rain-water slips
O’er the heavy blue bloom on each globe
Which the wasp to your lips
Still follows with fretful persistence—
Nay, taste, while awake,
This half of a curd-white smooth cheese-ball,
That peels, flake by flake,
Like an onion’s, each smoother and whiter;
Next, sip this weak wine
From the thin green glass flask, with its stopper,
A leaf of the vine,—
And end with the prickly-pear’s red flesh
That leaves through its juice
The stony black seeds on your pearl-teeth
…Scirocco is loose!
Hark! the quick, whistling pelt of the olives
Which, thick in one’s track,
Tempt the stranger to pick up and bite them,
Though not yet half black!
How the old twisted olive trunks shudder!
The medlars let fall
Their hard fruit, and the brittle great fig-trees
Snap off, figs and all,—
For here comes the whole of the tempest
No refuge, but creep
Back again to my side and my shoulder,
And listen or sleep.

O how will your country show next week
When all the vine-boughs
Have been stripped of their foliage to pasture
The mules and the cows?
Last eve, I rode over the mountains;
Your brother, my guide,
Soon left me, to feast on the myrtles
That offered, each side,
Their fruit-*****, black, glossy and luscious,—
Or strip from the sorbs
A treasure, so rosy and wondrous,
Of hairy gold orbs!
But my mule picked his sure, sober path out,
Just stopping to neigh
When he recognized down in the valley
His mates on their way
With the *******, and barrels of water;
And soon we emerged
From the plain, where the woods could scarce follow
And still as we urged
Our way, the woods wondered, and left us,
As up still we trudged
Though the wild path grew wilder each instant,
And place was e’en grudged
’Mid the rock-chasms, and piles of loose stones
(Like the loose broken teeth
Of some monster, which climbed there to die
From the ocean beneath)
Place was grudged to the silver-grey fume-****
That clung to the path,
And dark rosemary, ever a-dying,
That, ’spite the wind’s wrath,
So loves the salt rock’s face to seaward,—
And lentisks as staunch
To the stone where they root and bear berries,—
And… what shows a branch
Coral-coloured, transparent, with circlets
Of pale seagreen leaves—
Over all trod my mule with the caution
Of gleaners o’er sheaves,
Still, foot after foot like a lady—
So, round after round,
He climbed to the top of Calvano,
And God’s own profound
Was above me, and round me the mountains,
And under, the sea,
And within me, my heart to bear witness
What was and shall be!
Oh Heaven, and the terrible crystal!
No rampart excludes
Your eye from the life to be lived
In the blue solitudes!
Oh, those mountains, their infinite movement!
Still moving with you—
For, ever some new head and breast of them
Thrusts into view
To observe the intruder—you see it
If quickly you turn
And, before they escape you, surprise them—
They grudge you should learn
How the soft plains they look on, lean over,
And love (they pretend)
-Cower beneath them; the flat sea-pine crouches
The wild fruit-trees bend,
E’en the myrtle-leaves curl, shrink and shut—
All is silent and grave—
’Tis a sensual and timorous beauty—
How fair, but a slave!
So, I turned to the sea,—and there slumbered
As greenly as ever
Those isles of the siren, your Galli;
No ages can sever
The Three, nor enable their sister
To join them,—half-way
On the voyage, she looked at Ulysses—
No farther today;
Though the small one, just launched in the wave,
Watches breast-high and steady
From under the rock, her bold sister
Swum half-way already.
Fortu, shall we sail there together
And see from the sides
Quite new rocks show their faces—new haunts
Where the siren abides?
Shall we sail round and round them, close over
The rocks, though unseen,
That ruffle the grey glassy water
To glorious green?
Then scramble from splinter to splinter,
Reach land and explore,
On the largest, the strange square black turret
With never a door,
Just a loop to admit the quick lizards;
Then, stand there and hear
The birds’ quiet singing, that tells us
What life is, so clear!
The secret they sang to Ulysses,
When, ages ago,
He heard and he knew this life’s secret,
I hear and I know!

Ah, see! The sun breaks o’er Calvano—
He strikes the great gloom
And flutters it o’er the mount’s summit
In airy gold fume!
All is over! Look out, see the gipsy,
Our tinker and smith,
Has arrived, set up bellows and forge,
And down-squatted forthwith
To his hammering, under the wall there;
One eye keeps aloof
The urchins that itch to be putting
His jews’-harps to proof,
While the other, through locks of curled wire,
Is watching how sleek
Shines the hog, come to share in the windfalls
—An abbot’s own cheek!
All is over! Wake up and come out now,
And down let us go,
And see the fine things got in order
At Church for the show
Of the Sacrament, set forth this evening;
Tomorrow’s the Feast
Of the Rosary’s ******, by no means
Of Virgins the least—
As you’ll hear in the off-hand discourse
Which (all nature, no art)
The Dominican brother, these three weeks,
Was getting by heart.
Not a post nor a pillar but’s dizened
With red and blue papers;
All the roof waves with ribbons, each altar
A-blaze with long tapers;
But the great masterpiece is the scaffold
Rigged glorious to hold
All the fiddlers and fifers and drummers
And trumpeters bold,
Not afraid of Bellini nor Auber,
Who, when the priest’s hoarse,
Will strike us up something that’s brisk
For the feast’s second course.
And then will the flaxen-wigged Image
Be carried in pomp
Through the plain, while in gallant procession
The priests mean to stomp.
And all round the glad church lie old bottles
With gunpowder stopped,
Which will be, when the Image re-enters,
Religiously popped.
And at night from the crest of Calvano
Great bonfires will hang,
On the plain will the trumpets join chorus,
And more poppers bang!
At all events, come—to the garden,
As far as the wall,
See me tap with a *** on the plaster
Till out there shall fall
A scorpion with wide angry nippers!

…”Such trifles”—you say?
Fortu, in my England at home,
Men meet gravely today
And debate, if abolishing Corn-laws
Is righteous and wise
—If ’tis proper, Scirocco should vanish
In black from the skies!
Jami Samson May 2014
Brood of the journey,
Offspring of adventure;
Cradled in a crib
Of boat rides and bus drives,
Rocked in time with teenage nursery rhymes,
A million miles per hundred hour,
Marking dashed lines
Across the Philippine map
From Region IV-A
To Region V,
For four summer daysprings
And five summer nightfalls.
My umbilical cord recoiled in loops,
Through the roller coaster road,
Under the waterfall expressways,
Bumper-to-bumper with the hills,
Baby on board;
Pulled in my diesel pushcart,
Back to the womb of my motherland
And into the water that once broke
To give me my own air.
But I haven't breathed better until
Now that I swim again in her salty seasac.
How I have long starved my feet
Of her creamy sand
Which the skin between my toes
Suckle like breastmilk.
How short it has taken
For her colors to change
From seagreen in the dawn,
To aquamarine by ripe daylight,
To turquoise in the afternoon,
And to teal blue by dusk,
Upon having me in her arms.
I was as happy as a clam
When a welcome party was thrown
By the fish residence
And I was reunited
With my crustacean playmates
And their echinoderm pals.
During my stay,
I had the whistles of the sea breeze
As my morning wake-up call,
And by night
The sky is my ceiling,
Decorated with star glitters
And one would fall everytime
To turn off my night light
While the waves would splash
A cool blanket on me.
I would go on treasure hunts
To find the lost seashells;
Raiding coast-to-coast of the boundary,
Declaring tug-of-war,
Jumping in with both feet
And holding my breath,
Fighting the careless Captain Current
And his crew of buccaneers
Attacking in foams and spumes,
And I was unwavering,
Unflagging,
Yanking the *****
To victory.
With Merleau-Ponty,
To be free is to be situated;
But with these marlins,
It is dancing on the ocean floor.
Take it from the jellyfishes
Who just go with the flow
And follow the tide
Whether if it meant
Being washed ashore
Or sinking in the deep,
As long as their tentacles
Are free.
One day I visited
The underwater kingdoms;
Parts of Atlantis
Dispersed into an archipelago.
The Coral Cave,
Land of the soft and stony;
There lives the family
Of jelly-prickled corals
Who are all slimes and tickles,
Among their relatives,
The rose reefs,
Who are red as petals
But rough as thorns.
The Boulder Territory,
A colossal chamber castle
Filled with all the bathroom stones
To scrub your feet with,
But which upon being rushed in
By the cavalry of billows,
One would bruise themself
On the cliff floors
For fear of the enemy,
The barracuda;
Patroling the dark areas
Of the vicinity,
Lying in wait
For its next victim.
In the neighboring island
Just beyond the shoreline,
Is the Seaweed Seabed;
The base plantation
Of the seagrapes,
Natively Philippine Caviar,
Which are saltwater explosives
In the mouth
That come in bunches
Of crunchy, jelly green beads.
Last but not the least,
The Pebble Desert;
A torrid terrain
Of dunes and dunes of pebbles
Pink, peach, and pearl,
Cool in the eyes
As pastel *****
But hot in the feet
As burning coals.
Sometimes we create
The most beautiful things
To be mirrors of ourselves
Modeled from our brokenness
To cast back
A better image of us
In one piece
And be looked at
As something worth loving
If not something perfect,
And God must have been
Truly in smithereens
As to put together
A whole world of a looking glass
Reflecting His divine entirety
For us, His fallible caretakers
To see Him as someone
Worthy of our love,
Aside from perfect.
And I know that
He knows me too well
To know that
What I really mean to say
Is 'I love you'
When I would rather
Simplicity speak for beauty
And let majesty be mystic,
Than bother forcing
Some not-quite words
To fit His creation.
Sadly,
Even the starfish,
The child of the ocean
And the sky,
A blending of two worlds,
Yet still goes out on a limb
To be a part of a third one,
Can't stay too long
Where it doesn't belong,
And we all have to
Go back at some point
To the place
We just couldn't call home
Because we're always looking
For somewhere else.
But I have come to find
That home is not really where,
But who you're with.
So I shall never have to worry
For the Earth is three-fourths water
And the body is fifty percent of it;
The ocean and I
Will always share
The same whole.
#52. May.23.14
All summer we moved in a villa brimful of echos,
Cool as the pearled interior of a conch.
Bells, hooves, of the high-stipping black goats woke us.
Around our bed the baronial furniture
Foundered through levels of light seagreen and strange.
Not one leaf wrinkled in the clearing air.
We dreamed how we were perfect, and we were.

Against bare, whitewashed walls, the furniture
Anchored itself, griffin-legged and darkly grained.
Two of us in a place meant for ten more-
Our footsteps multiplied in the shadowy chambers,
Our voices fathomed a profounder sound:
The walnut banquet table, the twelve chairs
Mirrored the intricate gestures of two others.

Heavy as a statuary, shapes not ours
Performed a dumbshow in the polished wood,
That cabinet without windows or doors:
He lifts an arm to bring her close, but she
Shies from his touch: his is an iron mood.
Seeing her freeze, he turns his face away.
They poise and grieve as in some old tragedy.

Moon-blanched and implacable, he and she
Would not be eased, released. Our each example
Of temderness dove through their purgatory
Like a planet, a stone, swallowed in a great darkness,
Leaving no sparky track, setting up no ripple.
Nightly we left them in their desert place.
Lights out, they dogged us, sleepless and envious:

We dreamed their arguments, their stricken voices.
We might embrace, but those two never did,
Come, so unlike us, to a stiff impasse,
Burdened in such a way we seemed the lighter-
Ourselves the haunters, and they, flesh and blood;
As if, above love's ruinage, we were
The heaven those two dreamed of, in despair.
Curtis Lindsay Jun 2013
the beach is for losing yourself*
i ask you what manner of man or beast could ignore its siren song
it dragged our silly smiles across the sand
feet trailing giddily behind us
we slipped wearied into the warm unceasing avalanche
and a year was washed away
in the thunderous salt rinse

the beach is for best friends and for beer
it is for games beneath the stars
while a plankton metropolis fluoresced underfoot
and a meteor grazed the spine of leo
we slumbered through brooding rains
that slunk away when we awoke to stare them down
white shapes cast slender shadows on the reeds at noon
sea breezes crooned tunes every child has always known
in languages no man will ever understand

the beach is for all of us
last night we dreamt of ancestral slimes marching out of it
today let us plunge in
it is for even creeping snakes and gnawing fleas
verily

but most of all
it is for your glistening face
for two sleepy seagreen eyes accustoming themselves to the bright shores of morning
while your coffee cooled on the camp stove
it is for the sheen of your wild brown arms
the surf of your laughter
words with which you filled a quiet moment
circling in my mind like gulls over the harbor

yes most of all
most of all
it is for you
speeding down the narrow cape
i was beside you
tapping in tandem with your electronic music
realizing more with every pastel cottage flickering by
that you had found me
and i had never felt
so *safe
joanna dibble Mar 2012
thalassia, my love, how can you forsake me
for the arms of neptune?
your absent eyes speak
my pleas are in vain.

she turns back to the wild ocean
sad seagreen eyes seeking the horizon
a gull cries

as eel to ancestral river
she slips beneath the surface
in deep rippling azure light
her element revealed.

as you are one, you will return to one
i cannot follow..
brief ecstatic hours, loved by a nixie
and i am ruined

my futile tears are seafoam
left on the beach after a storm.
my useless nets left behind
i will cast them no more
emma joy Dec 2012
Had
And I find myself seeing everything pertaining to her.
The sunset on seagreen waves reflects off the sand like her creamy white skin and ice warm eyes.
Some stranger’s smile in the park seems to glisten just as hers does when her rosy blood-drained lips spread so even.
A character from the TV screen seems to match her perfectly perfected pitch or create the same unthought delicate gesture that is more graceful than the ballerina’s pleat.
And I think maybe if I fill the utter corners of my heart and soul with these minute details of her mere existence I will become closer to her.
Closer to grasping her heart and her hand.
Closer to holding her soul and her face with mine.
But, it has occurred to me that no one person in the world can symbolize this woman.
No person in the world has her beauty and her rhythm.
And I can try all I can to be with her. Even when she is right next to me.
But, I know that I will never have her.
Because this woman cannot be had.
pea Mar 2021
It all started in March with
the people on television claiming
that it will be back to
normal in three months but
now it’s  here for
it’s first birthday  as I watch in
horror as the death toll rises from
nearly zero to half a million and the
stupid curve never deflating i’m
sick and tired of people being sick and
tired and “forgetting” that humans are
dying as if it's okay to go out just because
you’re some kind of ******* celebrity why
can’t you understand that the
world doesn’t
revolve around you i
stand helpless while
corporations boast that we’re “all
in this together” when we’re
not because unlike me you can
make a difference but yet you
sit on a throne made of
cash while essential workers struggle to
breathe their mask digging into their
skin tears dripping onto seagreen scrubs
i’m starting to
think that the real
virus is
you.
i hope everyone is okay
charles Jan 2023
seagreen in percussion,

ant hills in heels,

inhaling all thoughts.
Qualyxian Quest Aug 2020
UNC, gratefully
Students smilin'
I pledge allegiance

To Turtle Island.
Qualyxian Quest Jul 2021
Patience, wait with patience
Wind in seagreen trees

Walking meditation
Quietly he sees

Hey hey now UK
Oxford, if you please

Buddhamind in Bangkok
Here and there and these

            Summer sun
            winter freeze
Qualyxian Quest Aug 2021
David Markson lives in the library
Found him there myself
Ravenstory stamps
Got some plans to make

Seattle still has totem poles
And salmon
And MoPop
How long will it take?

For my postcards to sink in
Be true now, Seattle U.
Harry Potter library
Kabbalistic Jews

Mt. Ranier in hear clear
Water seagreen blue
Ferry boats fight back fear
Skyline lights for two

            Hello Kells
       George W. Adieu!

— The End —