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"Mother of heaven, regina of the clouds,
O sceptre of the sun, crown of the moon,
There is not nothing, no, no, never nothing,
Like the clashed edges of two words that ****."
And so I mocked her in magnificent measure.
Or was it that I mocked myself alone?
I wish that I might be a thinking stone.
The sea of spuming thought foists up again
The radiant bubble that she was. And then
A deep up-pouring from some saltier well
Within me, bursts its watery syllable.

II

A red bird flies across the golden floor.
It is a red bird that seeks out his choir
Among the choirs of wind and wet and wing.
A torrent will fall from him when he finds.
Shall I uncrumple this much-crumpled thing?
I am a man of fortune greeting heirs;
For it has come that thus I greet the spring.
These choirs of welcome choir for me farewell.
No spring can follow past meridian.
Yet you persist with anecdotal bliss
To make believe a starry connaissance.

III

Is it for nothing, then, that old Chinese
Sat tittivating by their mountain pools
Or in the Yangtse studied out their beards?
I shall not play the flat historic scale.
You know how Utamaro's beauties sought
The end of love in their all-speaking braids.
You know the mountainous coiffures of Bath.
Alas! Have all the barbers lived in vain
That not one curl in nature has survived?
Why, without pity on these studious ghosts,
Do you come dripping in your hair from sleep?

IV

This luscious and impeccable fruit of life
Falls, it appears, of its own weight to earth.
When you were Eve, its acrid juice was sweet,
Untasted, in its heavenly, orchard air.
An apple serves as well as any skull
To be the book in which to read a round,
And is as excellent, in that it is composed
Of what, like skulls, comes rotting back to ground.
But it excels in this, that as the fruit
Of love, it is a book too mad to read
Before one merely reads to pass the time.

V

In the high west there burns a furious star.
It is for fiery boys that star was set
And for sweet-smelling virgins close to them.
The measure of the intensity of love
Is measure, also, of the verve of earth.
For me, the firefly's quick, electric stroke
Ticks tediously the time of one more year.
And you? Remember how the crickets came
Out of their mother grass, like little kin,
In the pale nights, when your first imagery
Found inklings of your bond to all that dust.

VI

If men at forty will be painting lakes
The ephemeral blues must merge for them in one,
There is a substance in us that prevails.
But in our amours amorists discern
Such fluctuations that their scrivening
Is breathless to attend each quirky turn.
When amorists grow bald, then amours shrink
Into the compass and curriculum
Of introspective exiles, lecturing.
It is a theme for Hyacinth alone.

VII

The mules that angels ride come slowly down
The blazing passes, from beyond the sun.
Descensions of their tinkling bells arrive.
These muleteers are dainty of their way.
Meantime, centurions guffaw and beat
Their shrilling tankards on the table-boards.
This parable, in sense, amounts to this:
The honey of heaven may or may not come,
But that of earth both comes and goes at once.
Suppose these couriers brought amid their train
A damsel heightened by eternal bloom.

VIII

Like a dull scholar, I behold, in love,
An ancient aspect touching a new mind.
It comes, it blooms, it bears its fruit and dies.
This trivial trope reveals a way of truth.
Our bloom is gone. We are the fruit thereof.
Two golden gourds distended on our vines,
Into the autumn weather, splashed with frost,
Distorted by hale fatness, turned grotesque.
We hang like warty squashes, streaked and rayed,
The laughing sky will see the two of us
Washed into rinds by rotting winter rains.

IX

In verses wild with motion, full of din,
Loudened by cries, by clashes, quick and sure
As the deadly thought of men accomplishing
Their curious fates in war, come, celebrate
The faith of forty, ward of Cupido.
Most venerable heart, the lustiest conceit
Is not too ***** for your broadening.
I quiz all sounds, all thoughts, all everything
For the music and manner of the paladins
To make oblation fit. Where shall I find
Bravura adequate to this great hymn?

X

The fops of fancy in their poems leave
Memorabilia of the mystic spouts,
Spontaneously watering their gritty soils.
I am a yeoman, as such fellows go.
I know no magic trees, no balmy boughs,
No silver-ruddy, gold-vermilion fruits.
But, after all, I know a tree that bears
A semblance to the thing I have in mind.
It stands gigantic, with a certain tip
To which all birds come sometime in their time.
But when they go that tip still tips the tree.

XI

If *** were all, then every trembling hand
Could make us squeak, like dolls, the wished-for words.
But note the unconscionable treachery of fate,
That makes us weep, laugh, grunt and groan, and shout
Doleful heroics, pinching gestures forth
From madness or delight, without regard
To that first, foremost law. Anguishing hour!
Clippered with lilies scudding the bright chromes,
Keen to the point of starlight, while a frog
Boomed from his very belly odious chords.

XII

A blue pigeon it is, that circles the blue sky,
On sidelong wing, around and round and round.
A white pigeon it is, that flutters to the ground,
Grown tired of flight. Like a dark rabbi, I
Observed, when young, the nature of mankind,
In lordly study. Every day, I found
Man proved a gobbet in my mincing world.
Like a rose rabbi, later, I pursued,
And still pursue, the origin and course
Of love, but until now I never knew
That fluttering things have so distinct a shade.
Surfing my mind's midnight Sibylline sea
from a pandemonic Promethean quay,
caught in a creamy host, her countenance floats
off a weary coast, and I in briny thoughts.

Still see that wafting veil over gust and gale
tears in a frozen stare from a turbid tale.
Pride, where's your strutting stride on her rampant ride
as soul swamps the sight and rills roll the side?
            
Tossed to a tempest, once this enchantress,
off her fortress —to spume; to spray,
regardless...

Her keel creaked in sags as if on racks…
Her helm helpless in drags as if on tracks...
Her sails fretted in shreds; tattering dregs…
Her soul ripped in scraps; ravage and rags…
                               So—                                                              ­  
Could she hold the kraken heaves
     from her deeps to heaven’s weeps?
Could she stall Neptune's steeds
     spuming her cherub cheeks?
                               Yet—
Neptune nabbed in the nooks in nymphal eyes;
silent seagull-cries swam the eyes' sodden skies.
A Bragolin gleam on a Mona Lisa meme;
hanging loose on the brim, then succumbed to a stream
.  ..  ...  .  ..  ...  .  ..  ...              .  ..  ...­  .  ..  ...   in a briny, silent scream.

                               And I—
Cast to the thalassic tides of this mystery,
     still bobbing in memory's Venusian locks.
How this Seraphine gaze knocks in query
     on the Lethean tyranny of clocks!

                               And I —
Tossed to a tempest in her Seraphine scream.
     Home, now Avalon, beyond the rippling rim.
Lost on her gaze in an Olympian gleam.
     Her silent scream in my Sirenic dream.

                                Still I—
Locked in a bottle in an Apollonian deluge,
     sooth on Pandoran shores shares no refuge.
Swept with a stream with a Babylonian gleam,
     what she'd screamed to say, now nothing than a dream…


    Repost
© Hirondelle, Apr 27, 2025
    Arif Hifzioglu
This was a living Bragolin version of Mona Lisa I once saw and have ever been haunted by ever since: a version with eyes pooling with anguish yet in a cryptic Seraphine chemistry. Eyes Bragolin-painted with both pain and peace --two tides in the same still sea.

Both serenity and turmoil which I have little idea as to how they managed to federate on that haunting visage... Tears pooling in the eyes and exuding a strange, heavenly glow on the face...

Ever since my curiosity had the better of me to steal a furtive glance at this person, who I knew wouldn't rather me to have seen them in that undeserved heartbreak, I have been cast to a mental tempest, rudderless, at the sporadic hauntings of the moment.

We were in a place with other people, and she was summoned to go out. When she came back, she went to her place as if wading through the thick waters of leaden disappointment. Ignoring would have been unkind, yet my noticing her in that pool of sorrow, let alone looking, would have been upsetting to her, either. What would you have done in that situation? Walking out was not an option, either. You knew nothing -nothing more than the vague notion that you were the best person to help, but the least one to do so all the same.

After curiosity had had the better of me despite all reverence to her, and I dared to steal a millisecond furtive glance at her, my peek was met with a frozen poignant gaze which had already been there on me, screaming volumes from across an unknown sea of pain. I don't know how much longer it lingered on me after my eyes stampeded back to the shelter of the article I was reading. I was not meant to see her in that raw sorrow; this is for a fact. Once she was everyone's champion, and now, she was this fallen angel. Falling is hurtful, but having the others you love to witness it... I don't know; I have never risen so much to see what happens, and how it happens later.

Not being able to help, my troubled conscience has ever been in a sealed bottle in a troubled sea of why's and how's with the deafening silence of the scream in that frozen stare.

Human expression could sometimes be unbearably cryptic. And when we are overwhelmed by the emotions of a person we care deeply and try to understand them, we hit an intersection of two roads leading in two different directions. If we don't let our emotions overrule our reason, we can whisper a word or two from the rational world in which they have already suffered the heartbreak, which may mean that they already know the answer. We almost invariably ask them to strip their dreams off the truth to make life less disappointing. Yet, isn't sacrificing your dreams for a less disappointed heart already a disappointment?

Sterile and packed with realism; nevertheless, this could be the better path though it fronts the emotive aspect -the human psyche. We should be that beacon of reality calling them back from the tempest of emotions they have been swept into in an open sea of heartbreak. Yet, if we are also overwhelmed by the raw sorrow they have been hit with, we are in no position of playing the part of that lighthouse of resolve and reason. Thus, we hit the other road less often taken. We romanticize the situation seeking an answer in the same ocean of heartbreak, rudderless. We try to approach them like some story hero rather than a mentor.

I might say, for the sake of the people you love, keep your walls strong and keep casting your light to them in the thick of a tempest, taking the brunt of colossal waves of pain and suffering. Speak to them the truth they need to hear to get out of the problem even if you know they know the answer already.

In this particular situation; however, I have tried to walk both roads. I not only played the lighthouse taking the brunt of the pounding waves but also sought solace to my pain in romanticized poetry. Hence 'The Seraphine Scream'. I partially played the hero; I have given counsel and encouragement through writing a highly emotive letter of encouragement. However, this poem which romanticizes my memory of her mourning behind a mysterious veil of restrain is not only written to crown my cherished memory of this excellent human being who happened to fall for a time and for a reason, but for my own healing of the memory as well. Not having the means to help her properly get back on her feet hurt indeed. But, I'm sure she will do it by herself when time comes.

Some Cultural Notes about the MYTHOPOETIC Images I Used:

APOLLONIAN: poetic prowess
SIBILINE: the potential of the mind to interpret conjectural reality
PROMETHEAN: the pain knowledge brings
SERAPHINE: for angelic purity and beauty
LETHEAN: the pull of oblivion
PANDORAN: chaotic and destructive qualities BABYLONIAN: banishment and spiritual exile
OLYMPIAN: divine quality and beauty
SIRENIC: dangerously alluring

Reference to ART
GIOVANNI BRAGOLIN is the Italian painter famous for the haunting portraits of crying children he painted.
VENUSIAN LOCKS are used for the whitecapped waves inspired by Boticelli's iconic Greco-Roman painting 'The Birth of Venus' featuring her hair like the whitecapped waves, echoing the sea which birthed her. Venus is the Roman version of Greek Aphrodite whose name means 'the one born from sea foam'.
Cathy E Hodgson Feb 2014
When night visits on tomorrow’s threshold
Dreams waver to sway with a gentle breeze
Storms in the distant clash with lightening
Green is hidden by stormy gray shadow

Earth moves with full moon in tow
Beaconing the sunlight to whisper
Oh yes, Enchantment endears wonders
Mysteries of love grow on a divine path

Harp is in tune with her enchanted finger tips
Spreading a song beyond in clear dew skies
Apple tree blossoms in spring with her coaxing
Birthing fruit of the earth, wrestling to belong

Darkness waivers to hold, sun kisses horizon
Sleep yawn takes shore with spuming echoes
Brightness blinds a seagull twinkling eye
Night is vanished as the Morning Whispers

© Cathy Hodgson
Third Eye Candy Sep 2022
Harriet slept to colonize time and space
with her chrysanthemums and cardamon irises
tacked to a wall behind a lens in her eye
rapidly moving through a slumber quest
to pillage the invisible with her wisp of might
to glean the terrace of lost chambers of gnostic grog
in flagons of hubris, spuming at the spicet
of a dervish star in a barrel.

Then she makes breakfast.
Rachel Thomas Jan 2021
She lived beneath the spuming waves,
A crown of pearls atop her head,
And like a pearl her limpid face,
Her lips of fiery coral-red.
Her palace was a sunken cave,
With scalloped roof and amber walls,
While golden-paved and turquoise-domed
Were all the dark, rococo halls.
The candlesticks, the marble busts,
The amphorae and frozen clocks,
Were spoils from all those star-crossed ships,
That came to grief upon the rocks
And when the moon beamed through the waves,
She dreamt of life upon the land,
Of painted birds and pungent flowers,
Of honeyed fruits and sunbaked sand.
She pictured there a gorgeous prince,
His eyes like shards of peridot,
A youth with hyacinthine locks,
And raiments of forget-me-not.
But when she woke, she knew that she,
Would never tread upon the land,
Nor smell the flowers, nor taste the fruit,
Nor kiss her lover on the hand.
And as she held this solemn thought,
That they would always be apart,
She felt as if an icicle
Had struck her squarely in the heart.

— The End —