Parole Nascosti

Men Loved Wholly Beyond Wisdom ~ Louise Bogan

Men loved wholly beyond wisdom

Have the staff without the banner,

Like a fire in a dry thicket,

Rising within women’s eyes

Is the love men must return.

Heart, so subtle now, and trembling,

What a marvel to be wise,

To love never in this manner!

To be quiet in the fern

Like a thing gone dead and still,

Listening to the prisoned cricket

Shake its terrible, dissembling

Music in the granite hill.

                            [Painting: Ashes ~ Edvard Munch]

Milkweed ~ James Wright

While I stood here, in the open, lost in myself,

I must have looked a long time

Down the corn rows, beyond grass,

The small house,

White walls, animals lumbering toward the barn.

I look down now. It is all changed.

Whatever it was I lost, whatever I wept for

Was a wild, gentle thing, the small dark eyes

Loving me in secret.

It is here. At the touch of my hand,

the air fills with delicate creatures

From the other world.

                                     [Photograph~ kateycat at DeviantArt]

Poppies on the Wheat ~ Helen Hunt Jackson

Along Ancona’s hills the shimmering heat,

A tropic tide of air with ebb and flow

Bathes all the fields of wheat until they glow

Like flashing seas of green, which toss and beat

Around the vines. The poppies lithe and fleet

Seem running, fiery torchmen, to and fro

To mark the shore.

                           The farmer does not know

That they are there. He walks with heavy feet,

Counting the bread and wine by autumn’s gain,

But I, —I smile to think that days remain

Perhaps to me in which, though bread be sweet

No more, and red wine warm my blood in vain,

I shall be glad remembering how the fleet,

Lithe poppies ran like torchmen with the wheat.

Chinoiseries by Amy Lowell

  Reflections

When I looked into your eyes,

I saw a garden

With peonies, and tinkling pagodas,

And round-arched bridges

Over still lakes.

A woman sat beside the water

In a rain-blue, silken garment.

She reached through the water

To pluck the crimson peonies

Beneath the surface,

But as she grasped the stems,

They jarred and broke into white-green ripples;

And as she drew out her hand,

the water-drops dripping from it

Stained her rain-blue dress like tears.

  Falling Snow

The snow whispers about me,

And my wooden clogs

Leave holes behind me in the snow.

But no one will pass this way

Seeking my footsteps,

And when the temple bell rings again

They will be covered and gone.

  Hoar-Frost

In the cloud-gray mornings

I heard the herons flying;

And when I came into my garden,

My silken outer garment

Trailed over withered leaves.

A dried leaf crumbles at a touch,

But I have seen many Autumns

With herons blowing like smoke

Across the sky.

                                                                  [Photograph ~ Diana Matisz]

Bale-Fire by Robin Robertson

Each watcher wears a lighted mask

blazoned with the fire’s gust,

like a birthmark cast from the kiln.

Heat in waves, in flames splashing,

and plumes, black plumes.

Sparks go up like spindrift,

crackling into the cold night flue.

The fire ebbs for the end of autumn:

cautery of ash and ember made

against the coming snow.

And the rain, immanent as stars,

now falling, falling slowly.

Under the shiver of a new moon: winter;

entering, charmed and charged.

[Photo ~ Diana Matisz]

‘Static’ by Robin Robertson

The storm shakes out its sheets

against the darkening window:

the glass flinches under thrown hail.

Unhinged, the television slips its hold,

streams into black and white

then silence, as the lines go down.

Her postcards stir on the shelf, tip over;

the lights of Calais trip out one by one.

He cannot tell her

how the geese scull back at twilight,

how the lighthouse walks its beam

across the trenches of the sea.

He cannot tell her how the open night

swings like a door without her,

how he is the lock

and she is the key.

[Photograph ~ ‘Secret Night’ / Diana Matisz]

Rondeau After a Transatlantic Telephone Call

by: Marilyn Hacker

Love, it was good to talk to you tonight.

You lather me like summer though. I light

up, sip smoke. Insistent through walls comes

the downstairs neighbor’s double-bass. It thrums

like toothache. I will shower away the sweat,

smoke, summer, sound. Slick, soapy, dripping wet,

I scrub the sharp edge off my appetite.

I want: crisp toast, cold wine prickling my gums,

love. It was good

imagining around your voice, you, late-

awake there. (It isn’t midnight yet

here.) This last glass washes down the crumbs.

I wish that I could lie down in your arms

and, turned toward sleep there (later), say, “Goodnight,

love. It was good.”

Adult ~ Linda Gregg

I’ve come back to the country where I was happy

changed. Passion puts no terrible strain on me now.

I wonder what will take the place of desire.

I could be the ghost of my own life returning

to the places I lived best. Walking here and there,

nodding when I see something I cared for deeply.

Now I’m in my house listening to the owls calling

and wondering if slowly I will take on flesh again.

Bellrope ~ Robert Morgan

The line through the hold in the dank

vestibule ceiling ended in

a powerful knot worn slick, swinging

in the breeze from those passing. Half

an hour before the service Uncle

Allen pulled the call to worship,

hauling down the rope like the starting

cord of a motor, and the tower

answered and answered, fading

as the clapper lolled aside. I watched

him before Sunday school heave on

the line as on a wellrope. And

the wheel creaked up there as heavy

buckets emptied out their startle

and spread a cold splash to farthest

coves and hollows, then sucked the rope

back into the loft, leaving just

the knot within reach, trembling

with its high connections.

Eye Mask ~ Denise Levertov

In this dark I rest,

unready for the light which dawns

day after day,

eager to be shared.

Black silk, shelter me.

I need

more of the night before I open

eyes and heart

to illumination. I must still

grow in the dark like a root

not ready, not ready at all.

Magnolia Basin ~ Wang Wei

On branch tips the hibiscus bloom.

The mountains show off red calices.

Nobody. A silent cottage in the valley.

One by one flowers open, then fall.

Dusk In My Backyard ~ Keith Wilson

(San Miguel, NM)

The long black night

moves over my walls:

inside a candle is lighted

by one of my daughters.

Even from here I can see

the illuminated eyes, bright

face of a child before flame.

It’s nearly time to go in.

The wind is cooler now,

pecans drop, rattle down—

the tin roof of our house

rivers to platinum in the early moon.

Dogs bark & in the house, wine, laughter.

Orchards In July ~ Zbigniew Machej

Waters from cold springs

and glittering minerals

tirelessly wander.

Patient, unceasing,

they overcome granite, layers

of hungry gravel, iridescent

precincts of clay. If they abandon

themselves to the black

roots it’s only to go

up, as high as possible

through wells hidden

under the bark of fruit trees. Through

the green touched with gray, of leaves,

fallen petals of white

flowers with rosy edges,

apples heavy with sweet redness

and their bitterish seeds.

O, waters from cold

springs and glittering

minerals!  You are awaited

by a cirrus with a fluid,

sunny outline

and by an abyss of blue

which has been rinsed

in the just wind.

Seen Fleetingly, From A Train ~ Bronislaw Maj

Seen fleetingly, from a train:

a foggy evening, strands of smoke

hanging immobile over fields,

the humid blackness of earth, the sun

almost set—against its fading shield,

far away, two dots: women in dark wraps

coming back from church perhaps, perhaps

one tells something to another, some common story,

of sinful lives perhaps—her words

distinct and simple but out of them

one could create everything

again.  Keep it in memory, forever:

the sun, ploughed earth, women,

love, evening, those few words

good for the beginning, keep it all—

perhaps tomorrow we will be

somewhere else, altogether.

I Met The Rain ~ Louise Driscoll

I met the rain today in an open place,

The young rain, adventuring, as she came along.

Her dress was all of silver, she had a smiling face,

And she sang to the dusty trees, a little song.

The dusty trees were glad and they clapped their hands.

I saw a tired flower turn and smile.

At the bend of a little path where a linden stands,

I watched the rain at play for a little while.

Her feet were small and they trod on the grass and bent it.

She carried a scarf of mist that brushed my cheek.

She shook an odor out on the air to scent it,

She bent to the barberries and I heard her speak.

I saw the rain go by like a girl with laughter,

But I will never tell you the word she said.

That you must learn yourself and forever after

Know how the leaves and grass are comforted.

I stood at a bend in the path and the rain went by me.

I could see, like a skein of silk, her shining hair,

She turned with a little smile to satisfy me,

For all the while she knew that I was there.