chris

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So far chris has created 50 blog entries.

Poem Out of Childhood

Originally published in Theory of Flight (1935)           1 Breathe-in experience, breathe-out poetry    : Not Angles, angels    :     and the magnificent past shot deep illuminations into high-school. I opened the door into the concert-hall and a rush of triumphant violins answered me while the syphilitic woman turned her mouldered face intruding upon Brahms.         Suddenly, in an accident the girl's brother was killed, but her father had just died    : she stood against the wall, leaning her cheek, dumbly her arms fell, "What will become of me?"    and I went into the corridor for a drink of water. These [...]

2018-12-07T20:05:46+00:00December 7, 2018|Poetry, Writings|0 Comments

Song for Dead Children

Originally published in Theory of Flight (1935) We set great wreaths of brightness on the graves of the passionate who required tribute of hot July flowers    : for you, O brittle-hearted, we bring offering remembering how your wrists were thin and your delicate bones not yet braced for conquering. The sharp cries of ghost-boys are keen above the meadows, the little girls continue graceful and wondering; flickering evening on the lakes recalls those young heirs whose developing years have sunk to earth their strength not tested, their praise unsung. Weave grasses for their childhood:     :     who will [...]

2018-12-07T20:05:14+00:00December 7, 2018|Poetry, Writings|0 Comments

In a Dark House

Originally published in Theory of Flight (1935) Two on the stairs in a house where they had loved     : mounting, and the steps a long ascent before them brown: a single step creaking high in the flight; the turn    : the quiet house and the cheese-yellow walls shadowed by night, dark; and the unlit lamps along the wall. Dusk piles in old house-corners rapidly.          Shade grows where corners round to flights of stairs again.          Evening accumulates under the treads of mounting stairs. They rise: he tightly-knit, clenched in anxiety, she calm, massive in female beauty, precise [...]

2018-12-07T20:04:36+00:00December 7, 2018|Poetry, Writings|0 Comments

Notes for a Poem

Originally published in Theory of Flight (1935) Here are the long fields inviolate of thought, here are the planted fields ranking the sky, signs in the earth : water-cast shuttles of light flickering the underside of rock. These have been shown before; but the fields know new hands, the son's fingers grasp warmly at the father's hoe ; there will be new ways of seeing these ancestral lands. "In town, the munitions plant has been poor since the war, And nothing but a war will make it rich again." Holy, holy, holy, sings the church next door. Time-ridden, a man [...]

2018-12-07T20:03:45+00:00December 7, 2018|Poetry, Writings|0 Comments

Sonnet

Originally published in Theory of Flight (1935) My thoughts through yours refracted into speech transmute this room musically tonight, the notes of contact flowing, rhythmic, bright with an informal art beyond my single reach. Outside, dark birds fly in a greening time : wings of our sistered wishes beat these walls : and words afflict our minds in near footfalls approaching with latening hour's chime. And if an essential thing has flown between us, rare intellectual bird of communication, let us seize it quickly : let our preference choose it instead of softer things to screen us each from the [...]

2018-12-07T20:03:12+00:00December 7, 2018|Poetry, Writings|0 Comments

Käthe Kollwitz

Originally published in The Speed of Darkness (1968) 1 Held between wars my lifetime among wars, the big hands of the world of death my lifetime listens to yours. The faces of the sufferers in the street, in dailiness, their lives showing through their bodies a look as of music the revolutionary look that says I am in the world to change the world my lifetime is to love to endure to suffer the music to set its portrait up as a sheet of the world the most moving the most alive Easter and bone and Faust walking among flowers [...]

2018-12-07T20:02:40+00:00December 7, 2018|Long Poetry, Writings|0 Comments

Wooden Spring

Originally published in Theory of Flight (1935) How horrible late spring is, with the full death of the frozen tight bulbs brownly rotting in earth; and each chord of light rayed into slivers, a bunch of grapes plucked grape by grape apart, a warm chord broken into the chilled single notes. (Let us rely on cerebral titillation for the red stimulus of sensuous supply;) here is no heat, no fierce color: spring is no bacchante this year eager to celebrate her carnal dedication. The ghosts swim, lipless, eyeless, upward : the crazy hands point in five directions down : to [...]

2018-12-07T19:59:38+00:00December 7, 2018|Poetry, Writings|0 Comments

Place-Rituals

Originally published in Theory of Flight (1935) TRADITION OF THIS ACRE This is the word our lips caress, our teeth bite on the pale spongy fruit of this, the name : mouthing the story, cowlike in dignity, and spitting it in the tarnished cuspidor of present days. And if there were radium in Plymouth Rock, they would not strike it (bruising the fair stone), nor gawk at Semiramis on Main Street nor measure the gentle Christ in terms of horse-power. Cracked bells are severally struck at noon. The furrow of their ways will cradle us all. Amen, amen, to the [...]

2018-12-07T19:58:46+00:00December 7, 2018|Poetry, Writings|0 Comments
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