Poetry

From a Play : Publisher’s Song

Originally published in Breaking Open (1973) I lie in the bath and I contemplate the toilet-paper: Scottissue, 1000 sheets—         What a lot of pissin and shittin         What a lot of pissin and shittin Enough for the poems of Shelley and Keats— All the poems of Shelley and Keats.     (c) Muriel Rukeyser

2018-12-07T20:28:26+00:00December 7, 2018|Poetry, Writings|0 Comments

In the Night the Sound Woke Us

Originally published in Breaking Open (1973) In the night the sound woke us. We went up to the deck. Brightness of brightness in the black night. The ship standing still, her hold wide open. Light shining orange on the lumber her cargo, fresh strong-smelling wood. A tall elder sailor standing at the winches, his arms still, down; not seeming to move, his hands hidden behind black leather balcony. The silver-hair tall sailor, stern and serene his face turning from side to side. The winches fell and rose with the newborn wood. Orange and blazing in the lights it rose. Vancouver [...]

2018-12-07T20:06:19+00:00December 7, 2018|Poetry, Writings|0 Comments

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

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
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