One communicates and exchanges in poetry, as in music, as in silence...
Though It Be Thy Will
by Abdias DeMarin
(Special thanks to Graceful-Jen for providing the lament
that served as its humourous counterpointe)
Though it be thy will to wrest thy breast from mine,
Though no Roman heart can make Sabian claim,
My pate is parched from excess prate and pine,
Such showes bring shame and diminish my fame.
At first light found a golden garden gave to me,
Lillie nymphs umteen litt'ring shade of tree,
The dewy petals rolled with fond embrace,
their kisses painting the tears on my face.
When bored with the bevy the breeze answered all,
Did a hundred more nymphs from the branches fall,
In beauty's bower, thus burdened with bliss,
I nearly forgave thy deeds gone amiss.
My love for thee is like a sorrowe blinde,
Obscur'ng the garden within my minde,
Though beauty is thine, 'tis a hair of the world's,
Nor canst thou wrest me, 'tis a flame unfurled.
+++
*Where are the songs of spring? Ay, where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too, — (Keats, To Autumn)*
 |
The Roses of Heliogabalus (1888), by Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema, oil on canvas, 132.1 x 213.7 cm, private collection. As it was painted during the winter, Tadema arranged to have roses sent weekly from the French Riviera for four months to ensure the accuracy of each petal.
Self-embrace on Silk Prayer
by Ting-Jen Hwang, on 8th January 2012
(With thanks to Hamlet-at-Sea of this incarnation,
for being the final catalyst of my poem.)
"Is it a blessing for a poet to be a natural poet-magnet?"
The romantic thinker wonders to herself.
'Oh you Little Fool,' she whispered,
A foolish thinker I am.
All these men, coming
in and out of me. All this pleasure and pain,
flickering like dying blue flames.
An instant garden trampled upon for hundreds of years
by those he loves with his Life－ah, such blasphemous
Beauty. An instant paradise turned
into the most exquisite ice ablaze.
A bruised garden amidst the flames.
The love and devotion that it takes to create
－such Beauty－
I can never fully comprehend.
Threads of a thousand hues are weaving themselves
in and out of each other; breathing esoteric,
breathing erotic, into
the weakest Bird of the most powerful strength－
A Bird without a name－
Can I be spared－Can I be
abstract like your patterns of this mesmerising nature, again?
I plead with my heart to be
as romantic and as abstract, like
your Little Brother, again.
Tears from the eyes of his heart are still rolling,
shining on my quill
like dews on those pink Oleander flowers－
falling, falling, fallen.
(And in case you were wondering, I was not speaking of
your little brother, I was speaking of
Mine. Like all these quests for Beauty and pleasure－I was
speaking, and thinking, of Mine.)
Breathing erotic. Breathing esoteric.
All these fiery blossoms burning way below sub-zero,
I could faint,
just listening to them.
|
