(EKPHRASTIC) HENRI MATISSE: WOMAN BEFORE AN AQUARIUM

              Bette Davis with nothing to do,

              In a rare moment of rest.

              She has nothing to do but wait.

              She wants a cigarette.

SOME CONTEMPORARY POETS AND THEIR WORK

They work hard,
going to great lengths
that it be not overcharged
with either music or sense,
and their labors are rewarded:
it isn't.

TO THE MUSIC OF MOZART

Symphony No. 27 in G, K. 199: Second Movement, Andante

In Memoriam

Louis Dollarhide

William Horan 

Smiling, three women come into the salon,
Three young women under the high ceiling.

They curtsey together and, turning and circling,
Smoothly they move to invisible music

While all around them the mute world is sleeping,
Feeling the hush of the late afternoon.

Softly the strings sound—and clarinet and flute,
Two shafts of bright sunlight in a shadowy room.



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Photo from http//:greatriftvalley.blogspot.com/2007_08_01_archive.html

RILKE IN THE LIBRARY

Neither a prophet nor a man possessed
with eyes of wildfire and haywire hair,
the quiet expert in the window there
brings nothing new to feed your chic unrest.

Beside gigantic fronds, half hidden by
the out-sized sofas of the Reading Room,
a hunter stalks among the elephants.
Unlike the bright birds and the beasts of prey,
he does not shoulder through the alien gloom
with tribal arrogance, gauche elegance.

His disappearance is the only hint
of the movement of the mind behind it—

A study by da Vinci, a shark's fin
shearing the water as it zeroes in


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Portrait from areyouindecisive.tumblr.com, April 2008
_

AT SEA

Night comes, releasing me
and free as a ship at sea, with all around
only the spun horizon by
triangulation from the stars
to tell
and out into the star-expanded space
my thoughts pursue the still
still changing souls

. . . and bodies lie
like ore in the mother-lode
the ages vent their pressure in
the subterranean chambers of the brain
slow, dissolve, and crystals realign

imponderably Earth inclines
toward where all meet
what sustains
what sustains the planet as

and huger more oppressive each next day's
juggernaut unretarded overtakes
what sustains

what

darkly . . .

Stars

beneath the Earth






Off the island of Key West, 1970
_

VANITY FAIR

You wake up, out of nowhere, in a carny county fair,
And everything's for sale, and you are poor.

Like most, you pay for the right to pay more and more
For less and less: cracked kewpie doll, torn teddy bear,

Grease-soaked corn-dog that turns to glue in the throat,
And a chance to gawk at the two-headed man
And the woman with the legs of a goat.

Your head whirls till flat earth's a tilted carrousel,
And you stagger among the enameled saddles,

A child bedazzled by every flashing, twirling thing,
You lurch to the hysterical calliope,
You lunge for the flying brass ring.


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Photo from http://villagetucson.com/blueCreme2012Layout/scripts/image/full.php?fid=13

(UNTITLED)

The conclusion that I have not been able to avoid is that none of the passers-by sees either this pool or me. No one ever seems to stop by the low round curb; nobody, as far as I can tell, even glances this way.

One can't blame them--it's not the sort of thing that calls attention to itself; it is, one would almost say, nondescript. Neither large nor small (although its width does not permit one to reach across it), apparently it is not wide enough to allow the formation of ripples; none is ever seen.

Within the low circle of its rim, the water is almost as invisible as if the pool were empty. No light is reflected from the surface; nor, when I lean over it, do I ever see my own reflection. It reflects nothing.

I don't know how deep it is, or where the water comes from--if, after all, the liquid in the pool be water. It is not unlike ether or alcohol in its lack of density, except that it has no properties or effects, not even that of annulling sensations. It is perfectly colorless, absolutely odorless and tasteless.

I do not wish to be here, but I cannot move away; I cannot stop dipping my hand to drink, never feeling either thirsty or satisfied.

Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackboard

(Moments in the life of an English teacher, with a nod to Wallace Stevens)

Notice: Part of this poem includes a parody of the offensive language characteristic of "gangsta rappers" and similar performers, people with names like Enema, Puff Adder and Sniff Doggie Doo. The term "gangsta rapper" is not a racial but an "artistic" label, and therefore the parody of "gangsta" language is not a racial slur but a criticism of its sociopathic content. In part the poem satirizes not only the sex/gender slurs made by such people but also their degradation of the English language. It was written several years before the radio personality Don Imus broadcast his troublesome and over-publicized gaffe. Wallace Stevens's "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird" has been parodied and imitated a number of times, and in different ways.


1

Among twenty snowy pages
The only cutting thing
Was the eye of the parody.


2

I was of three minds,
Like a book
In which there are three parodies.


3

The parody slipped in among the editor's papers;
It was a small sabot in the machine.


4

A chalk and a blackboard
Are one.
A chalk and a blackboard and an instructor are one
Huge parody.


5

I do not know which to prefer,
The parody of inflections
Or the inflections of parody:
The writing,
Or the whistling after.


6

Lines of cathartic broken prose filled the long page
With barbaric gas.
The shadow of a parody
Crossed and re-crossed my mind.
The mood
Traced in the parody
An inexplicable snicker.


7

Yo, gangsta rappers, hip-hoppers and wanna-be's,
Why yo ice-cracks showz?
Dont-cha see, da pa-ro-dee
Dissin ya durdy hoze?


8

I know the sober, stately cadences of standard English,
Its friendliness to earthy, concrete words;
But I know, too,
That the parody is involved....


9

When the parody was circulating,
It went around and around,
Cutting many circles.


10

At the counterpoint of the parody's
Open scoring on the page,
The hawkers of cacophony
Would gasp, aghast.


11

They overrode the country
In a million DJ vans;
They had no fears, no cares!
They never suspected
The parody would overtake them.


12

The crowd is streaming overhead,
The Mall slides by.
Somewhere a parody is hatching.


13

This Twilight has been a Dark Age
For ages.
An Ice Age has descended,
Colder than glaciers.
A parody poises itself
Among the pages.
_

From THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF EMILY DICKINSON

1

I've run to welcome—Absence—
To greet—a closing Door—
And followed after—Echoes—
Footsteps—
Still recede—before—

A Mountain or a Desert—
Were easier—to arrest—
Than embrace a—Flickering—
As it vanishes—

To try to apprehend a—Phantom
Exacts exhausting Toil—
Nature abhors a Vacuum—I'll
Avoid—a Void


2

Christ must love you—I must not—
My white Calvary—be—
Perfect like That—without the Spot
Of sad Carnality—

Lepers—God enjoins—in Love—
Law casts out—Unclean—
"Vox Populi Vox Dei"
Festers in Irony— 

3

Before—a Plank between two Cliffs—

Below—revolves the Abyss—

Behind me—Clouds—that mourn and lower—

Into Eternities—

Horizons of wide Silence—List—
As—less than Decimal—
I feel the Universe—lean down—
To watch—when I shall fall—