Falling madly (and therefore obsessively) in love with Edna

St. Vincent Millay... isn't she the most perfect Orlando in this picture? 

and so renascently romantic in this one...she would touch a hundred flowers 

and not pick one, 

and watch the wind bow down the grass

and the grass rise

with quiet eyes

and here perhaps thinking: we talk of taxes, and I call you friend; 

well, such you are, but well enough we know

how thick about us root, how rankly grow

those subtle weeds no man has need to tend,

that flourish through neglect, and soon must send

perfume so sweet upon us and overthrow

our steady senses

then perhaps in her mind beginning to seek Her, her other sister, 

her other soul: Grave Silence, lovelier 

than the three loveliest maidens,

whom evermore she follows wistfully, 

wandering Heaven and Earth

and Hell and the four seasons through.

and finally... before ever sweeping floors

or making dishes done,

she shall always be found

a-sunning in the sun!

Interested? Her bio and a few poems here, and a good collection of her work in digital format here.

Variación primera: "Afternoon on a Hill",  de Renascence

Variación segunda: Sonnet I, en Second April

Variación tercera: "Ode to Silence", also in Second April

Variación cuarta: "Portrait by a Neighbor", from A Few Figs from Thistles

Jewels and flowers

You were afraid of the god
sitting there among his jewels
and flowers and precious fabrics
all brightly colored
looking you straight in the eye
from the fake sky
of painted clouds

The god of fortune.
You were afraid of the god of good fortune.


But you also sang songs

(and claimed your right to freeedom
asking if I'd join you)

Somewhere between what the eye sees and what the mind thinks is the world

When I read about the garden

designed to bloom only white flowers,

I think about the Spanish friar who saw one

of my grandmothers, two hundred years

removed, and fucked her. If you look

at the word colony far enough, you see it

traveling back to the Latin

of  inhabit, till, and cultivate. Words

that would have meant something

to the friar, walking among the village girls

as though in a field of flowers, knowing

that fucking was one way of   having

a foreign policy. As I write this, there’s snow

falling, which means that every

angry thought is as short-lived as a match.

The night is its own white garden:

snow on the fence, snow on the tree

stump, snow on the azalea bushes,

their leaves hanging down like green

bats from the branches. I know it’s not fair

to see qualities of injustice in the aesthetics

of a garden, but somewhere between

what the eye sees and what the mind thinks

is the world, landscapes mangled

into sentences, one color read into rage.

When the neighbors complained

the roots of our cypress were buckling

their lot, my landlord cut the tree down.

I didn’t know a living thing three stories high

could be so silent, until it was gone.

Suddenly that sky. Suddenly all the light

in the windows, as though every sheet

of glass was having a migraine.

When I think about that grandmother

whose name I don’t even know, I think of

what it would mean to make a garden

that blooms black: peonies and gladiolas

of deepest purple, tulips like ravens.

Or a garden that doesn’t bloom at all: rocks

poised on clean gravel. When the snow stops,

I walk to see the quiet that has colonized

everything. The main street is asleep, except

for the bus that goes by, bright as a cruise ship.

There are sheet cakes of  snow on top

of cars. In front of   houses, each lawn

is as clean as paper, except where the first cat

or raccoon has walked across, each track

like a barbed-wire sash on a white gown.

On Gardens, by Rick Barot

The Wrong Pronouns

You made me cry in cruel stations,

So I missed many trains. You married others

In plausible buildings. The subsequent son

Became my boss. You promised me nothing

But blamed me for doubting when who wouldn’t.

If  I knew how to please you — who have found

Out my faults. In dreams I’m wild with guilt. Have pity

Kill it. Then, when I’ve lost all hope,

Kiss me again, your mouth so open — 

I’d give anything for one more night — 

That I go without thought. Don’t bite. No,

Mark me. My husband already knows

Exactly what owns me.

Gwyneth Lewis, Fooled Me for Years with the Wrong Pronuns

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