A Tale - Louise Bogan

[bookbatkat.livejournal.com]

Louise Bogan is my favorite poet of all time. As I'm trying to establish a new morning routine (I have a new job), I'm including in that routine to read a Bogan poem every morning after my shower. I'm also trying to read a page daily from her book A Poet's Alphabet.

In honor of this new beginning for me, I'm posting the first poem in Louise Bogan's collection The Blue Estuaries.

I hope you enjoy.


A Tale


This youth too long has heard the break
Of waters in a land of change.
He goes to see what suns can make
From soil more indurate and strange.

He cuts what holds his days together
And shuts him in, as lock on lock:
The arrowed vane announcing weather,
The tripping racket of a clock;

Seeking, I think, a light that waits
Still as a lamp upon a shelf, —
A land with hills like rocky gates
Where no sea leaps upon itself.

But he will find that nothing dares
To be enduring, save where, south
Of hidden deserts, torn fire glares
On beauty with a rusted mouth, —

Where something dreadful and another
Look quietly upon each other.