(no subject)

[glass-doll.livejournal.com]

A Better Resurrection
_sylvia plath-

I have no wit, I have no words, no tears;
My heart within me like a stone
Is numbed too much for hopes or fears;
Look right, look left, I dwell alone;
A lift mine eyes, but dimmed with grief
No everlasting hills I see;
My life is like the falling leaf;
O Jesus, quicken me.

(no subject)

[stephe.livejournal.com]

How about a little Robert Frost as we head into the fall:


The Need Of Being Versed In Country Things
by Robert Frost

The house had gone to bring again
To the midnight sky a sunset glow.
Now the chimney was all of the house that stood,
Like a pistil after the petals go.

The barn opposed across the way,
That would have joined the house in flame
Had it been the will of the wind, was left
To bear forsaken the place’s name.

No more it opened with all one end
For teams that came by the stony road
To drum on the floor with scurrying hoofs
And brush the mow with the summer load.

The birds that came to it through the air
At broken windows flew out and in,
Their murmur more like the sigh we sigh
From too much dwelling on what has been.

Yet for them the lilac renewed its leaf,
And the aged elm, though touched with fire;
And the dry pump flung up an awkward arm;
And the fence post carried a strand of wire.

For them there was really nothing sad.
But though they rejoiced in the nest they kept,
One had to be versed in country things
Not to believe the phoebes wept.

Nomad Exquisite, by Wallace Stevens

[http://users.livejournal.com/_outercourse/]

As the immense dew of Florida
Brings forth
The big-finned palm
And green vine angering for life,

As the immense dew of Florida
Brings forth hymn and hymn
From the beholder,
Beholding all these green sides
And gold sides of green sides,

And blessed mornings,
Meet for the eye of the young alligator,
And lightning colors
So, in me, come flinging
Forms, flames, and the flakes of flames.

Stevie Smith . In the Night

[insidiousintent.livejournal.com]

In the Night

I longed for companionship rather,
But my companions I always wished farther.
And now in the desolate night
I think only of the people i should like to bite.

--Stevie Smith

Cleanliness - A.F. Moritz

[mehinda.livejournal.com]

Cleanliness

Dead flies on the windowsills, the corpses now
of more than one summer, weightless but unstirred,
on the third story at the top of the stairs.

Impossible for her to climb them now.
Too much tiredness. But she will still
go there again some day, she promises.

Will rest the bucket and sponge on every step
and breathe, waiting for the water to stop
sloshing in the pail and her heart to stop beating.

Even if every step's an hour, a threat
of death, the attic will be clean again.
We watch. We notice the streaked tableware, the dust,

chipped things, and flecks of old food lying here,
on this first floor, its clearly dirty windows
beyond the ladder of her eyes, while in her words,

in her thought, only the lament goes on
for the space above, that it's filling up with webs,
that its contents are waiting to be given

or thrown away. And how much we'd give now
for the oprressive cleanliness that once
reached every day, angrily, into the least

and darkest corners of our childhood
to show us its vigor again, that fearful
enemy we won our best days in opposing.


~A.F. Moritz