gray room by wallace stevens

[another-dexter.livejournal.com]

Although you sit in a room that is gray,
Except for the silver
Of the straw-paper,
And pick
At your pale white gown;
Or lift one of the green beads
Of your necklace,
To let it fall;
Or gaze at your green fan
Printed with the red branches of a red willow;
Or, with one finger,
Move the leaf in the bowl--
The leaf that has fallen from the branches of the forsythia
Beside you...
What is all this?
I know how furiously your heart is beating.

"Juliet" Langston Hughes

[pyre006.livejournal.com]

Wonder
And pain
And terror,
And sick silly songs
Of sorrow,
And the marrow
Of the bone
Of life
Are smeared across
Her mouth.

The road
From Verona
To Mantova
Is dusty
With the drought.

Ode I from Sophocles' Oedipus, trans Fitts and Fitzgerald

[jayitaintso.livejournal.com]

( After a seer proclaims that Oedipus, who was declared king after defeating the sphinx in a riddle contest, killed the previous king, the chorus (representing the people of Thebes) decide what to believe. )

'Before the World Was Made'--William Butler Yeats

[anomalous-data.livejournal.com]

If I make the lashes dark
And the eyes more bright
And the lips more scarlet,
Or ask if all be right
From mirror after mirror,
No vanity's displayed:
I'm looking for the face I had
Before the world was made.

What if I look upon a man
As though on my beloved,
And my blood be cold the while
And my heart unmoved?
Why should he think me cruel
Or that he is betrayed?
I'd have him love the thing that was
Before the world was made.

Helen by George Seferis

[namelessslobcat.livejournal.com]

Helen

By George Seferis

 

TEUCER: ...in sea-girt Cyprus, where Apollo bade me live, I built
the city of Salamis in memory of my homeland.
.............................................................................
HELEN: It was not I who went to Troy, but an image.
.............................................................................
MESSENGER: What? Were all our pains then for a cloud?

                                                                       (Euripedes, Helen)

"You cannot sleep in Platres for the nightingales".
Shy nightingale, hidden among whispering leaves,
you bring the echoing coolness of the forest
to the sundered souls and bodies
of those who know there can be no return.
Blind voice, fumbling in the dark of memory
for footsteps, gestures, what I dare not call kisses,
and the slave-woman's sullen anger.

"You cannot sleep in Platres for the nightingales".

Where is Platres? Does anybody know this island?
All my life I've heard strange names,
new places, the latest foolishness
of men or gods;
                        my fate, weaving
between the final sword-thrust of some Ajax
and another Salamis,
brought me to this sea-coast.
The moon
rises out of the sea like Aphrodite,
covering Sagittarius, then seeks
the heart of Scorpio, changing everything.
Where is truth?
I too was an archer in those wars,
my fate that of a man whose arrow strayed.

Nightingale, songsmith,
on such a night as this by the shores of Proteus' sea
the Spartan slave-women heard your song and wept,
and among them (who would have guessed it) Helen!
She, whom we sought for years along Scamander's banks.
There on the desert's cusp I touched her and she spoke to me:
"Lies", she cried, "lies,
"I never stepped into the blue-prowed ship,
never trod glorious Ilium".

Deep-girdled, sun-dappled hair, that long body,
shadows, smiles everywhere
on shoulders thighs knees,
the flaring skin, and those eyes
with their great lashes
- all there, on the bank of the Delta.
                                           And in Ilium?
In Ilium, nothing - a simulacrum.
So the gods wished it.
And Paris embraced a shadow as if it had been flesh and blood,
while for ten long years we butchered one another over Helen.

Greece haemorrhaged.
So many bodies thrown
to the jaws of the sea, to the jaws of the earth:
so many souls
flung between the millstones like grains of wheat.
And blood bubbling up through river mud,
for a flaxen wave for a passing cloud
a butterfly's wingbeat a swandown's drift
all for an empty tunic, a Helen.
And what of my brother?
Nightingale nightingale nightingale,
what is a god? What's not a god? What falls between the two?

"You cannot sleep in Platres for the nightingales".

Sad bird,
          on sea-girt Cyprus
which I was promised in memory of my homeland,
I landed alone with this fable,
if indeed it is a fable,
if it is true that men will never again
fall into the gods' ancient snare;
                               if it is true
that in ages to come another Teucer,
some other Ajax Hecuba or Priam
or someone perhaps nameless, unknown, who yet
has seen Scamander heave with corpses,
will be spared the words
of messengers coming to say
that so much suffering so many lives
went spinning into the abyss
all for an empty tunic, for a Helen.

Luke Davies; (Suck)

[glaciator.livejournal.com]

Come let’s play mortals Sugar Lee,
That fierce embrace. And all my fear
Of loss, of departure, will dissolve
In the light of your limbs. Come stay an hour,

Or less. And don’t trust any technology,
And even the clocks are lying.
The only thing sure is the pleasure we’ll know
When we’re done with trying

To be polite, to suck all the juice from delay.
The only solution is abandon.
Come I don’t care — come you be the pyre;
And I will be the burned one.

Dream Song 14 John Berryman

[septimusette.livejournal.com]

Put this up on my whiteboard today, since a friend of mine had put "Life is too awesome not to smile," on hers. :P

Dream Song 14

Life, friends, is boring. We must not say so.
After all, the sky flashes, the great sea yearns,
we ourselves flash and yearn,
and moreover my mother told me as a boy
(repeatingly) "Ever to confess you're bored
means you have no

Inner Resources." I conclude now I have no
inner resources, because I am heavy bored.
Peoples bore me,
literature bores me, especially great literature,
Henry bores me, with his plights & gripes
as bad as Achilles,

who loves people and valiant art, which bores me.
And the tranquil hills, & gin, look like a drag
and somehow a dog
has taken itself & its tail considerably away
into the mountains or sea or sky, leaving
behind: me, wag.

You're here, still - Rose Ausländer

[hope-calaris.livejournal.com]

Throw your fear
into the air

Soon
your time is over
soon
heaven grows
under the grass
your dreams fall
into nowhere

Still
the carnation smells sweetly
the thrush sings
still you may love
give words away
you are here, still

Be what you are
Give what you have

(translated by Julia Samwer)

Conversation // Ai

[likelolwhat.livejournal.com]

( conversation by ai - exactly 31 lines long! )

The Little Mute Boy - by Federico Garcia Lorca

[mijeli.livejournal.com]

The Little Mute Boy
translated by W. S. Merwin

The little boy was looking for his voice.
(The king of the crickets had it.)
In a drop of water
the little boy was looking for his voice.

I do not want it for speaking with;
I will make a ring of it
so that he may wear my silence
on his little finger

In a drop of water
the little boy was looking for his voice.

(The captive voice, far away,
put on a cricket's clothes.)