Louise Bogan, Song for the Last Act

[cantahar.livejournal.com]

Song for the Last Act

Now that I have your face by heart, I look
Less at its features than its darkening frame
Where quince and melon, yellow as young flame,
Lie with quilled dahlias and the shepherd's crook.
Beyond, a garden, There, in insolent ease
The lead and marble figures watch the show
Of yet another summer loath to go
Although the scythes hang in the apple trees.

Now that I have your face by heart, I look.

Now that I have your voice by heart, I read
In the black chords upon a dulling page
Music that is not meant for music's cage,
Whose emblems mix with words that shake and bleed.
The staves are shuttled over with a stark
Unprinted silence. In a double dream
I must spell out the storm, the running stream.
The beat's too swift. The notes shift in the dark.

Now that I have your voice by heart, I read.

Now that I have your heart by heart, I see
The wharves with their great ships and architraves;
The rigging and the cargo and the slaves
On a strange beach under a broken sky.
O not departure, but a voyage done!
The bales stand on the stone; the anchor weeps
Its red rust downward, and the long vine creeps
Beside the salt herb, in the lengthening sun.

Now that I have your heart by heart, I see.

--Louise Bogan

Alfian Sa'at: "Autobiography" + request

[ampersandals.livejournal.com]

Like most of us, I can't remember how
I was separated from my first love
(Did it die, did I break it, was it stolen
Or did it fly out through the open window?)
I didn't have the radio-tuning parents
Who filled the house with music
Or instilled in me "a love of the cinema."
I never recalled my mother coming home
From the hairdressers' with a new hairdo
Or father teaching me fishing, or
Staying up to watch football on TV.
He did once bring a kite home but hung it
On my bedroom wall (he turned it into
A portrait, it wasn't his fault the wall
ever became more of a sky). Meanwhile
Cousins came for visits wearing braces

( And chattering about comics, bicycle scars... )

Request: Poems about language / the insufficiency of language? I'll start.
( +5 poems under cut )