On the 747

[punkinelf.livejournal.com]

Saw on writers almanac. Had to share

On the 747

by Malena Morling

As soon as I sat down
the seven year old girl
offered me gum
and showed me a postcard
of the airplane we were in.
She was writing her mother
whom she had just left at the gate,
smearing her love
in blue magic marker.
Then she pulled out a drawing
she had made of the wind
and one of a cloud
and a man who had ladders
for legs and eight arms
extending eight hands.
After the heavy body of the plane
lifted off the ground,
she held my hand and talked
about her flute teacher's birds
and the eels she had bought
in a bait store and let loose
on the beach, each one
slithering into the dark
of the green waves,
returning to what she said
she could not imagine.

"On the 747" by Malena Mörling, from Ocean Avenue.

'The Old Woman' by Joseph Campbell

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

The Old Woman
by Joseph Campbell (Seosamh MacCathmhaoil)

AS a white candle
In a holy place,
So is the beauty
Of an aged face.

As the spent radiance
Of the winter sun,
So is a woman
With her travail done,

Her brood gone from her,
And her thoughts as still
As the waters
Under a ruined mill.

A.Y. Campbell, 'The Dromedary'

[duathir.livejournal.com]

The Dromedary

In dreams I see the Dromedary still,
As once in a gay park I saw him stand:
A thousand eyes in vulgar wonder scanned
His humps and hairy neck, and gazed their fill
At his lank shanks and mocked with laughter shrill.
He never moved: and if his Eastern land
Flashed on his eye with stretches of hot sand,
It wrung no mute appeal from his proud will.

He blinked upon the rabble lazily;
And still some trace of majesty forlorn
And a coarse grace remained: his head was high,
Though his gaunt flanks with a great mange were worn:
There was not any yearning in his eye,
But on his lips and nostril infinite scorn.

by A.Y. Campbell

‎'An Old Waterford Woman' - Mary Devenport O'Neill

[missdisco.livejournal.com]

  ‎'An Old Waterford Woman' - Mary Devenport O'Neill, 1929

On the road over head,
To the passers-by,
'Listen,' she said,
'Inside this cliff are the dead.
They cry
Because they are dead.'
'You hear,' said I,
'The cry
Of the wind in the hollow face
of the cliff:
Within the cliff there is only earth.'
'And what,' she said,

'Are the dead
But earth?'

Came across this one during some MA dissertation research, from a largely forgotten Irish Modernist.