Written by
Jorge Luis Borges |
Throughout the course of the generations
men constructed the night.
At first she was blindness;
thorns raking bare feet,
fear of wolves.
We shall never know who forged the word
for the interval of shadow
dividing the two twilights;
we shall never know in what age it came to mean
the starry hours.
Others created the myth.
They made her the mother of the unruffled Fates
that spin our destiny,
they sacrificed black ewes to her, and the cock
who crows his own death.
The Chaldeans assigned to her twelve houses;
to Zeno, infinite words.
She took shape from Latin hexameters
and the terror of Pascal.
Luis de Leon saw in her the homeland
of his stricken soul.
Now we feel her to be inexhaustible
like an ancient wine
and no one can gaze on her without vertigo
and time has charged her with eternity.
And to think that she wouldn't exist
except for those fragile instruments, the eyes.
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Written by
Anne Sexton |
I knew you forever and you were always old,
soft white lady of my heart.
Surely you would scold
me for sitting up late, reading your letters,
as if these foreign postmarks were meant for me.
You posted them first in London, wearing furs
and a new dress in the winter of eighteen-ninety.
I read how London is dull on Lord Mayor's Day,
where you guided past groups of robbers, the sad holes
of Whitechapel, clutching your pocketbook, on the way
to Jack the Ripper dissecting his famous bones.
This Wednesday in Berlin, you say, you will
go to a bazaar at Bismarck's house.
And I
see you as a young girl in a good world still,
writing three generations before mine.
I try
to reach into your page and breathe it back.
.
.
but life is a trick, life is a kitten in a sack.
This is the sack of time your death vacates.
How distant your are on your nickel-plated skates
in the skating park in Berlin, gliding past
me with your Count, while a military band
plays a Strauss waltz.
I loved you last,
a pleated old lady with a crooked hand.
Once you read Lohengrin and every goose
hung high while you practiced castle life
in Hanover.
Tonight your letters reduce
history to a guess.
The count had a wife.
You were the old maid aunt who lived with us.
Tonight I read how the winter howled around
the towers of Schloss Schwobber, how the tedious
language grew in your jaw, how you loved the sound
of the music of the rats tapping on the stone
floors.
When you were mine you wore an earphone.
This is Wednesday, May 9th, near Lucerne,
Switzerland, sixty-nine years ago.
I learn
your first climb up Mount San Salvatore;
this is the rocky path, the hole in your shoes,
the yankee girl, the iron interior
of her sweet body.
You let the Count choose
your next climb.
You went together, armed
with alpine stocks, with ham sandwiches
and seltzer wasser.
You were not alarmed
by the thick woods of briars and bushes,
nor the rugged cliff, nor the first vertigo
up over Lake Lucerne.
The Count sweated
with his coat off as you waded through top snow.
He held your hand and kissed you.
You rattled
down on the train to catch a steam boat for home;
or other postmarks: Paris, verona, Rome.
This is Italy.
You learn its mother tongue.
I read how you walked on the Palatine among
the ruins of the palace of the Caesars;
alone in the Roman autumn, alone since July.
When you were mine they wrapped you out of here
with your best hat over your face.
I cried
because I was seventeen.
I am older now.
I read how your student ticket admitted you
into the private chapel of the Vatican and how
you cheered with the others, as we used to do
on the fourth of July.
One Wednesday in November
you watched a balloon, painted like a silver abll,
float up over the Forum, up over the lost emperors,
to shiver its little modern cage in an occasional
breeze.
You worked your New England conscience out
beside artisans, chestnut vendors and the devout.
Tonight I will learn to love you twice;
learn your first days, your mid-Victorian face.
Tonight I will speak up and interrupt
your letters, warning you that wars are coming,
that the Count will die, that you will accept
your America back to live like a prim thing
on the farm in Maine.
I tell you, you will come
here, to the suburbs of Boston, to see the blue-nose
world go drunk each night, to see the handsome
children jitterbug, to feel your left ear close
one Friday at Symphony.
And I tell you,
you will tip your boot feet out of that hall,
rocking from its sour sound, out onto
the crowded street, letting your spectacles fall
and your hair net tangle as you stop passers-by
to mumble your guilty love while your ears die.
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Written by
Billy Jno Hope |
folly cracked the mirror
a soul gasping wound
voodoo induced vertigo
psychedelic blackouts
in the cracks
between art and blasphemy
paralyzing paranoia of becoming
the vision that heals
cast shadows to douse the flames
starved enlightenment
i betrayed my muse
i wallowed in nostalgic fumes
blood clots from yesteryears insurrection mad dissident desire found wanting a rage dissipating in the twilight of friendship a facade evolved.
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Written by
Charles Bukowski |
washed-up, on shore, the old yellow notebook
out again
I write from the bed
as I did last
year.
will see the doctor,
Monday.
"yes, doctor, weak legs, vertigo, head-
aches and my back
hurts.
"
"are you drinking?" he will ask.
"are you getting your
exercise, your
vitamins?"
I think that I am just ill
with life, the same stale yet
fluctuating
factors.
even at the track
I watch the horses run by
and it seems
meaningless.
I leave early after buying tickets on the
remaining races.
"taking off?" asks the motel
clerk.
"yes, it's boring,"
I tell him.
"If you think it's boring
out there," he tells me, "you oughta be
back here.
"
so here I am
propped up against my pillows
again
just an old guy
just an old writer
with a yellow
notebook.
something is
walking across the
floor
toward
me.
oh, it's just
my cat
this
time.
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Written by
Barry Tebb |
Mornings like this I awaken and wonder
How I have moved so far, how I have moved so little
And yet in essence stayed the same
Always passionate for the unattainable
For Joan Baez to make me her analyst,
To tour Ireland with Eddie and Finbar Furey
To be made a Chevalier des Palmes for translating Milosz.
I remember one road, many roads I did not take
And my heart lurches and my stomach turns
At the vertigo of mystery
At the simplicity of childhood
And its melancholy
At the silence of the moors
Beckoning, unreachable, tormenting me
As I lie helpless at the border of infirmity
With my soul burning and brimming over
With adolescent passion.
Only analysis with its symmetries and asymmetries
Exactness and paradox, scientific as Heisenberg's
Principle of Uncertainty, yet various as the shades of Monet,
Eases me.
I think of those I have known and know no longer,
Who have died needlessly, disappeared irrevocably
Or changed beyond recognition.
I think of the bridge, river and streets
Of my Montmartre, gone under and made over
Into the grey utilities of trade, the empty road,
Sad as telegraph poles, my Sacr? Coeur silent and boarded up.
My Seine empty of the barges of D?rain
My Sorbonne absorbed, its students gone
Mornings like this, I awaken and wonder.
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Written by
Delmira Agustini |
Spanish Yo hacía una divina labor, sobre la rocaCreciente del Orgullo.
De la vida lejana,Algún pétalo vívido me voló en la mañana,Algún beso en la noche.
Tenaz como una loca,Sequía mi divina labor sobre la roca.
Cuando tu voz que funde como sacra campanaEn la nota celeste la vibración humana,Tendió su lazo do oro al borde de tu boca; —Maravilloso nido del vértigo, tu boca!Dos pétalos de rosa abrochando un abismo…—Labor, labor de gloria, dolorosa y liviana;¡Tela donde mi espíritu su fue tramando él mismo!Tú quedas en la testa soberbia de la roca,Y yo caigo, sin fin, en el sangriento abismo! EnglishI was at my divine labor, upon the rockSwelling with Pride.
From a distance,At dawn, some bright petal came to me,Some kiss in the night.
Upon the rock,Tenacious a madwoman, I clung to my work.
When your voice, like a sacred bell,A celestial note with a human tremor,Stretched its golden lasso from the edge of your mouth;—Marvelous nest of vertigo, your mouth!Two rose petals fastened to an abyss…—Labor, labor of glory, painful and frivolous;Fabric where my spirit went weaving herself!You come to the arrogant head of the rock,And I fall, without end, into the bloody abyss!
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Written by
Jennifer Reeser |
This night slip, in his honor
flipped inside out – of lace-
edged netting – is the color
of Shaka Zulu’s face;
of panther flower at midnight
where crow and boa doze;
of vertigo and stage fright
in frail Ophelia’s clothes.
I wear it as a symbol.
Its ripped, Chantilly trim
I fixed without a thimble,
was pricked and bled for him.
A torn band may be mended,
but what if he and I
disband, no longer blended?
My spine turned to the sky,
reflecting on my dresser
from mirror-fine sateens:
the Great Bear with the Lesser…
I dream of Shoji screens,
and when desire becomes
an overlaying itch,
the throbbing in my thumbs
untenable to stitch,
sleek, fitted, with the passion
of Shaka Zulu’s face,
reversed and fringe-of-fashion,
I put it on, in place
of achromatic egrets,
the vacant crystal ball.
Victoria has secrets.
I am her baby doll.
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Written by
Billy Jno Hope |
a lion at the door
swallowed the day
broken with spite
at the inevitable chorus of pop songs
sutured for soft light
i burdened siesta
with a thousand little earthquakes
i listened where you suffered vertigo
flowers have faded
bellies betray
caught the wistful eye
that curved beneath my eyelids
something slime
and panic strewn
we gather the remnants of democracy
silence herds mad laughter
cumulus scorn
haunted horizons running
running to weep
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Written by
Amy Lowell |
Reign of Louis Philippe
A great tall column spearing at the sky
With a little man on top.
Goodness! Tell me
why?
He looks a silly thing enough to stand up there so high.
What a strange fellow, like a soldier in a play,
Tight-fitting coat with the tails cut away,
High-crowned hat which the brims overlay.
Two-horned hat makes an outline like a bow.
Must have a sword, I can see the light glow
Between a dark line and his leg.
Vertigo
I get gazing up at him, a pygmy flashed with sun.
A weathercock or scarecrow or both things in one?
As bright as a jewelled crown hung above a throne.
Say, what is the use of him if he doesn't turn?
Just put up to glitter there, like a torch to burn,
A sort of sacrificial show in a lofty urn?
But why a little soldier in an obsolete dress?
I'd rather see a Goddess with a spear, I confess.
Something allegorical and fine.
Why, yes --
I cannot take my eyes from him.
I don't
know why at all.
I've looked so long the whole thing swims.
I feel he
ought to fall.
Foreshortened there among the clouds he's pitifully small.
What do you say? There used to be an
Emperor standing there,
With flowing robes and laurel crown.
Really? Yet
I declare
Those spiral battles round the shaft don't seem just his affair.
A togaed, laurelled man's I mean.
Now
this chap seems to feel
As though he owned those soldiers.
Whew! How
he makes one reel,
Swinging round above his circling armies in a wheel.
Sweeping round the sky in an orbit like the sun's,
Flashing sparks like cannon-balls from his own long guns.
Perhaps my sight is tired, but that figure simply stuns.
How low the houses seem, and all the people are
mere flies.
That fellow pokes his hat up till it scratches on the skies.
Impudent! Audacious! But, by Jove, he blinds
the eyes!
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Written by
John Berryman |
In a motion of night they massed nearer my post.
I hummed a short blues.
When the stars went out
I studied my weapons system.
Grenades, the portable rack, the yellow spout
of the anthrax-ray: in order.
Yes, and most
of my pencils were sharp.
This edge of the galaxy has often seen
a defence so stiff, but it could only go
one way.
—Mr Bones, your troubles give me vertigo,
& backache.
Somehow, when I make your scene,
I cave to feel as if
de roses of dawns & pearls of dusks, made up
by some ol' writer-man, got right forgot
& the greennesses of ours.
Springwater grow so thick it gonna clot
and the pleasing ladies cease.
I figure, yup,
you is bad powers.
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