catelin: (durgapink)
( Jul. 17th, 2008 11:18 am)

Messenger

In that space where he fluttered inside you

(and I when I say him it is not so much

about gender or form, although I know

no other name for him than Gabriel),

the seraphim who rested his wings

waited in your belly and whispered against

your innermost ear the secrets that you

were, for so long, too afraid to know—that

you were good, not merely good enough,

but absolutely deserving in a way only

the intensely faithful are; and the universe

was replenished with your understanding,

the world finally grew large enough to

accommodate his joyful soaring, too

divine for human eyes to bear, trumpeting

your true name—mother—in a thousand

languages across every sky that ever existed.

catelin: (Default)
( Dec. 2nd, 2001 01:12 am)
A big bud of moon hangs out of the twilight,
Star-spiders spinning their thread
Hang high suspended, withouten respite
Watching us overhead.

Come then under the trees, where the leaf-cloths
Curtain us in so dark
That here we’re safe from even the ermin-moth’s
Flitting remark.

Here in this swarthy, secret tent,
Where black boughs flap the ground,
You shall draw the thorn from my discontent,
Surgeon me sound.

This rare, rich night! For in here
Under the yew-tree tent
The darkness is loveliest where I could sear
You like frankincense into scent.

Here not even the stars can spy us,
Not even the white moths write
With their little pale signs on the wall, to try us
And set us affright.

Kiss but then the dust from off my lips,
But draw the turgid pain
From my breast to your bosom, eclipse
My soul again.

Waste me not, I beg you, waste
Not the inner night:
Taste, oh taste and let me taste
The core of delight.


--D.H. Lawrence
Tags:
catelin: (Default)
( Nov. 12th, 2001 11:33 am)
There seemed a smell of autumn in the air
At the bleak end of night; he shivered there
In a dank, musty dug-out where he lay,
Legs wrapped in sand-bags, lumps of chalk and clay
Spattering his face. Dry-mouthed, he thought, ‘To-day
We start the damned attack; and, Lord knows why,
Zero’s at nine; how bloody if I’m done in
Under the freedom of that morning sky!’
And then he coughed and dozed, cursing the din.

Was it the ghost of autumn in that smell
Of underground, or God’s blank heart grown kind,
That sent a happy dream to him in hell?
Where men are crushed like clods, and crawl to find
Some crater for their wretchedness; who lie
In outcast immolation, doomed to die
Far from clean things or any hope of cheer,
Cowed anger in their eyes, till darkness brims
And roars into their heads, and they can hear
Old childish talk, and tags of foolish hymns.

He sniffs the chilly air; (his dreaming starts),
He’s riding in a dusty Sussex lane
In quiet September; slowly night departs;
And he’s a living soul, absolved from pain.
Beyond the brambled fences where he goes
Are glimmering fields with harvest piled in sheaves,
And tree-tops dark against the stars grown pale;
Then, clear and shrill, a distant farm-cock crows;
And there’s a wall of mist along the vale
Where willows shake their watery-sounding leaves,
He gazes on it all, and scarce believes
That earth is telling its old peaceful tale;
He thanks the blessed world that he was born...
Then, far away, a lonely note of the horn.

They’re drawing the Big Wood! Unlatch the gate,
And set Golumpus going on the grass;
He knows the corner where it’s best to wait
And hear the crashing woodland chorus pass;
The corner where old foxes make their track
To the Long Spinney; that’s the place to be.
The bracken shakes below an ivied tree,
And then a cub looks out; and ‘Tally-o-back!’
He bawls, and swings his thong with volleying crack,
All the clean thrill of autumn in his blood,
And hunting surging through him like a flood
In joyous welcome from the untroubled past;
While the war drifts away, forgotten at last.

Now a red, sleepy sun above the rim
Of twilight stares along the quiet weald,
And the kind, simple country shines revealed
In solitudes of peace, no longer dim.
The old horse lifts his face and thanks the light,
Then stretches down his head to crop the green.
All things that he has loved are in his sight;
The places where his happiness has been
Are in his eyes, his heart, and they are good.
. . . .
Hark! there’s the horn: they’re drawing the Big Wood.


--Siegfried Sassoon, 1918
Tags:
catelin: (Default)
( Oct. 2nd, 2001 12:02 pm)
(fragmento)

A Eliot Weinberger

Novedad de hoy y ruina de pasado mañana, enterrada y
resucitada cada día,

convivida en calles, plazas, autobuses, taxis, cines, teatros, bares,
hoteles, palomares, catacumbas,

la ciudad enorme que cabe en un cuarto de tres metros cuadrados
inacabable como una galaxia,

la ciudad que nos sueña a todos y que todos hacemos y
deshacemos y rehacemos mientras soñamos,

la ciudad que todos soñamos y que cambia sin cesar mientras la
soñamos,

la ciudad que despierta cada cien años y se mira en el espejo de
una palabra y no se reconoce y otra vez se echa a dormir,

la ciudad que brota de los párpados de la mujer que duerme a mi lado y se convierte,

con sus monumentos y sus estatuas, sus historias y sus leyendas,
en un manantial hecho de muchos ojos y cada ojo refleja el mismo paisaje detenido,

antes de las escuelas y las prisiones, los alfabetos y los números, el
altar y la ley:
el río que es cuatro ríos, el huerto, el árbol, la Varona y el Varón
vestidos de viento

--volver, volver, ser otra vez arcilla, bañarse en esa luz, dormir bajo esas luminarias,
flotar sobre las aguas del tiempo como la hoja llameate del arce que
arrastra la corriente,

volver, ¿estamos dormidos o despiertos?, estamos,
nada más estamos,

amanece, es temprano...


---Octavio Paz
Tags:
catelin: (Default)
( Sep. 17th, 2001 03:23 pm)
So I dream about a tall, strong man with black hair, white teeth, a pale mysterious face, dark melancholy eyes, a dignified walk and a distant smile. Something like the Count of Monte Cristo. Above all, with a soft, clear voice. I would like him to tell me about his life, which will be very sad and full of terrible, frightening adventures. I would like him to be rather proud and haughty, fond of books, and able to write or play some kind of musical instrument. We would spend every evening at home, in front of the fire in winter, in the garden in summer, with a book or a pencil, his hand resting on mine! Isn't that the way husbands are?

If I ever should marry, I shall chose a man like that, and we shall write in this same diary together. Then my beloved diary will be the recipient of two great secrets and will have two hearts to watch over. It will know two signatures, A.N. and...I would like it to be a fantastic and unknown name like...like...I don't know. All the same, I shall think about it some more and look for a good name.

Anais Nin, from "Linotte"
Tags:
catelin: (Default)
( Sep. 12th, 2001 08:20 pm)
A woman I do not know other than from reading her posts as the friend of friends, asked that we tell her something beautiful. Such a simple request, really. It made me feel small and petty--guilty of forgetting the one thing I have always been certain of...life is beautiful, and terrible sometimes, but always beautiful. So, thank you, Velma, for the gentle reminder of how profoundly graceful people can be in the worst of circumstances. This is my offering. )
Tags:

The Bathing Pond
Harold Knight

Notice of Death: St. Martinville, Louisiana

Miss Evalene Cormier died in her seventy-sixth year, on a warm evening in June
watching fireflies on the front porch of her daddy's old house.

She never married so there are no children here to mourn her passing,
to recall apron strings, buttermilk pies, or the way she smiled with her eyes.

No one to testify to her kind spirit in the Mount Calvary Baptist Church
as the parishioners nod their heads and fan themselves in unison saying "Amen."

No one to know that as a young woman she'd disrobe without shame
to bathe in Ugly Pierre's pond, even when she knew he was always there watching.

No one to remember that she lay with him under the Flower Moon,
that she whispered how beautiful he was while he wept silent tears onto her lips.

There is no husband to lay a trembling hand to rest on the lace of her funeral gown,
loathe to return alone to the warm bed they shared for so many honey sweet years.

No one to understand why she never seemed right again after they found Ugly Pierre
dead in the woods, or why she hated her daddy so much.

There's nothing to say about Miss Evalene Cormier except that she loved watching fireflies.
Tags:
catelin: (Default)
( Jun. 24th, 2001 09:10 am)
Happiest of Happy Birthdays to You!

Squash

The time is right to mix sentences
with dirt and the sun
with punctuation and the rain with
verbs, and for worms to pass
through question marks, and the
stars to shine down on budding
nouns, and the dew to form on
paragraphs.

Richard Brautigan
Tags:
catelin: (Default)
( May. 7th, 2001 10:36 pm)
Finding Is Losing Something Else
Finding is losing something else.
I think about, perhaps even mourn,
what I lost to find this.


Richard Brautigan



I had lunch the other day and, as is my habit anymore without putting much thought into it, I caught small snippets of conversation from the surrounding tables. Most of the other patrons were younger. I work near a college so the cafes are full of fresh-faced earnest post-teens out to set the world (or at least their weekend date's pants) on fire. I didn't hear anything that caught my attention in particular; just the usual floating words that accompany those awkward times. Almost all of them had to do with love and desire, along with the posturing and preening that accompanies this stage in life. These puffs of heartfelt hopes and yearnings tickled my ears like whispers of songs to which I could no longer remember all the words.

I drove back to the office and as I made it into the parking lot, it struck me. I had lost my innocence. Not that it was gone altogether; I still hold onto bits and pieces of it from time to time, but I'd lost the giddiness of it. I'd lost the blind faith that it once provided me. There was a time when I would have expected this realization to be unbearable. Had someone told me when I was younger that it would come, I'd have scoffed at the cynicism of such a thought. But now...after enough years as witness and participant in some of the best and worst that a life on this planet can offer, I felt peaceful with it. The loss of innocence has not meant the loss of wonder...I am certain that I appreciate many things more deeply than before because I realize their value. More importantly, I realize their price.

I'm not sure when or how the wide-eyed young girl metamorphosed into who I am now...part mother, part warrior, part sage, part child (yes, as you grow older you remember that we are all someone's children). My heroes are different--more brave to me because of their fragility. It left me with the urge to not waste any of it...to chronicle the poignancy of something that I haven't found the words for yet. I walked back into the office feeling like a snake that had just shed its skin.
Tags:
catelin: (Default)
( Mar. 15th, 2001 01:16 pm)


The Street
A long silent street.
I walk in blackness and I stumble and fall
and rise, and I walk blind, my feet
stepping on silent stones and dry leaves.
Someone behind me also stepping on stones, leaves:
if I slow down, he slows;
if I run, he runs. I turn: nobody.
Everything dark and doorless.
Turning and turning these corners
which lead forever to the street
where nobody waits for, nobody follows me,
where I pursue a man who stumbles
and rises and says when he sees me: nobody.
---Octavio Paz


With my most sincere apologies to Mr. Yeats...

Yeats said never give
the heart outright,
but I may disregard
that particular
advice tonight.

For I'm feeling a bit
saucy and sweet.
It sure would be nice
to be swept off these
poor tired old feet.

Yeats told me to not
give all the heart.
I've done just like he said--
shared only the
very commonest part.

But I'm feeling brave,
ready this night
to be deaf, dumb, and blind.
Hell, I'll even believe in
Love at first sight.

So W.B. although I'm
with you in spirit,
Please understand this flesh
of mine needs some other
flesh to be near it.
Tags:
catelin: (Default)
( Feb. 2nd, 2001 06:49 pm)
february.2.


Woke up, rolled over,
caught a glimpse
of myself in
charcoal resting
against the wall.

No lover's arm
draped carelessly
over the hip,
No sleepy breath
condensing against
the throat's hollow.

No doubt
there will be
six more weeks of
winter.
Tags:
catelin: (Default)
( Jan. 25th, 2001 05:50 am)
This is something I wrote a some time ago for one of my dearest friends. Since we are celebrating a milestone of sorts, I wanted to remind him (and myself) how much I love him.


Valiant Minstrel

A minstrel wandered cross my path
Somersaulting up a hill instead of down
To catch my attention with a lopsided grin.
He plucked flowers from behind my ear
With an artless sleight of hand possessed
Only by those with a joy for the game.


His songs were found frivolous by many
For they lacked in the hopeless misery
That the times were accustomed to
But they drew laughter from my heart
That floated about me like wild confetti
Making an instant seem a banquet.


So I gave my hand and shared
A secret smile missed by most
Acknowledged only with a chuckle and nod
We understood our victory and whispered the word-
Friend.
Tags:
One of my favorites from one of my favorites...

Never Give All The Heart

Never give all the heart, for love
Will hardly seem worth thinking of
To passionate women, if it seem
Certain, and they never dream
That it fades out from kiss to kiss;
For everything that's lovely is
But a brief, dreamy, kind delight.
O never give the heart outright,
For they, for all smooth lips can say,
Have given their hearts up to the play.
And who can play it well enough
If deaf and dumb and blind with love?
He that made this knows all the cost.
For he gave all his heart and lost.

W.B. Yeats
Tags:
catelin: (Default)
( Jan. 16th, 2001 06:37 pm)
Got these comments back today on a poem that I wrote (Formica), which almost made it to publication but got the ax in the final round.

1 -- not enough bite for the poem. was a little bored waiting for it to
happen.
2 -- Really lovely. I love the triviality of tinkering around and then all
of a sudden, what the poem's really about comes out. Good impact. Images
are nice.
3 -- This poem attempts to build tension but fails to do so effectively.
The lyricality seems strained (reflecting / the speckled pallor/spread
underneath / our plates), and the end aims for cleverness but lacks punch --
largely because the rest of the poem falls short of the necessary build-up.

Oh, well. Back to the drawing board.
Tags:

The force that through the green fuse drives the flower
Drives my green age; that blasts the roots of trees
Is my destroyer.

And I am dumb to tell the crooked rose
My youth is bent by the same wintry fever.
Dylan Thomas1914-1953
Tags:
.

Profile

catelin: (Default)
catelin

Syndicate

RSS Atom

Most Popular Tags

Powered by Dreamwidth Studios

Style Credit

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags