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Ozziey

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On the hoof or dead, a satyr weighs about the single same. They mingle with goddesses and singe themselves in flame that they ignite with steady gaze while they recite the name of One who in the olden days slept on Naxos' shingle, and they are golden ruddy in the sun and hold themselves aloof. A satyr on the hoof is fleet. Slaughtered, their dark red meat is strong.

disgust

Modern

Mythology & Folklore

The Centaur does not need a Horse; He's part of one, as a matter of course. 'Twixt animal and man divided, His sex-life never is one-sided. He does what Doves and Sparrows do— What else he does is up to you.

neutral

Modern

Mythology & Folklore

Fitfully, he squeezed himself to the last, his head ringing ... then smash, over stones gone green the whole crown cup at one stroke splattering all that thinking lofted within the beast. Vaults have melted and poured the contrary whole ... Flesh went off in freezing jags of mist, in foggy coils, slowly, though a stripped heart arrowed by fire winnows itself from night. Plodding executioner, vast sleeve with its trains, shadow dragged at the embers, axes slicing into the glowing clod. And earth tumbles to slumber. Nevermore centaur: the wild. Yet under scorching trots at the stud farms, ringing deep within piled strata, veins of gold.

anger

Modern

Mythology & Folklore

To say that he was unhappy is either to say too much or too little: depending on who's the audience. Still, the smell he'd give off was a bit too odious, and his canter was also quite hard to match. He said, They meant just a monument, but something went astray: the womb? the assembly line? the economy? Or else, the war never happened, they befriended the enemy, and he was left as it is, presumably to portray Intransigence, Incompatibility—that sort of thing which proves not so much one's uniqueness or virtue, but probability. For years, resembling a cloud, he wandered in olive groves, marveling at one-leggedness, the mother of immobility. Learned to lie to himself, and turned it into an art for want of a better company, also to check his sanity. And he died fairly young—because his animal part turned out to be less durable than his humanity.

disgust

Modern

Mythology & Folklore

How this tart fable instructs And mocks! Here's the parody of that moral mousetrap Set in the proverbs stitched on samplers Approving chased girls who get them to a tree And put on a bark's nun-black Habit which deflects All amorous arrows. For to sheathe the virgin shape In a scabbard of wood baffles pursuers, Whether goat-thighed or god-haloed. Ever since that first Daphne Switched her incomparable back For a bay-tree hide, respect's Twined to her hard limbs like ivy: the puritan lip Cries: 'Celebrate the Syrinx whose demurs Won her the frog-colored skin, pale pith and watery Bed of a reed. Look: Pine-needle armor protects Pitys from Pan's assault! And though age drop Their leafy crowns, their fame soars, Eclipsing Eva, Cleo and Helen of Troy: For which of those would speak For a fashion that constricts White bodies in a wooden girdle, root to top Unfaced, unformed, the nipple-flowers Shrouded to suckle darkness? Only they Who keep cool and holy make A sanctum to attract Green virgins, consecrating limb and lip To chastity's service: like prophets, like preachers, They descant on the serene and seraphic beauty Of virgins for virginity's sake.' Be certain some such pact's Been struck to keep all glory in the grip Of ugly spinsters and barren sirs As you etch on the inner window

disgust

Modern

Mythology & Folklore

Before the oarsmen of Odysseus would leave their mark upon the wine-dark sea, I can divine the indefinable forms of that old god whose name was Proteus. Shepherd of the wave-flocks of the waters and wielder of the gift of prophecy, he liked to make a secret of his knowledge and weave a pattern of ambiguous signs. At the demand of people, he took on the substance of a lion or a bonfire or a tree, spreading shade on the river bank or water which would disappear in water. Proteus the Egyptian should not surprise you, you, who are one, but also many others.

surprise

Modern

Mythology & Folklore

Water touched water through my heart. I fell into a white tangle of octopus, fluttering for air, one molecule, one second ... something ghosted across my brain, fiber or seeds rising on the black negative. Then I fled into whales, into thread-fine fish where I ate muscle from my own bones, into the conch, believing I was a sea. As a sea anemone, prehensile, I waved tentacles in the dark; crept with snails, frightened of the impulse snapping whatever-I-was into eels, minnows, bones, into coins stamped with bees, into memory. The membranes weren't sealed. I escaped— light or energy—through mysterious windows. Rents appeared in my insane fabric, I'd tumble out of shape into other edges, the cliff of my own dreams looming blue in the shark's thrust for the swimmer.

fear

Modern

Mythology & Folklore

Ages ago they called her old. But there she was, walking the same street each day. So they changed the time-scale, calculating her age as with forests, in centuries. Yet she stood in the same spot each evening, black as a citadel towering, cavernous, charred, and out of it the words that teemed in her against her will, unwatched, endlessly flapped and screamed, while those that returned already perched beneath her brows shadowy, set for the night.

fear

Modern

Mythology & Folklore

Dear individual soul, this is the Styx. The Styx, that's right: Why are you so perplexed? As soon as Charon reads the prepared text over the speakers, let the nymphs affix your name badge and transport you to the banks. (The nymphs? They fled your woods and joined the ranks of personnel here.) Floodlights will reveal piers built of reinforced concrete and steel, and hovercrafts whose beelike buzz resounds where Charon used to ply his wooden oar. Mankind has multiplied, has burst its bounds: nothing, sweet soul, is as it was before. Skyscrapers, solid waste, and dirty air: the scenery's been harmed beyond repair. Safe and efficient transportation (millions of souls served here, all races, creeds, and sexes) requires urban planning: hence pavilions, warehouses, dry docks, and office complexes. Among the gods it's Hermes, my dear soul, who makes all prophecies and estimations when revolutions and wars take their toll— our boats, of course, require reservations. A one-way trip across the Styx is free: the meters saying, "No Canadian dimes, no tokens" are left standing, as you see, but only to remind us of old times. From Section Tau Four of the Alpha Pier you're boarding hovercraft Sigma Sixteen— it's packed with sweating souls, but in the rear you'll find a seat (I've got it on my s

surprise

Modern

Mythology & Folklore

With only his dim lantern To tell him where he is And every time a mountain Of fresh corpses to load up Take them to the other side Where there are plenty more I'd say by now he must be confused As to which side is which I'd say it doesn't matter No one complains he's got Their pockets to go through In one a crust of bread in another a sausage Once in a long while a mirror Or a book which he throws Overboard into the dark river Swift and cold and deep

disgust

Modern

Mythology & Folklore

All darkness is not equally dark. When he stepped down into the boat he made us snuff the whole row of smoldering torches and brands we'd kept. I drew my mantle round me. It was cold. "It's in pitch-darkness that I forebode land." And the boat-hook guided the ferry into black. Around the stem, Acheron's waters lapped. "There still remains some thirteen heartbeats' sand in the hourglass by the tiller. So I won't be late." Where we saw night's dark side and coal on coal he steered by the rocky islets' shadow play, and by the stone-pines' contours, toward his goal. In the dark the scrape of keel on gravel bank. "Here's my arm. Good night. The fare's one obol, thanks."

disgust

Modern

Mythology & Folklore

The conductor's hands were black with money: Hold on to your ticket, he said, the inspector's Mind is black with suspicion, and hold on to That dissolving map. We moved through London, We could see the pigeons through the glass but failed To hear their rumours of wars, we could see The lost dog barking but never knew That his bark was as shrill as a cock crowing, We just jogged on, at each request Stop there was a crowd of aggressively vacant Faces, we just jogged on, eternity Gave itself airs in revolving lights And then we came to the Thames and all The bridges were down, the further shore Was lost in fog, so we asked the conductor What we should do. He said: Take the ferry Faute de mieux. We flicked the flashlight And there was the ferryman just as Virgil And Dante had seen him. He looked at us coldly And his eyes were dead and his hands on the oar Marbled his calves and he said to us coldly: If you want to die you will have to pay for it

fear

Modern

Mythology & Folklore

Nor skin nor hide nor fleece Shall cover you, Nor curtain of crimson nor fine Shelter of cedar-wood be over you, Nor the fir-tree Nor the pine. Nor sight of whin nor gorse Nor river-yew, Nor fragrance of flowering bush, Nor wailing of reed-bird to waken you, Nor of linnet, Nor of thrush. Nor word nor touch nor sight Of lover, you Shall long through the night but for this: The roll of the full tide to cover you Without question, Without kiss

fear

Modern

Mythology & Folklore

There is no river which is called Lethe by the ancients. To forget is to neglect or to refuse to hold on to, to fail to get... they should put out to sea without being discovered by them ... he protected the murderer unawares it is not unknown to me that some god led thee What remains hidden is also forgetfulness means, the unnoticed, that which hasn't been seen yet, lateo the Latin what lies concealed ... lest he perish having known ... lest he perish having not accomplished his end Thou thoughtest to escape the gods' notice in ... to let a thing escape, to forget? That she might bear unknown? to forget purposely, to pass over? He chose to forget? Caught by the leg he went head first through the hole into the darkness where the waters roar & when he came out he needed those who could bathe him back into his memory and his forgetfulness: his wits were sharp enough when he was on sugar & didn't remember all that had happened in the year and a half since he had come in barefoot not to hold not to remember not to come by anything got

fear

Modern

Mythology & Folklore

The bride stepped on a snake; pierced by his venom, The girl tripped, falling, stumbled into Death. Her bridegroom, Orpheus, poet of the hour, And pride ofRhadope, sang loud his loss To everyone on earth. When this was done, His wailing voice, his lyre, and himself Came weaving through the tall gates ojTaenarus Down to the world of Death and flowing Darkness To tell the story of his grief again.

sadness

Modern

Mythology & Folklore

So you have swept me back, I who could have walked with the live souls above the earth, I who could have slept among the live flowers at last; so for your arrogance and your ruthlessness I am swept back where dead lichens drip dead cinders upon moss of ash; so for your arrogance I am broken at last, I who had lived unconscious, who was almost forgot; if you had let me wait I had grown from listlessness into peace, if you had let me rest with the dead, I had forgot you and the past. v So for your arrogance and your ruthlessness I have lost the earth and the flowers of the earth, and the live souls above the earth, and you who had passed across the light and reached ruthless; you who have your own light, who are to yourself a presence, who need no presence; yet for all your arrogance and your glance, I tell you this: such loss is no loss, such terror, such coils and strands and pitfalls of blackness, such terror is no loss; hell is no worse than your earth above the earth, hell is no worse, no, nor your flowers nor your veins of light nor your presence, a loss; my hell is no worse than yours though you pass among the flowers and speak with the spirits above earth. VI Against the black I have more fervour than you in all the splendour of that place, against the blackness and the sta

anger

Modern

Mythology & Folklore

He is here, come down to look for you. It is the song that calls you back, a song of joy and suffering equally: a promise: that things will be different up there than they were last time. You would rather have gone on feeling nothing, emptiness and silence; this stagnant peace of the deepest sea, which is easier than the noise and flesh of the surface. i You are used to these blanched dim corridors, you are used to the king who passes you without speaking. The other one is different and you almost remember him. He says he is singing to you because he loves you, not as you are now, so chilled and minimal: moving and still both, like a white curtain blowing in the draft from a half-opened window beside a chair on which nobody sits.

neutral

Modern

Mythology & Folklore

When Orpheus and his Eurydice walked up from the underworld, they thought of the light up there, how beautiful it was, how much they longed for, needed it; but even so, they'd been a long time in the dark, too long. They'd learned it needed them

sadness

Modern

Mythology & Folklore

Eurydice is impossible If Orpheus looks away Eurydice doubts and weeps If Orpheus looks at her Eurydice dies

fear

Modern

Mythology & Folklore

They had almost reached light. And as he walked, a space was left behind in the air like a keyhole in a door but him-shaped. And the door of the air was opening, opening so wide he had to turn to close it.

surprise

Modern

Mythology & Folklore

Though there are wild dogs Infesting the roads We have recitals, catalogues Of protected birds; And the rare pale sun To water our days. Men turn to savagery now or turn To the laws' Immutable black and red. To be judged for his song, Traversing the still-moist dead, The newly-stung, Love goes, carrying compassion To the rawly-difficult; His countenance, his hands' motion, Serene even to a fault.

disgust

Modern

Mythology & Folklore

And she was there. The little boat Coasting the perilous isles of sleep, Zones of oblivion and despair, Stopped, for Eurydice was there. The foundering skiff could scarcely keep All that felicity afloat. As if we had left earth's frontier wood Long since and from this sea had won The lost original of the soul, The moment gave us pure and whole Each back to each, and swept us on Past every choice to boundless good. Forgiveness, truth, atonement, all Our love at once—till we could dare At last to turn our heads and see The poor ghost of Eurydice Still sitting in her silver chair, Alone in Hades' empty hall.

sadness

Modern

Mythology & Folklore

It was an adventure much could be made of: a walk On the shores of the darkest known river, Among the hooded, shoving crowds, by steaming rocks And rows of ruined huts half-buried in the muck; Then to the great court with its marble yard Whose emptiness gave him the creeps, and to sit there In the sunken silence of the place and speak Of what he had lost, what he still possessed of his loss, And, then, pulling out all the stops, describing her eyes, Her forehead where the golden light of evening spread, The curve of her neck, the slope of her shoulders, everything Down to her thighs and calves, letting, letting the words come, As if lifted from sleep, to drift upstream, Against the water's will, where all the condemned And pointless labor, stunned by his voice's cadence, Would come to a halt, and even the crazed, dishevelled Furies, for the first time, would weep, and the soot-filled Air would clear just enough for her, the lost bride, To step through the image of herself and be seen in the light. As everyone knows, this was the first great poem, Which was followed by days of sitting around In the houses of friends, with his head back, his eyes Closed, trying to will her return, but finding Only himself, again and again, trapped In the chill of his loss, and, finally, Without a w

fear

Modern

Mythology & Folklore

II,XII I Be ahead of all parting, as though it already were behind you, like the winter that has just gone by. For among these winters there is one so endlessly winter that only by wintering through it will your heart survive. Be forever dead in Eurydice—more gladly arise into the seamless life proclaimed in your song. Here, in the realm of decline, among momentary days, be the crystal cup that shattered even as it rang. Be—and yet know the great void where all things begin, the infinite source of your own most intense vibration, so that, this once, you may give it your perfect assent. To all that is used-up, and to all the muffled and dumb creatures in the world's full reserve, the unsayable sums, joyfully add yourself, and cancel the count.

sadness

Modern

Mythology & Folklore

Whether he will go on singing or not, knowing what he knows of the horror of this world: He was not wandering among meadows all this time. He was down there among the mouthless ones, among those with no fingers, those whose names are forbidden, those washed up eaten into among the gray stones of the shore where nobody goes through fear. Those with silence. He has been trying to sing love into existence again and he has failed. Yet he will continue to sing, in the stadium crowded with the already dead who raise their eyeless faces to listen to him; while the red flowers grow up and splatter open against the walls. They have cut off both his hands and soon they will tear his head from his body in one burst of furious refusal. He foresees this. Yet he will go on singing, and in praise. To sing is either praise or defiance. Praise is defiance.

fear

Modern

Mythology & Folklore

When Orpheus walked beneath the trees all the leaves were Eurydices when Orpheus looked into a well he saw the skies of hell when Orpheus took up his lyre he saw his funeral pyre on which the Maenads tossed his scattered limbs and hissed "Everything he did was wrong: love and theory, wife and song" yet when they picked up his head they kissed his mouth and said "All the lies these lips told kept us from ever growing old— now keep them wet eternally." And Orpheus saw them throw it in the sea

anger

Modern

Mythology & Folklore

therefore to open mouth, and let the voice flayed, and eaten, piece by lean piece, and with what savorings, and with what shovings of the greasy fingers to the mouth, to get full flavors who, also, went down, and, came up, a coming back and, then, hid he fell to the cannibal girls after this

disgust

Modern

Mythology & Folklore

Of all the women whom I know it is Alcestis I most passionately admire, Who died for an unworthy man, being Sure that love was death And nothing more. Nothing is pure in Nature. Not childhood, nor infancy Nor the moment of begetting with its Too many images. Uneasy in my Labor, uneasy in my rest. In love Distressed; and in my loneliness quite lost— I walk out in this storm, as in a mind Deranged but not unclean; Alcestis is my dream, who died forever And then rose—for three days mute and strange.

fear

Modern

Mythology & Folklore

She seeks him; but he shuns the love Of all who are phenomenal. Only reflection sanctifies, For him, the beauty she holds dear. All mass is burden; he sinks its power: Potential drowned, the perfect flower. He knelt to the one pure idea, Self-love: the perfect sacrifice. She calls and calls to him, till all The vacant world resounds with love. * Only reflection sanctifies, For him, the beauty she holds dear. He kneels to the one pure idea, Self-love: the perfect sacrifice. For he has shunned all forms of love That are, like hers, phenomenal. She calls and calls to him, till all The vacant world resounds with love. * Only reflection sanctifies, For him, the beauty she holds dear. She calls and calls to him, till all The vacant world resounds with love.

disgust

Modern

Mythology & Folklore

Himself the worshipped and the worshipper, He sought himself and was pursued, wooed, fired By Ms own heat of love. Again, again He tried to kiss the image in the well; Again, again his arms embraced the silver Elusive waters where his image shone.... * * * Then with his last "Good-bye," "Good-bye," said Echo. At this he placed his head deep in cool grasses While death shut fast his eyes....

neutral

Modern

Mythology & Folklore

So, even with a severed tongue, Philomela recounted her tribulations, weaving them one by one into her robe with patience and faith, with modest colors—violet, ash, white and black—and as is always true with works of art, there's an excess of black. All the rest— Procne, Tereus with his axe, their pursuit in Daulis, even the cutting out of the tongue—we consider insignificant, things we forget. That robe of hers is enough, secret and precise, and her transformation at the crucial moment into a nightingale. Still, we say: without all the rest, those things now contemptible, would this brilliant robe and the nightingale exist?

disgust

Modern

Mythology & Folklore

He who breaks Philomela's heart to save her from the pain of love is a liar a liar. What is the nightingale's sweet song it means get lost get lost. On these trees I'm the only male.

sadness

Modern

Mythology & Folklore

As though the mercury's under its tongue, it won't talk. As though with the mercury in its sphincter, immobile, by a leaf-coated pond a statue stands white like a blight of winter. After such snow, there is nothing indeed: the ins and outs of centuries, pestered heather. That's what coming full circle means— when your countenance starts to resemble weather, when Pygmalion's vanished. And you are free to cloud your folds, to bare the navel. Future at last! That is, bleached debris of a glacier amid the five-lettered "never." Hence the routine of a goddess, nee alabaster, that lets roving pupils gorge on the heart of the color and temperature of the knee. That's what it looks like inside a virgin.

disgust

Modern

Mythology & Folklore

Niobe, your tears are your children now. See how we have multiplied.

neutral

Modern

Mythology & Folklore

The boy accepted them; His whole childhood in them, his difference From the others. The wings Gold, Gold for credence, Every feather of them. He believed more in the things Than I, and less. Familiar as speech, The family tongue. I remember New expedients, frauds, ridiculous In the real withering sun blazing Still. Who could have said More, losing the boy anyway, anyway In the bare field there old man, old potterer ...

anger

Modern

Mythology & Folklore

His memories of the labyrinth go numb with sleep. The single memory: how the calls and the confusion rose until at last they swung him up from the earth. And how all cleavings which have cried out always for their bridges in his breast slowly shut like eyelids, and how the birds swept past like shuttles, like arrows, and finally the last lark brushing his hand, falling like song. Then: the wind's labyrinth, with its blind bulls, cacophonous lights and inclines, with its dizzying breath which he through arduous struggle learned how to parry, until it rose again, his vision and his flight. Now he is rising alone, in a sky without clouds, in a space empty of birds in the din of the aircraft... rising towards a clearer and clearer sun, turning gradually cooler, turning cold, and upwards toward the spring of his blood, soul's cataract: a prisoner in a whistling lift, a seabubble's journey toward the looming magnetic air: the bursting of the foetal membrane, transparently near, and the vortex of signs, born of the springtide, raging of azure, crumbling walls, and drunkenly the call of the other side: Reality fallen Without reality born!

fear

Modern

Mythology & Folklore

He said he would be back and we'd drink wine together He said that everything would be better than before He said we were on the edge of a new relation He said he would never again cringe before his father He said that he was going to invent full-time He said he loved me that going into me He said was going into the world and the sky He said all the buckles were very firm He said the wax was the best wax He said Wait for me here on the beach He said Just don't cry I remember the gulls and the waves I remember the islands going dark on the sea I remember the girls laughing I remember they said he only wanted to get away from me I remember mother saying: Inventors are like poets, a trashy lot I remember she said those who try out inventions are worse I remember she added: Women who love such are the worst of all I have been waiting all day, or perhaps longer. I would have liked to try those wings myself. It would have been better than this.

fear

Modern

Mythology & Folklore

The gift from above the penalty from above— threads of the same spool. If it weren't for his wings who would have known that Icarus was a fool?

anger

Modern

Mythology & Folklore

From the ascending jet the cities recede like a wilderness of expanding constellations like the heroic past. If engines falter what to fall back on what underlies us but universal darkness pocked with fleeing stars? We do most fear to fall into no thing but falling. They have blown out even the flaming sun by which God candled this egg shaped earth saw in its molten yolk a stir of feathers set it warm to brood nested in orbit. From this dark egg we all have hatched we Icarus, at moth to a doomed star now free-fall out of time.

fear

Modern

Mythology & Folklore

Aging, the mind contracts and learns to do with less: out of itself exacts a filament, a tress to trap the lightest prize, a joy too fine for sense, that passion would despise but for its impotence.

joy

Modern

Mythology & Folklore

Love which is the most difficult mystery Asking from every young one answers And most from those most eager and most beautiful— Love is a bird in a fist: To hold it hides it, to look at it lets it go. It will twist loose if you lift so much as a finger. It will stay if you cover it—stay but unknown and invisible. Either you keep it forever with fist closed Or let it fling Singing in fervor of sun and in song vanish. There is no answer other to this mystery.

neutral

Modern

Mythology & Folklore

When Psyche—life—goes down to the shades, To search for Persephone in the translucent forest, A blind swallow flings itself at her feet With Stygian tenderness and a green twig. A throng of shades rushes towards the fugitive, Greeting the new companion with lamentations, And they wring their weak hands at her With bewilderment, shyly hopeful. One holds out a mirror, another a flask of perfume— The soul is a woman after all, she likes trinkets, And the leafless forest of transparent voices Is sprinkled with dry laments like fine rain. And not knowing where to begin in this tender commotion, The soul does not recognize the transparent groves; She breathes on the mirror and delays handing over The copper lozenge for the foggy ferrying

fear

Modern

Mythology & Folklore

My fate is cruel? No doubt it makes you think Of Dante, how I'm in it up to here. The pool is warm, I tell myself; to drink It wouldn't cool me anyway, so tears Are not in order. And to eat the fruit That hangs above me on that long, lone branch Would only lead to fouling what I stand In. No, it's better this way. This way suits Me fine, thank you. In water free of stench, I contemplate one perfect apple wind Would only blow away were I to reach. Weep not for me, my gentle reader. Each Man wants some object that will always tease And taunt. The trick is learning to be pleased.

disgust

Modern

Mythology & Folklore

Sits at the window, waits the threatened steel as any common housewife waits near dark for groceries that should have come at four, when it's too late to phone to hear they're certain, to know the boy is pedalling up the hill and not gone home. A boy who's late— it could be simply that, so still her hands. Two or three birds. Bare branches. A thrush taps on the gravel, tilts its head. Her eyes, she thinks, could hold it if she wanted, could make it come up close, think this is home. Sits there, her folded hands, her lips cold, the expected blade already on her skin. A piece of wind no bigger than a man moves the dead leaves, bends the sopping grass. A blind cord knocks the window like a drum. 'Perseus, stalwart, honest, comes his way, his footstep nicks the corners of the day, like something hard against a grey, chipped stone.' The stone he says she makes with those grey eyes. Jade in the dusk. Heavier than grey. And when he comes, how talk moves like a mirror, a polished shield, in shadows, then in light, always his care to stay behind its hurt. Talks of her greatest gift—to deck out men in stone: stone heart, stone limbs, the lot. Turns men to stone, turns them to herself. 'The only way to end, for both our good.' And like a man who shows off coins or gems he lets his words fal

fear

Modern

Mythology & Folklore

Perseus on an ornamental charger, German work, sixteenth century, Hovering above the slumbering Medusa Like a buzzing fly or a mosquito On beaten, golden wings. His head averted From her agate gaze. In his right hand A sword, in his left a mirror. Helmeted by night, slipshod by darkness. Wondering where to strike. She looks asleep As if dreaming of petrified forests, Monumental dryads, stone leaves, stone limbs, Or of the mate that she will never meet Who will look into her eyes and live.

fear

Modern

Mythology & Folklore

Heracles, mighty son offair-ankled Alkmene, accomplished his grim labors.... Blessed is he.' His exploits all finished, he is now among the gods, griefless and ageless forever.

sadness

Modern

Mythology & Folklore

For (no one left) pretending not to care Becomes an academic exercise: I could as easily hold up the skies As sit here writing in a summer chair Or find that voluntary garden where I can assert my title to the prize That's mine if I unravel the disguise, That doubleness we live in as in air. I do care. Even at the eleventh hour One has to hope for a miraculous birth, Though from the golden tree the dragons sigh Who have the whole of life within their power, Who will yield nothing. And the widowed earth Will sit there bravely smiling and not cry.

joy

Modern

Mythology & Folklore

They are not dead, they are not dead! Now that the sun, like a lion, licks his paws and goes slowly down the hill: now that the moon, who remembers, and only cares that we should be lovely in the flesh, with bright, crescent feet, pauses near the crest of the hill, climbing slowly, like a queen looking down on the lion as he retreats— Now the sea is the Argonauts' sea, and in the dawn Odysseus calls the commands, as he steers past those foamy islands; wait, wait, don't bring me the coffee yet, nor the pain grille. The dawn is not off the sea, and Odysseus' ships have not yet passed the islands, I must watch them still.

neutral

Modern

Mythology & Folklore

Jason swore that his hand was hers forever. She took him at his word.... * # * There Medea found Jason remarried, and with her deadly spells She burnt his bride to ashes while two seas Witnessed the flames that poured from Jason's halls. Even then her blood-red steel had pierced the bodies Of their two sons; yet she escaped the edge of Jason's sword by taking refuge in her Dragon's car, those flying monsters born Of Titan's blood.

anger

Modern

Mythology & Folklore

Anguish and revenge made visible, her serpents lifted Medea above pity and horror of the enacted Crime; murderess to herself most cruel, Absolute in power of absolute loss, Invulnerable by human justice or human hate, Apollo whose ancestral fire seethed in her veins Snatched among the gods who acknowledge only The truth of life, fulfilled in her To the last bitter blood-drop of her being. On amphora and crater apotheosis Has raised into the myths of Greece the barbarous Wronged woman whose outstretched parting hand Warns that there are furies among the immortals, That anguish is an avenging frenzy Of passionate love that slaughters her own children. What could earth-bound Jason who rated calculation above the gods Answer Medea departing on the dragon-chariot of her desolation?

anger

Modern

Mythology & Folklore

All through the blazing afternoon The hand drums talk together like locusts; The flute pours out its endless, thin stream, Threading it in and out the clatter of sticks upon wood-blocks. Drums and bells exchange handfulls of bright coins, Drums and bells scatter their music, like pennies, all over the air, And see, the lutanist's thin hand Rapidly picks the spangling notes off from his wires And throws them about like drops of water. Behind the bamboo blinds, Behind the palms, In the green, sundappled apartments of her palace Redslippered Ariadne, with a tiny yawn, Tosses a ball upon her roulette wheel. Suddenly, dead north, A Greek ship leaps over the horizon, skips like a colt, paws the foam. The ship courses through the pasture of bright amethysts And whinnies at the jetty. The whole city runs to see: Quick as closing your hand The racing sail's down. Then the drums are stunned, and the crowd, exalted, cries: O Theseus! O Grecian hero! Like a thought through the mind Ariadne moves to the window. Arrows of light, in every direction, Leap from the armor of the black-eyed captain. Arrows of light Resound within her like the strings of a guitar.

surprise

Modern

Mythology & Folklore

The Sphinx has fallen upon him with teeth and nails outstretched and with the full ferocity of life. Oedipus fell at her first onslaught, her first appearance horrified him— until then he had never imagined such a face or such talk. But for all the monster's leaning her two legs on Oedipus' breast, he recovers quickly—and now he has no fear of her at all, because he has the solution ready and will win. And yet he is not joyful over this victory. His fully melancholy gaze is not turned on the Sphinx, beyond he sees the narrow road that leads to Thebes, and that finally will end at Colonus. And his soul is clearly and prophetically aware that there the Sphinx will speak to him again with more difficult and with more extensive riddles that have no answer.

sadness

Modern

Mythology & Folklore

Not to have guessed is better: what is, ends, But among fellows, with reluctance, Clasped by the Woman-Breasted, Lion-Pawed. To have clasped in one's own arms a mother, To have killed with one's own hands a father —Is not this, Lame One, to have been alone? The seer is doomed for seeing; and to understand Is to pluck out one's own eyes with one's own hands. But speak: what has a woman's breasts, a lion's paws? You stand at midday in the marketplace Before your life: to see is to have spoken. —Yet to see, Blind One, is to be alone.

fear

Modern

Mythology & Folklore

So I spoke in a chorus of three different voices: of a gun-shy banshee, of a landlocked merman, of Orpheus himself wih a bad case of laryngitis, and said, Where is this performance getting us? And the Sphinx—at least I took her for the Sphinx: according to the sextant, the fix seemed right for the road to Thebes, and she had the same firm hoyden impersonal breasts that Ingres endows her with— said, "Not much of anywhere as far as I can tell. Where are you trying to get to?" Nowhere that I know of. "Then you are heading the wrong way, turning your back on it. This is the road from nowhere that you know of to nowhere that you don't know of." Is there much difference? "How should I know? All that I've been to is the nowhere that / know of." So I scuffed it all out and started over again.

neutral

Modern

Mythology & Folklore

In the zero of the night, in the lipping hour, Skin-time, knocking-time, when the heart is pearled And the moon squanders its uranian gold, She taunted me, who was all music's tongue, Philosophy's and wilderness's breed, Of shifting shape, half jungle-cat, half-dancer, Night's woman-petaled, lion-scented rose, To whom I gave, out of a hero's need, The dolor of my thrust, my riddling answer, Whose force no lesser mortal knows. Dangerous? Yes, as nervous oracles foretold Who could not guess the secret taste of her: Impossible wine! I came into the world To fill a fate; am punished by my youth No more. What if dog-faced logic howls Was it art or magic multiplied my joy? Nature has reasons beyond true or false. We played like metaphysic animals Whose freedom made our knowledge bold Before the tragic curtain of the day: I can bear the dishonor now of growing old. Blinded and old, exiled, diseased, and scorned— The verdict's bitten on the brazen gates, For the gods grant each of us his lot, his term. Hail to the King of Thebes!—my self, ordained To satisfy the impulse of the worm, Bemummied in those famous incestuous sheets, The bloodiest flags of nations of the curse, To be hung from the balcony outside the room Where I encounter my most flagrant source. Children, grandchildren, my lo

fear

Modern

Mythology & Folklore

Remembered on the Peloponnesian roads, He and his serving-boy and his concubine, White-headed and light-hearted, their true wits gone Past the last stroke of time into a day Without a yesterday or a to-morrow, A brightness laid like a blue lake around them, Or endless field to play or linger in. They were so gay and innocent, you'd have thought A god had won a glorious prize for them In some celestial field, and the odds were gone, Fate sent on holiday, the earth and heaven Thenceforth in endless friendly talk together. They were quite storyless and had clean forgotten That memory burning in another world; But they too leaf-light now for any story. If anyone spoke a word of other guilt By chance before them, then they stamped their feet In rage and gnashed their teeth like peevish children. But then forgot. The road their welcoming home. They would not stay in a house or let a door Be shut on them. The surly Spartan farmers Were kind to them, pitying their happiness

neutral

Modern

Mythology & Folklore

Blind Oedipus is old, death sits at his side, its cold breath on his hand. If you lean close, you can hear him speak; "Cursed with words, yet still they are my eyes, and what I say I see: old men who put their sons on distant hills to die, and calling it god's will, those armies of the young are led to think the enemy is somewhere over there and so are spared the messenger's arrival with the news: the twisted root, the lame foot—your father's legacy to you, your mother dreaming the king's dream, the oracle mouthing his desires, the rain dark as we begin, like statues made of earth, to melt back into mud, eyes pouring water, faces streaked and losing shape, returning to earth— like the terra-cotta army buried in the tomb of the Emperor Qin, but this time no beautiful figures to dig up, no one to comment on the exquisite realism, how each face is faithful to its original, the way each costume shows the rank, how the handsome horses flank imperial pride—only one common mud, earth closing over its own eyes ... we, who would give dumb matter voice, and to inherent numbers bring an intricate and abstract mirror, and span the distance between stars with the silver strands of mind, and link all difference in the shimmering bridge of imagery, and with blind molecules grow eyes and hands t

anger

Modern

Mythology & Folklore

Long afterwards the intelligent could deduce what had been offered and not recognized and they suggest that bitterness should be confined to the fact that the gods chose for their arbiter a mind and character so ordinary albeit a prince and brought up as a shepherd a calling he must have liked for he had returned to it when they stood before him the three naked feminine deathless and he realized that he was clothed in nothing but mortality the strap of his quiver of arrows crossing between his nipples making it seem stranger and he knew he must choose and on that day the one with the gray eyes spoke first and whatever she said he kept thinking he remembered but remembered it woven with confusion and fear the two faces that he called father the first sight of the palace where the brothers were strangers and the dogs watched him and refused to know him she made everything clear she was dazzling she offered it to him to have for his own but what he saw was the scorn above her eyes and her words of which he understood few all said to him Take -wisdom take power you will forget anyway the one with the dark eyes spoke and everything she said he imagined he had once wished for but in confusion and cowardice the crown of his father the crowns the crowns bowing to him his name everywhere

anger

Modern

Mythology & Folklore

Blue! Here I am, come out of the deadly caves 1b hear the thundering surf break on the shores And see those ships, when sunrise strikes the waves, Emerge from the dark with banks of golden oars. My lonely hands summon those majesties Whose salty beards amused my soft, light fingers. I cried. They sang of their nebulous victories And of those bays where the wake of their warships lingers. I hear the martial trumpets, the profound Sea shells beat a rhythm for the flying blades; The clear song of the oarsmen stills the storms, And the gods on heroic prows where the rollers pound, Their ancient smiles battered by foam cascades, Stretch out to me their indulgent, sculptured arms

sadness

Modern

Mythology & Folklore

There are rhymes in this world. Disjoin them, and it trembles. You were a blind man, Homer. Night sat on your eyebrows. Night, your singer's cloak. Night, on your eyes, like a shutter. Would a seeing man not have joined Achilles to Helen? Helen. Achilles. Name a better sounding match. For, in defiance of chaos The world thrives on accords. Yet, disjointed (with accord At its core) it seeks revenge In wifely unfaithfulness And the burning Troy. You were a blind man, bard. You littered fortune like trash. Those rhymes have been forged in that World, and as you draw them apart This world crumbles. Who needs An accord! Grow old, Helen! Achaia's best warrior! Sparta's sweet beauty! Nothing but the murmur Of myrtle, a lyre's dream: "Helen. Achilles. The couple kept apart."

fear

Modern

Mythology & Folklore

Teucer: ... in sea-girt Cypress, -where it was decreed by Apollo that I should live, giving the city the name ofSalamis in memory of my island home. * * * Helen: I never went to Troy; it was a phantom. * * * Servant: What? You mean it was only for a cloud that we struggled so much?

surprise

Modern

Mythology & Folklore

Wakefulness. Homer. Taut sails. I have read half the list of ships: The outstretched brood, the string of cranes That once soared over Hellas. Like a wedge of cranes into alien lands— Divine foam on the heads of the kings— Where are you sailing? Were it not for Helen, What would Troy be to you, Achaean men? The sea and Homer—both impelled by love. To whom shall I listen? And now Homer is silent, And a black sea, with its ornate noise, Approaches my pillow with a ponderous roar.

fear

Modern

Mythology & Folklore

From the first look I knew he was no good. That perfumed hair, those teeth, those smiling lips all said, "Come home with me." I knew I would. Love? Who can say? Daylight withdrew in strips along those vaulted archways waiting where the slaves would hear us whisper on the stair. Not smart, not interesting—no, not the best at anything, all talk and fingertips. The best I left behind; they're in those ships nosing your harbor. You can guess the rest. The heart does what it does, and done is done. Regret? What for? The future finds its Troys in every Sparta, and your fate was spun not by old crones, but pretty girls and boys

disgust

Modern

Mythology & Folklore

Iphigenia, led to sacrifice Between the piercing cries of those who weep for her, Serenely marches with the light And, face turned forward to the wind, Like victory riding a vessel's prow, Untouched, annihilates catastrophe.

sadness

Modern

Mythology & Folklore

The stairs lead to the room as bleak as glass Where fancy turns the statues. The empty chairs are dreaming of a protocol, The tables, of a treaty; And the world has become a museum. (The girl is gone, Fled from the broken altar by the beach, From the unholy sacrifice when calms became a trade-wind.) The palaces stare out from their uncurtained trouble, And windows weep in the weak sun. The women fear the empty upper rooms More than the streets as grey as guns Or the swordlight of the wide unfriendly esplanade. Thoughts turn to salt among those shrouded chairs Where, with knives no crueller than pens, or promises, Took place the painless slaying of the leader's daughter. O, humbler than the truth she bowed her head, And scarcely seemed, to us, to die. But after she was killed she fled, alive, like a surprise, Out of the glass world, to Diana's Tauris. The wind cheered like a hero in the tackle of the standing ships And hurled them bravely on the swords and lances of the wintry sea— While wisdom turned to salt upon the broken piers. This is the way the ministers have killed the truth, our daughter, Steps lead back into the rooms we fear to enter; Our minds are bleaker than the hall of mirrors: And the world has become a museum.

fear

Modern

Mythology & Folklore

Little girls— skinny, resigned to freckles that won't go away, not turning any heads as they walk across the eyelids of the world, looking just like Mom or Dad, and sincerely horrified by it— in the middle of dinner, in the middle of a book, while studying the mirror, may suddenly be taken off to Troy. In the grand boudoir of a wink they all turn into beautiful Helens. They ascend the royal staircase in the rustling of silk and admiration. They feel light. They all know that beauty equals rest, that lips mold the speech's meaning, and gestures sculpt themselves in inspired nonchalance. Their small faces worth dismissing envoys for extend proudly on necks that merit countless sieges. Those tall, dark movie stars, their girlfriends' older brothers, the teacher from art class, alas, they must all be slain. Little girls observe disaster from a tower of smiles. Litttle girls wring their hands in intoxicating mock despair. Little girls against a backdrop of destruction, with flaming towns for tiaras, in earrings of pandemic lamentation. Pale and tearless. Triumphant. Sated with view. Dreading only the inevitable moment of return. Little girls returning.

fear

Modern

Mythology & Folklore

Seeing that Patroclos was slaughtered, who was so manly, strong, and young, the horses of Achilles began weeping; their deathless nature leapt in rage at this accomplishment of death. They waved their heads, and shook their long manes; with their hooves they struck the earth, and lamented, knowing Patroclos was lifeless, ruined, base flesh now—his mind lost— undefended, breathless, returning to the great Nothing out of life. Zeus saw the deathless horses' tears and pity moved him. "It was wrong," he said, "for me to act so carelessly at Peleus' wedding feast. Not giving you would have been better, my poor horses. What could you have found, degraded there, with miserable mankind, the plaything of Fate? Exempt from death, exempt from age, time's offending rule still subjects you. Men have tied you on their racks." And yet not that, but death's eternal ruin still forced the tears from these two noble beasts

anger

Modern

Mythology & Folklore

She looked over his shoulder For vines and olive trees, Marble well-governed cities And ships upon untamed seas, But there on the shining metal His hands had put instead An artificial wilderness And a sky like lead. A plain without a feature, bare and brown, No blade of grass, no sign of neighborhood, Nothing to eat and nowhere to sit down, Yet, congregated on its blankness, stood An unintelligible multitude. A million eyes, a million boots in line, Without expression, waiting for a sign. Out of the air a voice without a face Proved by statistics that some cause was just In tones as dry and level as the place: No one was cheered and nothing was discussed; Column by column in a cloud of dust They marched away enduring a belief Whose logic brought them, somewhere else, to grief. She looked over his shoulder For ritual pieties, White flower-garlanded heifers, Libation and sacrifice, But there on the shining metal Where the altar should have been, She saw by his flickering forge-light Quite another scene. Barbed wire enclosed an arbitrary spot Where bored officials lounged (one cracked a joke) And sentries sweated for the day was hot: A crowd of ordinary decent folk Watched from without and neither moved nor spoke As three pale figures were led forth and bound To three posts driven u

sadness

Modern

Mythology & Folklore

"... glorious Hector, quickly lifting the helmet from his head, set it down on the ground, fiery in the sunlight, and raising his son he kissed him, tossed him, in his arms, lifting a prayer to Zeus and the other deathless gods: "Zeus, all you immortals! Grant this boy, my son, may be like me, first in glory among the Trojans, strong and brave like me, and rule all Troy in power and one day let them say, "He is a better man than hisfather!'- when he comes home from battle bearing the bloody gear of the mortal enemy he has killed in war— a joy to his mother's heart.

anger

Modern

Mythology & Folklore

When shiny Hector reached out for his son, the wean Squimed and buried his head between his nurse's breasts And howled, terrorised by his father, by flashing bronze And the nightmarish nodding of the horse-hair crest. His daddy laughed, his mammy laughed, and his daddy Took off the helmet and laid it on the ground to gleam, Then kissed the babbie and dandled him in his arms and Prayed that his son might grow up bloodier than him.

fear

Modern

Mythology & Folklore

A tower, no ivy, I. The wind was powerless, horns lunging round and round me like a bull's. It stirred up clouds of dust to north and south and in quarters I've forgotten or never knew. But I endured, foundations deep in earth, walls broad, heart strong and warm within, defending my own brood. Sorrow was closer kin than any of those. Not the favorite, not the eldest. But a kinsman agreeable in the chores, humble at table, a shadowy teller of tales beside the fire. There were times he went off hunting far away at the masculine call of his steady pulse, his eye sharp on the target. He returned with game, consigned it to a helper shrewd with the knife and the zealous care of women. On retiring I'd say: What a fine piece of work my hands are weaving out of the hours. From girlhood on I kept before my eyes a handsome sampler; was ambitious to copy its figure; wished no more. Unmarried, I lived chaste while that was right; later was loyal to one, to my own husband. Never a dawn that found me still asleep, never a night that overtook me till the beehive hum of my home had sunk to rest. The house of my lord was rich with works of my hand; his lands stretched out to horizons. And so that his name would not die when his body died, he had sons of me; they were valiant sons; had stamina. Of

fear

Modern

Mythology & Folklore

Clytemnestra opens the window, looks at herself in the glass to put on her new hat. Agamemnon stands in the vestibule, lights a cigarette, and waits for his wife. Aegisthus comes in at the main door. He doesn't know that Agamemnon returned home last night. They meet on the stairs. Clytemnestra suggests that they go to the theatre. From now on they will be going out a lot together. Electra works in the cooperative. Orestes studies pharmacology. Soon he'll marry his careless classmate with the pale complexion and eyes continually filled with tears.

neutral

Modern

Mythology & Folklore

On the Mycenae road with its eucalyptus trees you can find resiny wine and cheese of sheep's milk "A la belle Helene de Menelas," a tavern that leads thought away from the blood of the Atridae. Your palace, Agamemnon, is a bandits' hide-out under Mount Zara, of stone unscratched by roots, perched over twisted ravines. The poets speak much of you, of the crime invented in your house of crises, of Electra's sombre frenzy, for ten years drawing her distant brother to matricide with the eye of her sex; the diabolical speak of the queen's logic—wife of the absent soldier Agamemnon, mind, sword betrayed. And you alone are lost Orestes, your face vanished without a golden mask. To the Lions of the gate, and skeletons of the scenic harmony raised by philologists of the stones, greetings from a Greek Sicilian

disgust

Modern

Mythology & Folklore

I myself saw furious with blood Neoptolemus, at his side the black Atridae, Hecuba and the hundred daughters, Priam Cut down, his filth drenching the holy fires. In that extremity I bore me well, A true gentleman, valorous in arms, Disinterested and honourable. Then fled: That was a time when civilization Run by the few fell to the many, and Crashed to the shout of men, the clang of arms: Cold victualing I seized, I hoisted up The old man my father upon my back, In the smoke made by sea for a new world Saving little—a mind imperishable If time is, a love of past things tenuous As the hesitation of receding love. (To the reduction of uncitied littorals We brought chiefly the vigor of prophecy, Our hunger breeding calculation And fixed triumphs.) I saw the thirsty dove In the glowing fields of Troy, hemp ripening And tawny corn, the thickening Blue Grass All lying rich forever in the green sun. I see all things apart, the towers that men Contrive I too contrived long, long ago. Now I demand little. The singular passion Abides its object and consumes desire In the circling shadow of its appetite. There was a time when the young eyes were slow, Their flame steady beyond the firstling fire, I stood in the rain, far from home at nightfall By the Potomac, the great Dome lit the water, T

anger

Modern

Mythology & Folklore

O sad Ulysses in decline, seer of terrible omens, does no sweetness in your soul foment Desire fora pale dreamer of shipwrecks, who loves you?

sadness

Modern

Mythology & Folklore

Aft, he sleeps, un twitching, he has seen all places and been made to suffer, they call him godlike, the ship rides the wine-dark waves, he is on his way home, he sleeps.

neutral

Modern

Mythology & Folklore

Pity Ulysses, fondly sure his men exulted in their pure recovered forms and burned to think what shame befell from Circe's drink. Be glad he never did awaken nights when heroes, memory-shaken, sicken with longing for the sty, the brutal tusk, the leering eye.

anger

Modern

Mythology & Folklore

I never turned anyone into a pig. Some people are pigs; I make them look like pigs. I'm sick of your world that lets the outside disguise the inside. Your men weren't bad men; undisciplined life did that to them. As pigs, under the care of me and my ladies, they sweetened right up. Then I reversed the spell, showing you my goodness as well as my power. I saw we could be happy here, as men and women are when their needs are simple. In the same breath, I foresaw your departure, your men with my help braving the crying and pounding sea. You think a few tears upset me? My friend, every sorceress is a pragmatist at heart; nobody sees essence who can't face limitation. If I wanted only to hold you I could hold you prisoner.

disgust

Modern

Mythology & Folklore

Nightmare of beasthood, snorting, how to wake. I woke. What beasthood skin she made me take? Leathery toad that ruts for days on end, Or cringing dribbling dog, man's servile friend, Or cat that prettily pounces on its meat, Tortures it hours, then does not care to eat: Parrot, moth, shark, wolf, crocodile, ass, flea. What germs, what jostling mobs there were in me. These seem like bristles, and the hide is tough. No claw or web here: each foot ends in hoof. Into what bulk has method disappeared? Like ham, streaked. I am gross—grey, gross, flap-eared. The pale-lashed eyes my only human feature. My teeth tear, tear. I am the snouted creature That bites through anything, root, wire, or can. If I was not afraid I'd eat a man. Oh a man's flesh already is in mine. Hand and foot poised for risk. Buried in swine. I root and root, you think that it is greed, It is, but I seek out a plant I need. Direct me gods, whose changes are all holy, To where it flickers deep in grass, the moly: Cool flesh of magic in each leaf and shoot, From milky flower to the black forked root. From this fat dungeon I could rise to skin And human title, putting pig within. I push my big grey wet snout through the green, Dreaming the flower I have never seen

disgust

Modern

Mythology & Folklore

Her Telepathic-Station transmits thought-waves the second-rate, the bored, the disappointed, and any of us when tired or uneasy, are tuned to receive. So, though unlisted in atlas or phone-book, Her garden is easy to find. In no time one reaches the gate over which is written large: MAKE LOVE NOT WAR. Inside it is warm and still like a drowsy September day, though the leaves show no sign of turning. All around one notes the usual pinks and blues and reds, a shade over-emphasized. The rose-bushes have no thorns. An invisible orchestra plays the Great Masters: the technique is flawless, the rendering schmaltz. Of Herself no sign. But, just as the pilgrim is starting to wonder 'Have I been hoaxed by a myth?', he feels Her hand in his and hears Her murmuring: At last! With me, mistaught one, you shall learn the answers. What is conscience but a nattering fish-wife, the Tree of Knowledge but the splintered main-mast of the Ship of Fools? Consent, you poor alien, to my arms where sequence is conquered, division abolished: soon, soon, in the perfect orgasm, you shall, pet, be one with the All. She does not brutalize her victims (beasts could bite or bolt). She simplifies them to flowers, sessile fatalists who don't mind and only can talk to themselves. All but a privileged Few, the elit

neutral

Modern

Mythology & Folklore

a personal note (re: visitation) always pyrotechnics; stars spinning into phalluses of light, serpents promising sweetness, their forked tongues thick and erect, patriarchs of bird exposing themselves in the air. this skin is sick with loneliness. You want what a man wants, next time come as a man or don't come.

disgust

Modern

Mythology & Folklore

in Just- spring when the world is mud- luscious the little lame balloonman whistles far and wee and eddieandbill come running from marbles and piracies and it's spring when the world is puddle-wonderful the queer old balloonman whistles far and wee and bettyandisbel come dancing from hop-scotch and jump-rope and it's spring and the goat-footed balloonMan whistles far and wee

joy

Modern

Mythology & Folklore

We passed old farmer Boothby in the field. Rugged and straight he stood; his body steeled With stubbornness and age. We met his eyes That never flinched or turned to compromise, And Luck, he cried, good luck!and waved an arm, Knotted and sailor-like, such as no farm In all of Maine could boast of; and away He turned again to pitch his new-cut hay... We walked on leisurely until a bend Showed him once more, now working toward the end Of one great path; wearing his eighty years Like banners lifted in a wind of cheers. Then we turned off abruptlytook the road Cutting the village, the one with the commanding View of the river. And we strode More briskly now to the long pier that showed Where the frail boats were kept at Indian Landing. In the canoe we stepped; our paddles dipped Leisurely downwards, and the slim bark slipped More on than in the water. Smoothly then We shot its nose against the rippling current, Feeling the rising rivers half-deterrent Pull on the paddle as we turned the blade To keep from swerving round; while we delayed To watch the curious wave-eaten locks; Or pass, with lazy turns, the picnic-rocks.... Blue eels flew under us, and fishes darted A thousand ways; the once broad channel shrunk. And over us the wise and noble-hearted Twi

neutral

Modern

Mythology & Folklore

The difficulty to think at the end of day, When the shapeless shadow covers the sun And nothing is left except light on your fur— There was the cat slopping its milk all day, Fat cat, red tongue, green mind, white milk And August the most peaceful month. To be, in the grass, in the peacefullest time, Without that monument of cat, The cat forgotten in the moon; And to feel that the light is a rabbit-light, In which everything is meant for you And nothing need be explained; Then there is nothing to think of. It comes of itself; And east rushes west and west rushes down, No matter. The grass is full And full of yourself. The trees around are for you, The whole of the wideness of night is for you, A self that touches all edges, You become a self that fills the four corners of night. The red cat hides away in the fur-light And there you are humped high, humped up, You are humped higher and higher, black as stone— You sit with your head like a carving in space And the little green cat is a bug in the grass.

sadness

Modern

Mythology & Folklore

Living, I had no might To make you hear, Now, in the inmost night, I am so near No whisper, falling light, Divides us, dear. Living, I had no claim On your great hours. Now the thin candle-flame, The closing flowers, Wed summer with my name, And these are ours. Your shadow on the dust, Strength, and a cry, Delight, despair, mistrust, All these am I. Dawn, and the far hills thrust To a far sky. Living, I had no skill To stay your tread, Now all that was my will Silence has said. We are one for good and ill Since I am dead.

fear

Modern

Mythology & Folklore

Knock knock He has closed his door The gardens lilies have started to rot So who is the corpse being carried from the house You just knocked on his door And trot trot Trot goes little lady mouse Translated from the French

fear

Modern

Nature

I have built a house in the middle of the Ocean Its windows are the rivers flowing from my eyes Octopi are crawling all over where the walls are Hear their triple hearts beat and their beaks peck against the windowpanes House of dampness House of burning Seasons fastness Season singing The airplanes are laying eggs Watch out for the dropping of the anchor Watch out for the shooting black ichor It would be good if you were to come from the sky The skys honeysuckle is climbing The earthly octopi are throbbing And so very many of us have become our own gravediggers Pale octopi of the chalky waves O octopi with pale beaks Around the house is this ocean that you know well And is never still Translated from the French

fear

Modern

Nature

The palm at the end of the mind, Beyond the last thought, rises In the bronze decor, A gold-feathered bird Sings in the palm, without human meaning, Without human feeling, a foreign song. You know then that it is not the reason That makes us happy or unhappy. The bird sings. Its feathers shine. The palm stands on the edge of space. The wind moves slowly in the branches. The bird's fire-fangled feathers dangle down.

disgust

Modern

Nature

I My Soul. I summon to the winding ancient stair; Set all your mind upon the steep ascent, Upon the broken, crumbling battlement, Upon the breathless starlit air, Upon the star that marks the hidden pole; Fix every wandering thought upon That quarter where all thought is done: Who can distinguish darkness from the soul? My Self. The consecrated blade upon my knees Is Sato's ancient blade, still as it was, Still razor-keen, still like a looking-glass Unspotted by the centuries; That flowering, silken, old embroidery, torn From some court-lady's dress and round The wooden scabbard bound and wound, Can, tattered, still protect, faded adorn. My Soul. Why should the imagination of a man Long past his prime remember things that are Emblematical of love and war? Think of ancestral night that can, If but imagination scorn the earth And intellect its wandering To this and that and t'other thing, Deliver from the crime of death and birth. My Self. Montashigi, third of his family, fashioned it Five hundred years ago, about it lie Flowers from I know not what embroidery— Heart's purple—and all these I set For emblems of the day against the tower Emblematical of the night, And claim as by a soldier's right

fear

Modern

Nature

The unpurged images of day recede; The Emperor's drunken soldiery are abed; Night resonance recedes, night-walkers' song After great cathedral gong; A starlit or a moonlit dome disdains All that man is, All mere complexities, The fury and the mire of human veins. Before me floats an image, man or shade, Shade more than man, more image than a shade; For Hades' bobbin bound in mummy-cloth May unwind the winding path; A mouth that has no moisture and no breath Breathless mouths may summon; I hail the superhuman; I call it death-in-life and life-in-death. Miracle, bird or golden handiwork, More miracle than bird or handiwork, Planted on the starlit golden bough, Can like the cocks of Hades crow, Or, by the moon embittered, scorn aloud In glory of changeless metal Common bird or petal And all complexities of mire or blood. At midnight on the Emperor's pavement flit Flames that no faggot feeds, nor steel has lit, Nor storm disturbs, flames begotten of flame, Where blood-begotten spirits come And all complexities of fury leave, Dying into a dance, An agony of trance, An agony of flame that cannot singe a sleeve. Astraddle on the dolphin's mire and blood, Spirit after spirit! The smithies break the flood, The golden smithies of the Emperor! Marbles of the dancing floor Break bitter f

anger

Modern

Nature

O sweet everlasting Voices, be still; Go to the guards of the heavenly fold And bid them wander obeying your will, Flame under flame, till Time be no more; Have you not heard that our hearts are old, That you call in birds, in wind on the hill, In shaken boughs, in tide on the shore? O sweet everlasting Voices, be still.

fear

Modern

Nature

Although you hide in the ebb and flow Of the pale tide when the moon has set, The people of coming days will know About the casting out of my net, And how you have leaped times out of mind Over the little silver cords, And think that you were hard and unkind, And blame you with many bitter words.

anger

Modern

Nature

She that but little patience knew, From childhood on, had now so much A grey gull lost its fear and flew Down to her cell and there alit, And there endured her fingers' touch And from her fingers ate its bit. Did she in touching that lone wing Recall the years before her mind Became a bitter, an abstract thing, Her thought some popular enmity: Blind and leader of the blind Drinking the foul ditch where they lie? When long ago I saw her ride Under Ben Bulben to the meet, The beauty of her country-side With all youth's lonely wildness stirred, She seemed to have grown clean and sweet Like any rock-bred, sea-borne bird: Sea-borne, or balanced in the air When first it sprang out of the nest Upon some lofty rock to stare Upon the cloudy canopy, While under its storm-beaten breast Cried out the hollows of the sea.

anger

Modern

Nature

There was a man whom Sorrow named his friend, And he, of his high comrade Sorrow dreaming, Went walking with slow steps along the gleaming And humming sands, where windy surges wend: And he called loudly to the stars to bend From their pale thrones and comfort him, but they Among themselves laugh on and sing alway: And then the man whom Sorrow named his friend Cried out, Dim sea, hear my most piteous story! The sea swept on and cried her old cry still, Rolling along in dreams from hill to hill. He fled the persecution of her glory And, in a far-off, gentle valley stopping, Cried all his story to the dewdrops glistening. But naught they heard, for they are always listening, The dewdrops, for the sound of their own dropping. And then the man whom Sorrow named his friend Sought once again the shore, and found a shell, And thought, I will my heavy story tell Till my own words, re-echoing, shall send Their sadness through a hollow, pearly heart; And my own tale again for me shall sing, And my own whispering words be comforting, And lo! my ancient burden may depart. Then he sang softly nigh the pearly rim; But the sad dweller by the sea-ways lone Changed all he sang to inarticulate moan Among her wildering whirls, forgetting him.

sadness

Modern

Nature

The woods of Arcady are dead, And over is their antique joy; Of old the world on dreaming fed; Grey Truth is now her painted toy; Yet still she turns her restless head: But O, sick children of the world, Of all the many changing things In dreary dancing past us whirled, To the cracked tune that Chronos sings, Words alone are certain good. Where are now the warring kings, Word be-mockers? By the Rood Where are now the warring kings? An idle word is now their glory, By the stammering schoolboy said, Reading some entangled story: The kings of the old time are dead; The wandering earth herself may be Only a sudden flaming word, In clanging space a moment heard, Troubling the endless reverie. Then nowise worship dusty deeds, Nor seek, for this is also sooth, To hunger fiercely after truth, Lest all thy toiling only breeds New dreams, new dreams; there is no truth Saving in thine own heart. Seek, then, No learning from the starry men, Who follow with the optic glass The whirling ways of stars that pass Seek, then, for this is also sooth, No word of theirs the cold star-bane Has cloven and rent their hearts in twain, And dead is all their human truth. Go gather by the humming sea Some twisted, echo-harbouring shell, And to its lips thy story tel

sadness

Modern

Nature

There it was, word for word, The poem that took the place of a mountain. He breathed its oxygen, Even when the book lay turned in the dust of his table. It reminded him how he had needed A place to go to in his own direction, How he had recomposed the pines, Shifted the rocks and picked his way among clouds, For the outlook that would be right, Where he would be complete in an unexplained completion: The exact rock where his inexactnesses Would discover, at last, the view toward which they had edged, Where he could lie and, gazing down at the sea, Recognize his unique and solitary home.

neutral

Modern

Nature

By a peninsula the painter sat and Sketched the uneven valley groves. The apostle gave alms to the Meek. The volcano burst In fusive sulphur and hurled Rocks and ore into the air Heavens sudden change at The drawing tempestuous, Darkening shade of dense clouded hues. The wanderer soon chose His spot of rest; they bore the Chosen hero upon their shoulders, Whom they strangely admired, as The beach-tide summer of people desired.

fear

Modern

Nature

Is this the river East I heard? Where the ferries, tugs and sailboats stirred And the reaching wharves from the inner land Ourstretched, like the harmless receiving hand And the silvery tinge that sparkles aloud Like the brilliant white demons, which a tide has towed From the rays of the morning sun Which it doth ceaselessly shine upon. But look at the depth of the drippling tide The dripples, reripples like the locusts astride; As the boat turns upon the silvery spread It leavesstrangea shadow dead. And the very charms from the reflective river And from the stacks of the floating boat There seemeth the quality neer to dissever Like the ruffles from the mystified smoke.

fear

Modern

Nature

The motion of gathering loops of water Must either burst or remain in a moment. The violet colors through the glass Throw up little swellings that appear And spatter as soon as another strikes And is born; so pure are they of colored Hues, that we feel the absent strength Of its power. When they begin they gather Like sand on the beach: each bubble Contains a complete eye of water.

anger

Modern

Nature

I went out to the hazel wood, Because a fire was in my head, And cut and peeled a hazel wand, And hooked a berry to a thread; And when white moths were on the wing, And moth-like stars were flickering out, I dropped the berry in a stream And caught a little silver trout. When I had laid it on the floor I went to blow the fire a-flame, But something rustled on the floor, And someone called me by my name: It had become a glimmering girl With apple blossom in her hair Who called me by my name and ran And faded through the brightening air. Though I am old with wandering Through hollow lands and hilly lands, I will find out where she has gone, And kiss her lips and take her hands; And walk among long dappled grass, And pluck till time and times are done, The silver apples of the moon, The golden apples of the sun.

neutral

Modern

Nature