Off The Shelf Resumes

Remembrance

by Sir Thomas Wyatt

 

 

They flee from me, that sometime did me seek

    With naked foot, stalking in my chamber.

I have seen them gentle, tame, and meek,

    That now are wild, and do not remember

    That sometime they put themselves in danger

         To take bread at my hand; and now they range

         Busily seeking with a continual change.

Thanked be fortune it hath been otherwise

    Twenty times better; but once, in special,

In thin array, after a pleasant guise,

    When her loose gown from her shoulders did fall,

    And she me caught in her arms long and small;

         Therewith all sweetly did me kiss,

         And softly said, ‘Dear heart, how like you this?’

It was no dream: I lay broad waking:

    But all is turned, thorough my gentleness,

Into a strange fashion of forsaking;

    And I have leave to go of her goodness,

    And she also to use newfangleness.

         But since that I so kindly am served,

         I would fain know what she hath deserved.

 ~Sir Thomas Wyatt

def:  newfangleness: fickleness, infidelity




 Notes: When I began Verse Escape, six years ago now back in the heyday of blogging, I included a feature called Off The Shelf, where I shared the works of poets dead and living that in some manner spoke to me. Since at this point, my own output is so low, and the blog exists mostly for my own satisfaction (though my few kind readers are much appreciated) I've decided to once again do so, and the first entry in the reawakened series will be Remembrance,(also sometimes called by its first line, They Flee from Me That Sometime Did Me Seek) by Sir Thomas Wyatt.

Sir Thomas Wyatt was a 16th-century English ambassador and lyrical poet in the court of Henry VIII. He was a great innovator in popularizing many classical poetic forms  into the English language, including the sonnet.  

[Per wikipedia: "A significant amount of his literary output consists of translations and imitations of sonnets by the Italian poet Petrarch; he also wrote sonnets of his own. He took subject matter from Petrarch's sonnets, but his rhyme schemes make a significant departure. ...Wyatt employs the Petrarchan octave, but his most common sestet scheme is cddc ee. This marks the beginnings of an exclusively "English" contribution to sonnet structure, that is three quatrains and a closing couplet. 

In addition to imitations of works by the classical writers Seneca and Horace, he experimented in stanza forms including the rondeau, epigrams, terza rima, ottava rima songs, satires and also with monorime, triplets with refrains, quatrains with different length of line and rhyme schemes, quatrains with codas, and the French forms of douzaine and treizaine. Wyatt introduced contemporaries to his poulter's measure form ...and is acknowledged a master of the iambic tetrameter.^" ]

Several of his poems, including the often anthologized  Whoso List To Hunt, are reputed to be about Anne Boleyn, with whom he was rumored to have had an affair. This sent him to the Tower during Anne's trial for adultery, though unlike her and five of her alleged lovers, he escaped execution and remained more or less in the King's favor, as much as anyone can be said to have done so.

Wyatt died in 1542 at the age of 39. His poetry remained unpublished during his lifetime.

I like all of his work, but this poem in particular.

Images: Sir Thomas Wyatt, by Hans Holbein the Younger, 1535-37

Still Life With Animals, 1660, by Melchior d'Hondecoeter

Public Domain

Off The Shelf Archives ~ March

'All the best red flowers have black at the heart.' ~joyannjones (c)

There's no excuse for the archivist this time. I have simply been AWOL. But I'm here now, at least for the moment, to change out the dusty offering from months ago and replace it with another selection.

Lately, as one does when other, newer inspirations desert one, I've fallen back on the perennial favorites, like Lorca, in the last selection, and for this time, the poetry of Wallace Stevens. Over the years, I've found his work a rich mine of ideas and a never-failing, jaw-dropping source of linguistic mastery, and every re-reading yields a stronger appreciation.

So, this month's selection will be Connoisseur of Chaos, by Wallace Stevens, and you can find it here on the Off The Shelf Page.

Note to Readers: I will be taking a short breather and posting a little less frequently between now and next month, attempting to marshal my mental juices for April, National Poetry Month, when I habitually attempt to write a poem a day. This year, the Imaginary Garden with Real Toads will be offering support with daily challenges to all of us who engage in this effort, so hope to see you there.

~*~

And now without further babble, here is the last selection for a final perusal before it goes to gather dust permanently in the archives, Qasida of The Woman Prone, by Federico Gracia Lorca:

Qasida of the Woman Prone

To see you naked is to remember the Earth,

the smooth Earth, clean of horses,

the Earth without a reed, pure form

closed to the future: a confine of silver.

To see you naked is to understand the desire

of rain that searches for the delicate waist,

or the fever of the broad-faced sea

that cannot find the light of its cheek.

Blood will ring through the bedrooms

and will come with flashing swords,

but you will not know where the heart of the toad

or the violet has hidden.

Your womb is a struggle of roots.

Your lips are a dawn without contour.

Under the lukewarm roses of the bed,

the dead  moan waiting their turn.

~Federico Garcia Lorca

I have  changed or rearranged a few words and a bit of punctuation here and there  because I didn't agree with the translation in my book. The original poem is written in form, and I'm sure that's why to me some of the meaning was altered to fit it in English--I'd rather have the meaning. For those who can read it and would like to do their own interpreting, here is the original Spanish:

Casida IV

De la mujer tendida

Verte desnuda es recordar la Tierra,

la Tierra lisa, limpia de caballos.

La Tierra sin un junco, forma pura

cerrada al porvenir: confin de plata.

Verte desnuda es comprender el ansia

de la lluvia que busco debil talle.

o la fiebre del mar de immenso rostro

sin encontrar la luz de su mejilla.

La sangre sonará por los alcobas

y vendrá con espadas fulgurantes

pero tú no sabrás dónde se ocultan

el corazón de sapo o la violeta.

Tu vientre es una lucha de raíces,

tus labios son an alba sin contorno.

Bajo las rosas tibias de la cama

los muertos gimen esperando turno.

~Federico Garcia Lorca

Image: Black Magic, 1934, by Rene Magritte 

No copyright infringement is intended.

via wikipaintings.org

Off The Shelf Archive~January

We are halfway through the month and it just occurred to me that, other than online, I hadn't even read any poetry since before the Xmas horrordays. So last night I got out my Lorca, and lost my connection to reality for several hours in his ability to visualize the minefield of the subconscious in all the colors and tastes of surrealism. Then I realized it was, coincidentally, time for an update  of my reclusive and little read feature, the Off the Shelf thing, and I just was not in the mood for any more Poe right now, soooo...you will find one of the poems that I enjoyed, Qasida of the Prone Woman, by Federico Garcia Lorca,  here, in the Off The Shelf Archives.


Here is a short bio of Spanish poet Federico Garcia Lorca at The Poetry Foundation for those interested, and they have several of his poems there also..

~*~

Last month's Poe selection, for a final read before it disappears into the archives:

Alone

~by Edgar Allen Poe

From childhood's hour I have not been
As others were; I have not seen
As others saw; I could not bring
My passions from a common spring.
From the same source I have not taken
My sorrow; I could not awaken
My heart to joy at the same tone;
And all I loved, I loved alone.
Then- in my childhood, in the dawn
Of a most stormy life- was drawn
From every depth of good and ill
The mystery which binds me still:
From the torrent, or the fountain,
From the red cliff of the mountain,
From the sun that round me rolled
In its autumn tint of gold,
From the lightning in the sky
As it passed me flying by,
From the thunder and the storm,
And the cloud that took the form
(When the rest of Heaven was blue)
Of a demon in my view. 

Top Image: Detail from The Death and Ascension of St Francis, 1300, by Giotto.

Footer Image: The Demon, 1909, by Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis

Both Public Domain, via wikipaintings.org

Off The Shelf Archive~November

Greetings and salutations, dear reader, if reader there should be. Since this little self-indulgent feature of mine gets almost no attention anyway, I've decided to just have some fun with it.

For the next few months, I'm going to be pleasing myself by pulling out all the poems of Edgar Allen Poe no one reads, or sees distorted in ubiquitous memes of varying, often dubious anachronism. The Raven is indeed a fine poem, but it's only a sort of condensation of Poe's ever restless soul in one particular place. So I'm opening the time capsule of my angst-ridden teenage poetry devotions, and putting some of my favorite Poe up on the Off The Shelf page. This will continue until I get tired of doing it, so bear up or pass along.

Many of these poems will be extremely lengthy by our modern standards--surprise! Poe was not a master of haiku or micropoetry, and the concept of less is more had yet to be discovered in literature, sometimes to his detriment, but often to our pleasure. Many will be sentimental, as only that age could be, unashamedly so. All of them will use a language we no longer have the time or inclination to employ, but that is an un-editable, infinitely rich component of why the poems work.

So, suspend your disbelieve, get out your black mourning bands, cameos, bottles of laudenum, rings woven from locks of hair from the dead, and most importantly, your linen handkerchiefs to soak up a solemn tear or those beads of a fearful sweat, and enjoy or ignore, as you so please.

We will begin with Spirits of the Dead, by Edgar Allen Poe,

here, on the Off The Shelf Page.

~*~

As always, last month's selection is presented for a final perusal--The Name of it is Autumn, by Emily Dickinson:

The Name of it is Autumn

 by Emily Dickinson

The name—of it—is "Autumn"—
The hue—of it—is Blood—
An Artery—upon the Hill—
A Vein—along the Road—

Great Globules—in the Alleys—
And Oh, the Shower of Stain—
When Winds—upset the Basin—
And spill the Scarlet Rain—

It sprinkles Bonnets—far below—
It gathers ruddy Pools—
Then—eddies like a Rose—away—
Upon Vermilion Wheels— 

Image: Lake George, Autumn, by Georgia O'Keefe 1927

May be protected by copyright. All copyright belongs to the copyright holders.

via wikipaintings.org 

Off The Shelf Archives~October

Fall is blowing in, and for once, it is cool and crisp even here in the Dust Bowl. My favorite season, Halloween (yes, for me it is an entire season) is here, and with it all the haunting music of the end of summer and the beginning of change. So I am not dithering about this month, but changing out the Off The Shelf selection to match the impending onslaught of fall colors with a short, brooding  poem by Emily Dickinson called by it's first line "The name of it is Autumn..."

In other news, I will once again be keeping with an All Hallows theme this month, as I have for the past few years, so you can expect a bit more of the dark to be showing up. My muse has been absent without leave a lot lately, but I will post whenever she deigns to cooperate.

~*~          ~*~          ~*~

Without further ado, then, here is Emily Dickinson on the Off The Shelf Page, and below, last month's selection Personal Helicon, by Seamus Heaney, for a last persual:

Personal Helicon

for Michael Longley

As a child, they could not keep me from wells
And old pumps with buckets and windlasses.
I loved the dark drop, the trapped sky, the smells
Of waterweed, fungus and dank moss.


One, in a brickyard, with a rotted board top.
I savoured the rich crash when a bucket
Plummeted down at the end of a rope.
So deep you saw no reflection in it.


A shallow one under a dry stone ditch
Fructified like any aquarium.
When you dragged out long roots from the soft mulch
A white face hovered over the bottom.


Others had echoes, gave back your own call
With a clean new music in it. And one
Was scaresome, for there, out of ferns and tall
Foxgloves, a rat slapped across my reflection.


Now, to pry into roots, to finger slime,
To stare, big-eyed Narcissus, into some spring
Is beneath all adult dignity. I rhyme
To see myself, to set the darkness echoing.

~Seamus Heaney

Image: Fountain in the Garden of Saint Paul Hospital, 1889, Vincent Van Gogh
via wikipaintings.org

Off The Shelf Archives~August

Most of us active in the world of internet poetry have probably heard by now that the celebrated Irish poet and 1995 Nobel Laureate, Seamus Heaney, passed on Friday, August 30, 2013, at the age of 74.

Mr. Heaney has appeared on my Off The Shelf page previously, but I have chosen another one of his poems to remember him by for this next month, Personal Helicon.

This link to the NYTimes gives a full obituary and biography for those interested.


You can find his poem here, in the Off The Shelf archives.

~*~

As always, here is a last look at the previous Off the Shelf selection, some songs from The Tempest, by William Shakespeare:

Some Songs

from The Tempest, by William Shakespeare

Our Revels Now Are Ended 

Our revels now are ended. These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits and

Are melted into air, into thin air:

And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,

The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces,

The solemn temples, the great globe itself,

Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve

And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,

Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff

As dreams are made on, and our little life

Is rounded with a sleep.
( ~Prospero)


Ariel's Songs

Come unto these yellow sands,

   And then take hands:

Curtsied when you have, and kissed

   The wild waves whist,

Foot it featly here and there;

And, sweet sprites, the burden bear.

   Hark, hark!

      Bow, wow

   The watch-dogs bark,

      Bow, wow,

   Hark, hark! I hear

The strain of strutting Chanticleer

Cry, Cock-a-diddle-dow.

Full fathom five thy father lies;

   Of his bones are coral made;

Those are pearls that were his eyes:

   Nothing of him that doth fade,

But doth suffer a sea-change

Into something rich and strange:

Sea nymphs hourly ring his knell.

                      Ding-dong!

   Hark! now I hear them,

                    Ding-dong, bell!


Where the bee sucks, there suck I,

In a cowslip's bell I lie,

There I couch when owls do cry,

On the bat's back I do fly

After summer merrily
Merrily, merrily, shall I live now
Under the blossom that hangs on the bough.

Image: Miranda, by John William Waterhouse
Public Domain, via wikipaintings.org

Off The Shelf Archive~July

It's been one of those summers, and for one reason or another I have been quite remiss about changing out the Off The Shelf page. It wasn't for lack of a new selection, though.

Months ago in a discussion of a poem, my blog friend Karin Gustafson (ManicDDaily) sent me an excerpt from Shakespeare's play about spirits of air and darkness, The Tempest, and I thought of all the lines in it that are part of our daily speech, that I've heard in every kind of context my whole life.

It made me realize that there is a force in poetry that really can't be explained intellectually--it's a part of the flesh and bone of who we as human beings are, a unique invention to express ourselves in ways outside of the obvious, that makes the obvious reveal its far more hidden true nature.

Anyway, the example Karin sent me is now  here in the Off The Shelf Archive, Ariel's 'nonsense' songs, penned by Will about 1610, over 400 years ago. While the language is not really the way we currently speak, and while much of it is fully intended to be fanciful, if not outright silly,  I nonetheless am confidant that at some point, in some conversation, you have used at least one phrase from these.

I've added an additional song from Ariel,  ('Where the Bee...' ) and a (perhaps over-) familiar snippet of Prospero speaking at the very end of the play, because I can.

~*~

And now for something totally different: a last chance to read the former selection before it goes into the vaults, a poem called The Far Garden, by the incomparable Fireblossom (Shay Simmons --unless you can't stand living without it, in which case you can buy her book here on Amazon. )

The Far Garden

When I was young I asked,

Why are my arms made of blackberry vines?

And why do I

Most love to sit

In the far garden filled

With strawberries and mint?

Why do I have

Cat-tail colored hair?

Why is the thunderhead

A black mother bear?

Why is my skin filled with restless blue lightning

And the pull of the moon?

You dreamed it, child--

Is all that I was told, and it's

A sin to lie

A sin to lie.

When I was young, I ran

Away through the wheat under bright summer sun

Until I was alone

Save for sparrow and crow

With south wind for sign post

And further to go.

I sang to the quicksilver

Dead in the earth

Who lay with the bear's teeth,

The strawberry red,

And the sweet things that were.

You dreamed it, child--

Was all I was told, but the

Far garden called and we

Grew up wild

Grew up wild.

© Shay Caroline Simmons, 

2008-2013,  All Rights Reserved.

Used with permission.

from the book, My Mad Love; Poems Out In The Noonday Sun, 

by Shay Caroline Simmons

Image:Garden of Spanish Farmhouse, by Joaquin Sorolla, 1909
Public Domain

Off the Shelf Archive ~Special Edition Redux

Today, May 22nd, is a certain poet's birthday--one of my favorites, who also happens to be one of the best of friends, (and poets) around.

I am speaking of the inimitable Fireblossom, also known by the real world sobriquet of Shay Caroline Simmons. She has recently published a collection of her poems on Amazon, entitled, My Mad Love, and earlier in the month I put a selection from it on my Off The Shelf page. I promised another one, and so here it is. I saved my very favorite for last.

It's called The Far Garden, one of the first poems I read by Shay that blew me away, something she does pretty routinely, but you know what they say about first times. This one is my idea of magic.

You can find more of Shay's outstanding poetry at her blog, The Word Garden.

Happy Birthday, Shay, and thanks for letting me share your work here, on the Off The Shelf Page.

~*~

Here is the previous selection from My Mad Love: The Healing.

The Healing

I spread five fingers and five seasons came;

I kept the one that had no name.

I closed them round the stepchild month;

She felt like love when love is done.

I stuffed the lost one in my mouth,

And spoke things scratching to get out.

The Gypsy wrapped around my eyes,

and by blue evening I was blind.

She wormed her way into my ear

and whispered quite like you, my dear.

She burrowed deep into my brain,

Sweet and sharp like blade and cane.

But when the sweet bitch found my heart,

She bit and sealed the broken part.

© Shay Caroline Simmons, 

2008-2013,  All Rights Reserved.

Used with permission.

from the book, My Mad Love; Poems Out In The Noonday Sun, 

by Shay Caroline Simmons

Image: Artist Unknown, via Facebook

Off The Shelf Archive~Special Edition

Available at Amazon

Welcome to a special two part edition of the Off The Shelf Archives. Since the month of April was devoted to tirelessly torturing myself into somehow scribbling a poem every day, the Off the Shelf page has been languishing in abandonment. So, to make up for this neglect, I am having two poems featured there this month, and both will be by one of my favorite poets of all time, Shay Caroline Simmons, more often encountered on the internet as Fireblossom, who also happens to be my BFF and, along with Kelli Simpson (Mama Zen) co-author of our recently released poetry anthology, Gemini/Scorpio/Capricorn.

Shay, interviewed sipping Vanilla Chai at her palatial beach house in Antarctica, refused to answer most of my personal questions about how she survives all winter on the ice floes, sleeping on polar bears for warmth and playing gypsy violin to passing beluga whales, but did deign to grant me permission to plug her book...I mean, feature two poems from My Mad Love,  pictured above, a comprehensive collection of her work covering the last five years at her blog  Shay's Word Garden.  

NOTE: These poems are under copyright, so don't even think about using them in your next collection of seasonally-inspired unicorn  haikus.

The first selection is entitled, The Healing, and is one of Shay's infrequent but always highly effective forays into rhyme. It was very difficult choosing only two poems, but this one makes an instant entry into the brain with its sparse and haunting short couplets, and for the unexpectedly sharp end.



You can find it here, on the Off The Shelf page.

                                           

~*~

And below, presented for a last reading before it goes into the vaults, is the selection from March, a sonnet by Rupert Brook:

Sonnet: I said I splendidly loved you; it's not true 

I said I splendidly loved you; it's not true.
Such long swift tides stir not a land-locked sea.
On gods or fools the high risk falls -- on you --
The clean clear bitter-sweet that's not for me.
Love soars from earth to ecstasies unwist.
Love is flung Lucifer-like from Heaven to Hell.
But -- there are wanderers in the middle mist,
Who cry for shadows, clutch, and cannot tell
Whether they love at all, or, loving, whom:
An old song's lady, a fool in fancy dress,
Or phantoms, or their own face on the gloom;
For love of Love, or from heart's loneliness.
Pleasure's not theirs, nor pain. They doubt, and sigh,
And do not love at all. Of these am I.

~Rupert Brooke

Image: Seascape, by Caude Monet, 1866

Public domain via wikipaintings.org

Off the Shelf Archive: March 2013

The archivist is on top of things for a change, and ready to switch out poems with alacrity. During this past month, I read some escapist literature, a mystery novel by Deborah Crombie called Dreaming of the Bones. The subject was the suicide of a woman poet of the Sixties, which turned out to actually be murder. No surprise there, plot-wise, but the poet character was obsessed with the life and poetry of WWI era poet Rupert Brooke. Each chapter heading had a quote from one of his poems, and thus I read more Rupert Brooke last month than I'd done in twenty years.

I was a bit surprised at how good he was, despite being obviously very young--and how good he might have become if he'd lived longer and lost some of the melodrama of youthful exuberance. Anyway, here is a bio page of his short but eventful life at Poets.org, for those interested.

The selection I've chosen for this month, by Rupert Brooke of course, is 

Sonnet: I said splendidly I loved you; it's not true.

You'll find it here, on the Off the Shelf page, which now allows comments.

~*~

And here for final perusal before hitting the archives is last month's verse, Calypso's Island, by Archibald MacLeish:

Calypso's Island

by Archibald MacLeish

I know very well, goddess, she is not beautiful

As you are: could not be. She is a woman,

Mortal, subject to the chances: duty of

Childbed, sorrow that changes cheeks, the tomb--

For unlike you she will grow gray, grow older,

Gray and older, sleep in that small room.

She is not beautiful as you, O golden!

You are immortal and will never change

And can make me immortal also, fold

Your garment round me, make me whole and strange

As those who live forever, not the while

That we live, keep me from those dogging dangers--

Ships and the wars--in this green, far-off island,

Silent of all but sea's eternal sound

Or sea-pine's when the lull of surf is silent.

Goddess, I know how excellent this ground,

What charmed contentment of the removed heart

The bees make in the lavender where pounding

Surf sounds far off and the bird that darts

Darts through its own eternity of light,

Motionless in motion, and the startled

Hare is startled into stone, the fly

Forever golden in the flickering glance

Of leafy sunlight that still holds it. I

Know you, goddess, and your caves that answer

Ocean's confused voices with a voice:

Your poplars where the storms are turned to dances;

Arms where the heart is turned. You give the choice

To hold forever what forever passes,

To hide from what will pass, forever. Moist,

Moist are your well-stones, goddess, cool your grasses!

And she--she is a woman with that fault

Of change that will be death in her at last!

Nevertheless I long for the cold, salt,

Restless, contending sea and for the island

Where the grass dies and the seasons alter:

Where that one wears the sunlight for a while.

Image: Island of Treasures, by Rene Magrite, 1942

All copyright belongs to the copyright holders.

via wikipaintings.org

Off The Shelf Archive~February 2013

The archivist has been sorely distracted lately, dear readers. Between holidays, health and hectic moments of every day minutia, I've been writing less, and reading less of what I need to read, and more of what is pure indulgence. I've also had to limit my hours on the computer. All this by way of excuse, of course, for not changing out the Off The Shelf selection in months.

For February, I turn to a poet who's little read these days, but a favorite of mine, Archibald MacLeish. I don't suppose many remember him, though he won three Pulitzer Prizes, an Academy Award, and was also the Librarian of Congress and an assistant Secretary of State. Fame, particularly for poets, is a pretty flimsy thing, I think

MacLeish was a Modernist poet, essayist, screenwriter and playwright, heavily influenced by Pound and Eliot, and sometimes seems like an echo, but don't we all (echo our influences, that is)--his own voice is there underneath, and to me he has an easy, comfortable way with words.  I don't know much more about him than that, but I've always liked his poetry.  Poets.org has a short bio of him here and the Poetry Foundation has a much longer one, if interested.

The poem I've chosen is Calypso's Island, and you'll find it on the Off The Shelf   page, which now allows comments.

~*~

The former selection, Anecdote of the Jar, by Wallace Stevens, is below for a final perusal:

Anecdote of the Jar

I placed a jar in Tennessee,
And round it was, upon a hill.
It made the slovenly wilderness
Surround that hill.

The wilderness rose up to it,
And sprawled around, no longer wild.
The jar was round upon the ground
And tall and of a port in air.

It took dominion everywhere.
The jar was gray and bare.
It did not give of bird or bush,
Like nothing else in Tennessee. 

~by Wallace Stevens 

Image: Coffee Pot, by Henri de Toulouse Lautrec

Public domain, via wikipaintings.org

 

Off the Shelf Archive~November

Time to take down the other-worldly All Hallows selection from last month and move on to the (for me) always grisly holiday season. I'm once again indebted to Karin Gustafson of ManicdDaily for mentioning the poem I've selected, Anecdote of the Jar, by Wallace Stevens.

You'll find it here, in the Off the Shelf Archive for February 2013.


Below for a final perusal is last month's offering,  The Song of Wandering Aengus, by W.B Yeats. Please feel free to comment on either poem here as comments are disabled off the main page.

The Song Of Wandering Aengus

~by William Butler Yeats

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 aflame,
But something rustled on the floor,
And some one 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.

Image: The Charmer, 1911, John William Waterhouse
Public Domain, via wikimedia commons

Off the Shelf Archive~October

October is at the midpoint, and soon will be winding down to that holiday at the end of the month known variously as Hallowe'en, All Hallows, Dia de Los Muertos, Samhain, and various other appellations, so I felt it was time to change out the Off the Shelf selection to something a bit more...magical. Karin Gustafson (ManicdDaily) mentioned in a comment what I thought might be an appropriate choice, The Song of Wandering Aengus, by the great Anglo-Irish poet W.B. Yeats. 

It now appears on the Off the Shelf page for November 2012, to keep some of the Other world in this one. Thanks, Karin.

~*~  ~*~  ~*~

To make room for the change-out, here is the previous selection, If You Forget Me, by Pablo Neruda:

If You Forget Me

I want you to know
one thing.

You know how this is:
if I look
at the crystal moon, at the red branch
of the slow autumn at my window,
if I touch
near the fire
the impalpable ash
or the wrinkled body of the log,
everything carries me to you,
as if everything that exists,
aromas, light, metals,
were little boats
that sail
toward those isles of yours that wait for me.

Well, now,
if little by little you stop loving me
I shall stop loving you little by little.

If suddenly
you forget me
do not look for me,
for I shall already have forgotten you.

If you think it long and mad,
the wind of banners
that passes through my life,
and you decide
to leave me at the shore
of the heart where I have roots,
remember
that on that day,
at that hour,
I shall lift my arms
and my roots will set off
to seek another land.

But
if each day,
each hour,
you feel that you are destined for me
with implacable sweetness,
if each day a flower
climbs up to your lips to seek me,
ah my love, ah my own,
in me all that fire is repeated,
in me nothing is extinguished or forgotten,
my love feeds on your love, beloved,
and as long as you live it will be in your arms
without leaving mine. 

~Pablo Neruda

Header Image: Red Autumn, by SouthernPixel-Alby Headrick  on flick'r
Shared under a Creative Commons License

Footer Image: Canna 'Tropicanna' © joyannjones 2012

Off the Shelf Archive~September

I've decided to take a mini-vacation from blogging this week, and while I'm absent thought it would be a good time to change out the Off the Shelf selection,  since it's been several months. I've chosen one that deals with the vagaries of love, from one of my favorite poets, Pablo Neruda, called If You Forget Me.

You'll find it here on the updated  Off the Shelf page.


Below is the previous selection, by Stephen Crane, On the Desert. You can comment on either poem here, as comments are disabled off the main page. See you all soon.

~*~  ~*~  ~*~

On the Desert

~by Stephen Crane

On the desert
A silence from the moon's deepest valley.
Fire rays fall athwart the robes
Of hooded men, squat and dumb.
Before them, a woman
Moves to the blowing of shrill whistles
And distant thunder of drums,
While mystic things, sinuous, dull with terrible colour,
Sleepily fondle her body
Or move at her will, swishing stealthily over the sand.
The snakes whisper softly;
The whispering, whispering snakes,
Dreaming and swaying and staring,
But always whispering, softly whispering.
The wind streams from the lone reaches
Of Arabia, solemn with night,
And the wild fire makes shimmer of blood
Over the robes of the hooded men
Squat and dumb.
Bands of moving bronze, emerald, yellow,
Circle the throat and the arms of her,
And over the sands serpents move warily
Slow, menacing and submissive,
Swinging to the whistles and drums,
The whispering, whispering snakes,
Dreaming and swaying and staring,
But always whispering, softly whispering.
The dignity of the accursed;
The glory of slavery, despair, death,
Is in the dance of the whispering snakes.

Image: Sensuality, by Franz Stuck, oil on canvas, 1891
Public domain, via Wikipaintings.org