Fire-Fangled Feathers

—Photo by Katy Brown, Davis

TEA AT THE PALAZ OF HOON

—Wallace Stevens

Not less because in purple I descended

The western day through what you called

The loneliest air, not less was I myself.

What was the ointment sprinkled on my beard?
What were the hymns that buzzed beside my ears?

What was the sea whose tide swept through me there?

Out of my mind the golden ointment rained,

And my ears made the blowing hymns they heard.

I was myself the compass of that sea:

I was the world in which I walked, and what I saw

Or heard or felt came not but from myself;

And there I found myself more truly and more strange.

______________________

STAR AT TALLAPOOSA

—Wallace Stevens

The lines are straight and swift between the stars.

The night is not the cradle that they cry,

The criers, undulating the deep-oceaned phrase.

The lines are much too dark and much too sharp.

The mind herein attains simplicity.
There is no moon, on single, silvered leaf.

The body is no body to be seen

But is an eye that studies its black lid.

Let these be your delight, secretive hunter,

Wading the sea-lines, moist and ever-mingling,

Mounting the earth-lines, long and lax, lethargic.
These lines are swift and fall without diverging.

The melon-flower nor dew nor web of either

Is like to these.  But in yourself is like:
A sheaf of brilliant arrows flying straight,

Flying and falling straightway for their pleasure,

Their pleasure that is all bright-edged and cold,

Or, if not arrows, then the nimblest motions,

Making recoveries of young nakedness

And the lost vehemence the midnights hold.

______________________

OF MERE BEING
—Wallace Stevens

The palm at the end of the mind,

Beyond the last thought, rises

In the bronze distance,

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 birds' fire-fangled feathers dangle down.

—Photo by Katy Brown

RALEIGH WAS RIGHT

—William Carlos Williams

We cannot go to the country

for the country will bring us no peace

What can the small violets tell us

that grow on furry stem in

the long grass among lance-shaped leaves?

Though you praise us

and call to mind the poets

who sung of our loveliness

it was long ago!

long ago! when country people

would plow and sow with

flowering minds and pockets at ease—

if ever this were true.

Not now.  Love itself a flower

with roots in a parched ground.

Empty pockets make empty heads.

Cure it if you can but

do not believe that we can live

today in the country

for the country will bring us no peace.

______________________

A SORT OF A SONG
—William Carlos Williams

Let the snake wait under

his weed

and the writing

be of words, slow and quick, sharp

to strike, quiet to wait,

sleepless.

—through metaphor to reconcile

the people and the stones.

Compose. (No ideas

but in things.) Invent!

Saxifrage is my flower that splits

the rocks.

_____________________

DANSE RUSSE

—William Carlos Williams

If I when my wife is sleeping

and the baby and Kathleen

are sleeping

and the sun is a flame-white disc

in silken mists

above shining trees,—

if I in my north room

dance naked, grotesquely

before my mirror

waving my shirt round my head

and singing softly to myself:

"I am lonely, lonely.

I was born to be lonely,

I am best so!"

If I admire my arms, my face,

my shoulders, flanks, buttocks,

against the yellow drawn shades,—

Who shall say I am not

the happy genius of my household?

______________________

Today's LittleNips:

Sipping persian tea,
toes buried in warm white sand,
balmy winds abound.

Little blue pillow
teeters by the tall bed post
as we play footsies.

Swift fingers now slow,
frostbitten in the snowy
sunless evening.

Cold blue-green waves curl
softly break through the pinkish
pastel horizon.

—Samira R. Noorali, Houston, TX

______________________

—Medusa

Watch for more of former Sacramentan Samira's work to be coming soon. She has a new book, A Simple Rebirth (see uniqebuy.com/a-simple-rebirth.html) and will be reading at the Sacramento Poetry Center in June.

Update: Joyce Odam is home from the hospital! That was quick! She broke her hip Friday, surgery Saturday, and now home—with a child-sized walker.

—Photo by Katy Brown