O Carib Isle!
The tarantula rattling at the lily’s foot
Across the feet of the dead, laid in white sand
Near the coral beach—nor zigzag fiddle crabs
Side-stilting from the path (that shift, subvert
And anagrammatize your name)—No, nothing here
Below the palsy that one eucalyptus lifts
In wrinkled shadows—mourns.
And yet suppose
I count these nacreous frames of tropic death,
Brutal necklaces of shells around each grave
Squared off so carefully. Then
To the white sand I may speak a name, fertile
Albeit in a stranger tongue. Tree names, flower names
Deliberate, gainsay death’s brittle crypt. Meanwhile
The wind that knots itself in one great death—
Coils and withdraws. So syllables want breath.
But where is the Captain of this doubloon isle
Without a turnstile? Who but catchword crabs
Patrols the dry groins of the underbrush?
What man, or What
Is Commissioner of mildew throughout the ambushed senses?
His Carib mathematics web the eyes’ baked lenses!
Under the poinciana, of a noon or afternoon
Let fiery blossoms clot the light, render my ghost
Sieved upward, white and black along the air
Until it meets the blue’s comedian host.
Let not the pilgrim see himself again
For slow evisceration bound like those huge terrapin
Each daybreak on the wharf, their brine-caked eyes;
—Spiked, overturned; such thunder in their strain!
And clenched beaks coughing for the surge again!
Slagged of the hurricane—I, cast within its flow,
Congeal by afternoons here, satin and vacant.
You have given me the shell, Satan,—carbonic amulet
Sere of the sun exploded in the sea.
poem by Harold Hart Crane
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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Related quotes
Black and White and Red
Black and White
And Red I see
Demons they do
Torture me
Black and White
And Red all day
The voices are real
Or so they say
Black and White
And Red abound
I'm lost I call
I'm never found
Black and White
And Red flow out
I scream but you
Don't hear me shout
Black and White
And Red so bright
Exit blood and
Enter light
Black and White
And Red of death
Now I breathe
My final breath
poem by Anonymous Ghurl
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Song from Aella
O SING unto my roundelay,
O drop the briny tear with me;
Dance no more at holyday,
Like a running river be:
My love is dead,
Gone to his death-bed
All under the willow-tree.
Black his cryne as the winter night,
White his rode as the summer snow,
Red his face as the morning light,
Cole he lies in the grave below:
My love is dead,
Gone to his death-bed
All under the willow-tree.
Sweet his tongue as the throstle's note,
Quick in dance as thought can be,
Deft his tabor, cudgel stout;
O he lies by the willow-tree!
My love is dead,
Gone to his death-bed
All under the willow-tree.
Hark! the raven flaps his wing
In the brier'd dell below;
Hark! the death-owl loud doth sing
To the nightmares, as they go:
My love is dead,
Gone to his death-bed
All under the willow-tree.
See! the white moon shines on high;
Whiter is my true-love's shroud:
Whiter than the morning sky,
Whiter than the evening cloud:
My love is dead,
Gone to his death-bed
All under the willow-tree.
Here upon my true-love's grave
Shall the barren flowers be laid;
Not one holy saint to save
All the coldness of a maid:
My love is dead,
Gone to his death-bed
All under the willow-tree.
With my hands I'll dent the briers
Round his holy corse to gre:
Ouph and fairy, light your fires,
Here my body still shall be:
My love is dead,
Gone to his death-bed
All under the willow-tree.
Come, with acorn-cup and thorn,
Drain my heartès blood away;
Life and all its good I scorn,
Dance by night, or feast by day:
My love is dead,
Gone to his death-bed
All under the willow-tree.
poem by Thomas Chatterton
Submitted by Veronica Serbanoiu
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Disingenuousness
Here lies another box for nature,
Carbon ready;
Black to eyes down here,
Where death is at its job.
Up there you’ll hear a rhythmic sob
Or two from living yet-to-dies –
A humming lacrimoso –
It all but cleans the eyes:
Forget it –
The dismal show of grief –
Life is only chemistry –
Our stay is only brief.
It’s we who hype it up!
Diaphragms jerk again;
The jet monotone of hearses
Feeds the disingenuousness
Of undertakers –
They seem to stare at something up ahead –
For them, it’s in the blood,
To taxi off the dead.
Copyright © Mark R Slaughter 2011
The March of Death
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poem by Mark R Slaughter
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Ebb-Tide
NOW the vexed clouds, wind-driven, spread wings of white,
Long leaning wings across the sea and land.
The waves creep back bequeathing to our sight
The treasure-house of their deserted sand,
And where the nearer waves curl white and low,
Knee-deep in swirling brine the slow-foot shrimpers go.
Pale breadth of sand, where clamorous gulls confer,
Marked with broad arrows by their planted feet;
White rippled pools, where late deep waters were
And ever the white waves marshalled in retreat
And the grey wind in sole supremacy
O'er opal and amber cold of darkening sky and sea.
poem by Edith Nesbit
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Come Away, Death
(harle/shakespeare)
Come away, come away, death
And in sad cyprus let me be laid
Fie away, fie away, breath
I am slain by a fair cruel maid
My shroud of white stuck all with you
O prepare it
My part of death no one so true
Did share it
Come away, come away, death
Not a flower, not a flower, sweet
On my black coffin let there be strewn
Not a friend, not a friend, greet
My poor corpse where my bones shall be thrown
A thousand thousand sighs to say
Lay me over
Sad true lover never find my grave
To weep there
Come away, come away, death
song performed by by Elvis Costello
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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In Memory of David Archer (LIV)
The words are always as
strange and dead as those
fragments and oddments that
the wave casts up on the shore:
I stand in the sea mist
gazing down at the white
words and old bits of wood
and wonder what they were for.
I think that they were not
ever intended to do
what, when we seek to speak,
we believe that they may:
they cannot bear us up
the frothy words and like
wings at the lame foot
lift us out of the clay.
For all the reflections
I call up out of the sea
(they seem to speak as the shell
seems to speak for the sea)
are no more truly here
than the wind weaving sand
into shapes of things
we think that we know and see.
When in the evening sky
a single star appears
over my head, and the moon
out of the cloud lifts its face,
when the white gull turns
or the high plover hovers
to tell me with a cry
I trespass in this place:
What I see, then, with
that cloud my witness is
not shapes of the mind or wind
like the slow rainbowings
of the dolphin's skin as it dies
but, as though from the cloud
I saw my bone walk the shore,
the theology of all things.
The white stones and the old
odd bits of sea blanched wood,
Overstrand and the swinging
lighthouse glimpsed in the mists,
they flash in the prisms and I
believe for a moment I see
the dazzling atoms dancing
in every thing that exists.
The children dance on the shore.
The waves dies on the sand.
The spray blows to and fro,
the children dance and die.
What waves are these that dance
with the children on the sand?
I hear them calling, but cannot
hear what it is that they cry.
I neither understand
nor know why I am moved
beyond these words by the
odd bits of bleached wood
cast up on Overstrand
or by the black and twisted
October evening tree
dying beside the road.
or by the child of midnight
so deep asleep but still
lost in the corridors
of the mansions of dust,
by any or by all
ceremonial evidence
attesting that we love
simply because we must.
I walk upon Overstrand shore
and the crab at my foot
inscribes praise in the sand.
The wave bursts with glory
because it rises up like
angels out of the sea,
and the dead starfish burns
on Overstrand promontory.
Why do I hear them cry
out from the far side of life,
those forms and impulses
unborn beyond the sky?
Why should they hope and seek
above all else to be?
Tonight on Overstrand
I know for one moment why.
poem by George Barker
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A Single Candle/Death Herself
A single flame lights her face
The face of death
A single candle holds her fears
The fears of death
Her hands clasped anrond their souls
The souls of the dead
She feeds of their screams
The screams of the dead
Her legs lay bellow her
Bellow death
Her black gown over her body
The body of death
Her chest rises and falls with her breath
The breath of death
Her cloak drawn over her long flowing jet hair
The face of death
Her eyes unmoved unfeeling
Do you see it?
Do you see the soul of death?
Do you feel it?
Her skin as white as snow as it fades into darkness
The snow of tears
Her cloths as dark as night that swallows the light
The dark we all shall see
Her eyes close as she feels their souls flow
Flow from the dead
She leaves them there to lay in darkness
She steals from the dead
A single candle lights their faces filled with her
Filled with death
They fall into the darkness of her eyes, of her heart
The darkness of death
A single candle shall stay to light their way
Their way through the dark
A single candle holds their past
The pain and trials
A single candle lights her face
The face of death
A single candle holds her fears
The fears of death herself
A single candle
poem by Bethany Maxwell
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A walk along the beach
I see a ship
passing beyond the breakers
white on the top
and red at the bottom
and the sea is calm
and a light wind
is blowing on the beach.
Alone I walk
on the hot soft sand
looking for shells
but here and there
I find one that’s not broken
and walk on further
and further
almost as if following a track
that’s just out of reach.
Climbing down
a small cliff
I am suddenly on a seclude beach
and in the blinding light
shells are everywhere
and I know
that no one else
has been here.
Some are brittle
like the leaves of flowers
and others hard as rock
with orange and pink embouchures,
a scope of blues,
hazing mother of pearl
shimmering like a rainbow,
brittle green circles
with holes in the middle
and some are more pure white
than snow.
I pick a ransom up at dusk
and lay down on my back
and watch the sun
setting above the sea
and time trail from me.
I must have been stuck
in my own thoughts
and caught by the serenity
when suddenly I noticed
a beautiful naked girl
looking at me
with a kiss in her eyes
that penetrates into my soul.
Her eyes shining
with shivering iridescence
(just like mother of pearl)
and her teeth gleaming
whiter than anything.
The second kiss
is on my lips
and hot and sweet.
Some perfume
almost dazes my head
and her nipples brush
protruding against my cheek.
“You have beautiful shells, ”
a husky voice says
and no words can express
my thoughts
while I kiss her back.
poem by Gert Strydom
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Death and I
When death comes
I’ll need not love –
Consumed,
No wreath or dove
Could offer me salvation,
Not when I’m no more.
A weathered stone will bear my name –
Identity of once a being
Living out existence in
A world of risk, and never seeing
Sense of why we’re here.
My genes will die away thro’ child –
Hue of eyes and hair, the way of thought,
Will quickly dim with generation –
Bow to future dominance –
Memories of provenance
Resigned to curious few.
When death comes
I’ll need not grace
Below; no grieving face
Will call my resurrection,
Not when I’m at ground –
Death and I so bound.
Copyright © Mark R Slaughter 2011
D eath Crawl
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poem by Mark R Slaughter
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Sotto Voce
To Edward Thomas
The haze of noon wanned silver-grey,
The soundless mansion of the sun;
The air made visible in his ray,
Like molten glass from furnace run,
Quivered o'er heat-baked turf and stone
And the flower of the gorse burned on —
Burned softly as gold of a child's fair hair
Along each spiky spray, and shed
Almond-like incense in the air
Whereon our senses fed.
At foot — a few sparse harebells: blue
And still as were the friend's dark eyes
That dwelt on mine, transfixèd through
With sudden ecstatic surmise.
'Hst!' he cried softly, smiling, and lo,
Stealing amidst that maze gold-green,
I heard a whispering music flow
From guileful throat of bird, unseen: —
So delicate, the straining ear
Scarce carried its faint syllabling
Into a heart caught-up to hear
That inmost pondering
Of bird-like self with self. We stood,
In happy trance-like solitude,
Hearkening a lullay grieved and sweet —
As when on isle uncharted beat
'Gainst coral at the palm-tree's root,
With brine-clear, snow-white foam afloat,
The wailing, not of water or wind —
A husht, far, wild, divine lament,
When Prospero his wizardry bent
Winged Ariel to bind....
Then silence, and o'er-flooding noon.
I raised my head; smiled too. And he —
Moved his great hand, the magic gone —
Gently amused to see
My ignorant wonderment. He sighed.
'It was a nightingale,' he said,
'That sotto voce cons the song
He'll sing when dark is spread;
And Night's vague hours are sweet and long,
And we are laid abed.'
poem by Walter de la Mare
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Sunlight And Sea
Give me the sunlight and the sea
And who shall take my heaven from me?
Light of the Sun, Life of the Sun,
O happy, bold companion,
Whose golden laughters round me run,
Making wine of the blue air
With wild-rose kisses everywhere,
Browning the limb, flushing the cheek,
Apple-fragrant, leopard-sleek,
Dancing from thy red-curtained East
Like a Nautch-girl to my feast,
Proud because her lord, the Spring,
Praised the way those anklets ring;
Or wandering like a white Greek maid
Leaf-dappled through the dancing shade,
Where many a green-veined leaf imprints
Breast and limb with emerald tints,
That softly net her silken shape
But let the splendour still escape,
While rosy ghosts of roses flow
Over the supple rose and snow.
But sweetest, fairest is thy face,
When we meet, when we embrace,
Where the white sand sleeps at noon
Round that lonely blue lagoon,
Fringed with one white reef of coral
Where the sea-birds faintly quarrel
And the breakers on the reef
Fade into a dream of grief,
And the palm-trees overhead
Whisper that all grief is dead.
Sister Sunlight, lead me then
Into thy healing seas again....
For when we swim out, side by side,
Like a lover with his bride,
When thy lips are salt with brine,
And thy wild eyes flash in mine,
The music of a mightier sea
Beats with my blood in harmony.
I breast the primal flood of being,
Too clear for speech, too near for seeing;
And to his heart, new reconciled,
The Eternal takes his earth-bound child.
Who the essential secret spells
In those gigantic syllables,--
Flowing, ebbing, ebbing, flowing,--
Gathers wisdom past all knowing.
Song of the Sea, I hear, I hear,
That deeper music of the sphere,
Catch the rhythm of sun and star,
And know what light and darkness are;
Ay, faint beginnings of a rhyme
That swells beyond the tides of time;
Beat with thy rhythm in blood and breath,
And make one song of life and death.
I hear, I hear, and rest content,
Merged in the primal element,
The old element whence life arose,
The fount of youth, to which it goes.
Give me the sunlight and the sea
And who shall take my heaven from me?
poem by Alfred Noyes
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Poinciana
(simon/bernier)
Blow...tropic wind...
Sing a song...through the trees.
Trees...sigh to me...
Soon my love...i will see.
Poinciana,
Your branches speak to me of love.
Pale moon is casting shadows from above.
Poinciana,
Somehow I feel the jungle beat
Within me, there grows a rhythmic, savage
Beat.
Love is everywhere, its magic perfume fills the air.
To and fro, you sway, my hearts in time,
Ive learned to care.
Poinciana,
Though skies may turn from blue to gray,
My love will live for ever and a day.
Blow....tropic wind,
Sing a song through the trees.
Trees...sigh to me
Soon my love... I will see.
Poinciana...
song performed by by Nat King Cole
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Oh, Death
Oh, Death How sweet it is to be loved by you
Take my breath and make me new
How good feels your loving caress
now your here I may take my rest
for you oh, Death Have I waited so long
so many years have passed, so many gone wrong
I listen now as my heart subsides, the beat so slow
as I close my eyes.
Never have I felt so much peace, Now I give you my release
Oh, Death you are never late, without prejudice, without hate
I applaud you Death for a job well done, and I let my light go out
with the setting Sun.
poem by Daniel Jacob White
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Will Kiss You First
when your breath stinks of wars,
and your eyes bleed with rage...
when your tongue is a stranger
that your heart denies...
when your feet sink in the sand,
and your hands tremble with lust....
do you think that death
will kiss you first?
poem by Eric Cockrell
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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At Houtbay beach
A young girl and an old man
walk down steps
to the stretch
that the beach at Houtbay
throws against the sea.
There are some small fishing boats
in colours of blue,
orange and white
that sails into the sea,
but big white cabin cruisers
bobs up and down
next to the quay
some distance away
as if they are ownerless
while their bosses
play somewhere else.
The smell of sea-pike
roasting on coals
lies on the light wind
and their stomachs growl
of sudden hunger
and here and there
the girl stoops
to pick up shells.
His sturdy boots leaves flat tracts
on the firm sand
and there’s a brown wood walking stick
with a lion head in his hand
and the girl’s
bare foot tracts
run in advance.
The sea swishes in and out
and the wet sand
reflects a bright open day
and the blue water
stretches out
as far as you can see
and it’s as if he gets new power
next to the foaming water.
poem by Gert Strydom
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Visit Malaysia Year Poem - Pulau Ketam (State of Selangor)
pincers, white fluffy flesh
red hot, spicy shells
under our white
plastic hammers
each leg, pincer,
carapace broken
licked clean
the two eyes
now jutting out of
the auspicious
light as flight
red orange shell
so cleaned up of life
so meaningless
and emptied
of existence
a loser of
the world
except for
its rich delicious
steamy white
vein laced flesh
the shells
stripped of all the limbs
straddle the table
play out the animals in us
some are upside down
some in upright position
some helter skelter
loose signatures of the
delicious triumph of a two legged
over a ten legged wonder
now only our hands are
crawling all over the table
grabbing parts, positioning legs,
pincer for hammers
we are nothing
more than dinosaur
when it comes to crabs
they are but fluffy, juicy, spicy,
pulpy, squeaky rich protein to
fill up the stomach
to build the muscles
of our own limbs
more customers coming?
get ready the crabs
get ready the rice
and the hammers
how many of them please?
how many crabs?
ketam ketam ketam
plankwalk that make
our walk sound crab
and.....dinosaur
Ketam is the malay word for crabs. pulau ketam is an island 30 minutes away from port klang in selangor. port klang is about an hour by commuter train from kuala lumpur and the same amount of time if one drives in one's own car. the island is famous for its seafood. the wooden plankwalk to the numerous restaurants makes one's walk sound crab because it goes ketam ketam ketam.
poem by John Tiong Chunghoo
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Design
I found a dimpled spider, fat and white,
On a white heal-all, holding up a moth
Like a white piece of rigid satin cloth --
Assorted characters of death and blight
Mixed ready to begin the morning right,
Like the ingredients of a witches' broth --
A snow-drop spider, a flower like a froth,
And dead wings carried like a paper kite.
What had that flower to do with being white,
The wayside blue and innocent heal-all?
What brought the kindred spider to that height,
Then steered the white moth thither in the night?
What but design of darkness to appall?--
If design govern in a thing so small.
poem by Robert Frost
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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Death, Inevitable Death
Death, inevitable Death.
So now You come to show Your world,
Hence the blackened cloak – unfurled.
And peering down upon my form
– Bereft of pity – Your eyes of storm.
Death, inexorable Death.
‘When? ’ The only question out of Thee.
My dream retorts 'But ne’er for me! ’
But now awake, I bid you so –
My giving tears cry ‘Where to go? ’
Death, adamant Death.
You cast Your spell and guide me 'way,
For life and I have had our day.
And what of me? I prey You, tell!
Be glorious in Heaven or gnarled in Hell?
Death, ineluctable Death.
Oh wiry ghoul, I'm here to follow –
I leave my body grey and shallow.
‘Come! ’ You bid in thund’ring tones,
‘Beg farewell to shattered bones.’
Copyright © Mark R Slaughter 2009
Death
Death death
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Death death death
Death death
Death
poem by Mark R Slaughter
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Voyages
I
Above the fresh ruffles of the surf
Bright striped urchins flay each other with sand.
They have contrived a conquest for shell shucks,
And their fingers crumble fragments of baked weed
Gaily digging and scattering.
And in answer to their treble interjections
The sun beats lightning on the waves,
The waves fold thunder on the sand;
And could they hear me I would tell them:
O brilliant kids, frisk with your dog,
Fondle your shells and sticks, bleached
By time and the elements; but there is a line
You must not cross nor ever trust beyond it
Spry cordage of your bodies to caresses
Too lichen-faithful from too wide a breast.
The bottom of the sea is cruel.
II
—And yet this great wink of eternity,
Of rimless floods, unfettered leewardings,
Samite sheeted and processioned where
Her undinal vast belly moonward bends,
Laughing the wrapt inflections of our love;
Take this Sea, whose diapason knells
On scrolls of silver snowy sentences,
The sceptred terror of whose sessions rends
As her demeanors motion well or ill,
All but the pieties of lovers’ hands.
And onward, as bells off San Salvador
Salute the crocus lustres of the stars,
In these poinsettia meadows of her tides,—
Adagios of islands, O my Prodigal,
Complete the dark confessions her veins spell.
Mark how her turning shoulders wind the hours,
And hasten while her penniless rich palms
Pass superscription of bent foam and wave,—
Hasten, while they are true,—sleep, death, desire,
Close round one instant in one floating flower.
Bind us in time, O Seasons clear, and awe.
O minstrel galleons of Carib fire,
Bequeath us to no earthly shore until
Is answered in the vortex of our grave
The seal’s wide spindrift gaze toward paradise.
III
Infinite consanguinity it bears—
This tendered theme of you that light
Retrieves from sea plains where the sky
Resigns a breast that every wave enthrones;
While ribboned water lanes I wind
Are laved and scattered with no stroke
Wide from your side, whereto this hour
The sea lifts, also, reliquary hands.
And so, admitted through black swollen gates
That must arrest all distance otherwise,—
Past whirling pillars and lithe pediments,
Light wrestling there incessantly with light,
Star kissing star through wave on wave unto
Your body rocking!
and where death, if shed,
Presumes no carnage, but this single change,—
Upon the steep floor flung from dawn to dawn
The silken skilled transmemberment of song;
Permit me voyage, love, into your hands ...
IV
Whose counted smile of hours and days, suppose
I know as spectrum of the sea and pledge
Vastly now parting gulf on gulf of wings
Whose circles bridge, I know, (from palms to the severe
Chilled albatross’s white immutability)
No stream of greater love advancing now
Than, singing, this mortality alone
Through clay aflow immortally to you.
All fragrance irrefragably, and claim
Madly meeting logically in this hour
And region that is ours to wreathe again,
Portending eyes and lips and making told
The chancel port and portion of our June—
Shall they not stem and close in our own steps
Bright staves of flowers and quills today as I
Must first be lost in fatal tides to tell?
In signature of the incarnate word
The harbor shoulders to resign in mingling
Mutual blood, transpiring as foreknown
And widening noon within your breast for gathering
All bright insinuations that my years have caught
For islands where must lead inviolably
Blue latitudes and levels of your eyes,—
In this expectant, still exclaim receive
The secret oar and petals of all love.
V
Meticulous, past midnight in clear rime,
Infrangible and lonely, smooth as though cast
Together in one merciless white blade—
The bay estuaries fleck the hard sky limits.
—As if too brittle or too clear to touch!
The cables of our sleep so swiftly filed,
Already hang, shred ends from remembered stars.
One frozen trackless smile ... What words
Can strangle this deaf moonlight? For we
Are overtaken. Now no cry, no sword
Can fasten or deflect this tidal wedge,
Slow tyranny of moonlight, moonlight loved
And changed ... “There’s
Nothing like this in the world,” you say,
Knowing I cannot touch your hand and look
Too, into that godless cleft of sky
Where nothing turns but dead sands flashing.
“—And never to quite understand!” No,
In all the argosy of your bright hair I dreamed
Nothing so flagless as this piracy.
But now
Draw in your head, alone and too tall here.
Your eyes already in the slant of drifting foam;
Your breath sealed by the ghosts I do not know:
Draw in your head and sleep the long way home.
VI
Where icy and bright dungeons lift
Of swimmers their lost morning eyes,
And ocean rivers, churning, shift
Green borders under stranger skies,
Steadily as a shell secretes
Its beating leagues of monotone,
Or as many waters trough the sun’s
Red kelson past the cape’s wet stone;
O rivers mingling toward the sky
And harbor of the phoenix’ breast—
My eyes pressed black against the prow,
—Thy derelict and blinded guest
Waiting, afire, what name, unspoke,
I cannot claim: let thy waves rear
More savage than the death of kings,
Some splintered garland for the seer.
Beyond siroccos harvesting
The solstice thunders, crept away,
Like a cliff swinging or a sail
Flung into April’s inmost day—
Creation’s blithe and petalled word
To the lounged goddess when she rose
Conceding dialogue with eyes
That smile unsearchable repose—
Still fervid covenant, Belle Isle,
—Unfolded floating dais before
Which rainbows twine continual hair—
Belle Isle, white echo of the oar!
The imaged Word, it is, that holds
Hushed willows anchored in its glow.
It is the unbetrayable reply
Whose accent no farewell can know.
poem by Harold Hart Crane
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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The Wizard of Clayton Close
He's steeped in the shadows of ivy and stone,
And time is the seed that the Wizard has sown,
Has sown for the magick of weaving the night
In a tapestry taken from burning delight.
Burning delight in the eyes of the mind he has
Stolen, to conjure insight for the blind, for the
Blind are the pebbles that litter his beach, while the
Tides of his mind set the blind out of reach.
The masonry wall is caught deep in the spell that he
Conjured forgotten, in some distant dell,
And if you should peer through the ivy and stone
There's a voice whispers... 'leave me, just leave me alone.
I've wandered with Ishtar, away from your eyes
From your spying and prying, away from your lies,
In the peril and terror that lonely men speak...
Seek not the undying, whatever you seek.'
But drawn to the shadows and drawn to the stone
I could leave him not ever, not leave him alone,
And turning one day to the light and the lace
He uncovered his forehead, uncovered his face.
I froze in the instant to question my mind for
The face spoke eternities, infinite time
And the stars held their place in the lips of the man
And the cheeks and the ears, and the eyes and the hand.
The wall crumbled inward as slowly I fell
Through his eyes to the stars, to the depths of his well,
And knowledge was mine as it never had been,
In my mind, misaligned, in the things that I'd seen.
But knowledge was danger, disaster and death
To the heart that would beat, to the mind, to the breath,
To the cheek of a girl or the smile of a man,
To the whisp' of the wind, to the shift of the sand.
And nothing exists in the nothing of me
But the stars and the sky, and the sand and the sea,
The light that was night and the dark of the day
As I drift in the tides of his vision away.
And look as I might for the eyes of his mind
I believe that the Wizard is totally blind,
That once in the depths of his well and his breath
We're imprisoned in freedom, the freedom from death.
If only the way was as clearly defined
In the world of the deaf and the dumb and the blind,
I'd crawl through the stars to the lids of his eyes
To the breadth of his world and the width of his lies.
For the comfort of woman and warmth of a man
I would give all the shift and the sift of the sand,
And not all the shadows of ivy and stone
Would lure me to walk in the winter alone.
21 May 1975
poem by David Lewis Paget
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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