oh my poor little creature
poor creature
you are too blithe
for your own misery,
you would let pus run rivers
from your fox’s ears so long as they heard
the faintest mumbles
of good,
boy.
you do not have sense
to whimper when I tug green scabs
from your belly.
You kiss me through
broken teeth.
We return you to your
home and through a screen
we see the frail
decrepitude that is your
(euphemism) mother
and while we
burn with indignation on your
behalf you
run blissly to her
lap
oh would that we all were so
sweet in our suffering
that we might feel relief of
pain as only a
multiplying of the
sufficient love
which we received even in our most broken
state
and that the
Bad People
proved to be only
elderly and
careless
we might all then slip
at our time through the back
gate and into the
arms of a
loving god who will
wash our wounds and say
oh my poor little creature
poor creature
photograph by Pete Millis
Lord: it is time. The huge summer has gone by.
Now overlap the sundials with your shadows,
and on the meadows let the wind go free.
Command the fruits to swell on tree and vine;
grant them a few more warm transparent days,
urge them on to fulfillment then, and press
the final sweetness into the heavy wine.
Whoever has no house now, will never have one.
Whoever is alone will stay alone,
Will sit, read, write long letters through the evening,
and wander on the boulevards, up and down,
restlessly, while the dry leaves are blowing.
Rainer Maria Rilke, trans. Stephen Mitchell.
Illustration by 3amfromkyoto
Posting this poem whenever I first start to feel the onset of autumn has become a sort of tradition for me. The leaves here are turning; the light has changed. Pumpkins are shedding their umbilical vines. School has started again.
I’m not looking forward to the greyness and the dark of the Pacific winter; but autumn offers some fine consolations. It’s a magnificent last meal. I always thought that Rilke (and Mitchell) did a fine job a catching that thin, golden membrane between their fingers.
(In Memoriam Marina Tsvetayeva, Anna Wickham, Sylvia Plath, Shakespeare’s sister, etc., etc.)
The best slave
does not need to be beaten.
She beats herself.
Not with a leather whip,
or with stick or twigs,
not with a blackjack
or a billyclub,
but with the fine whip
of her own tongue
& the subtle beating
of her mind
against her mind.
For who can hate her half so well
as she hates herself?
& who can match the finesse
of her self-abuse?
Years of training
are required for this.
Twenty years
of subtle self-indulgence,
self-denial;
until the subject
thinks herself a queen
& yet a beggar —
both at the same time.
She must doubt herself
in everything but love.
She must choose passionately
& badly.
She must feel lost as a dog
without her master.
She must refer all moral questions
to her mirror.
She must fall in love with a cossack
or a poet.
She must never go out of the house
unless veiled in paint.
She must wear tight shoes
so she always remembers her bondage.
She must never forget
she is rooted in the ground.
Though she is quick to learn
& admittedly clever,
her natural doubt of herself
should make her so weak
that she dabbles brilliantly
in half a dozen talents
& thus embellishes
but does not change
our life.
If she‘s an artist
& comes close to genius,
the very fact of her gift
should cause her such pain
that she will take her own life
rather than best us.
& after she dies, we will cry
& make her a saint.
Erica Jong
Photo
Heat.
O wind, rend open the heat,
cut apart the heat,
rend it to tatters.
Fruit
cannot drop
through this thick air–
fruit cannot fall into heat
that presses up and blunts
the points of pears
and rounds the grapes.
Cut the heat–
plough through it,
turning it on either side
of your path.
Hilda Doolittle
Further Instructions.
Come, my songs, let us express our baser passions.
Let us express our envy for the man with a steady job and no worry about the future.
You are very idle, my songs,
I fear you will come to a bad end.
You stand about the streets, You loiter at the corners and bus-stops,
You do next to nothing at all.
You do not even express our inner nobilitys,
You will come to a very bad end.
And I? I have gone half-cracked.
I have talked to you so much that I almost see you about me,
Insolent little beasts! Shameless! Devoid of clothing!
But you, newest song of the lot,
You are not old enough to have done much mischief.
I will get you a green coat out of China
With dragons
worked upon it.
I will get you the scarlet silk trousers
From the statue of the infant Christ at Santa Maria Novella;
Lest they say we are lacking in taste,
Or that there is no caste in this family.
Ezra Pound