"I taste a liquor never brewed" - Emily Dickinson
I taste a liquor never brewed,
From tankards scooped in pearl;
Not all the vats upon the Rhine
Yield such an alcohol!
Inebriate of air am I, And debauchee of dew, Reeling, through endless summer days, From inns of molten blue.
When landlords turn the drunken bee Out of the foxglove's door, When butterflies renounce their drams, I shall but drink the more!
Till seraphs swing their snowy hats, And saints to windows run, To see the little tippler Leaning against the sun!
Note: Before too long, before I forget, a poem that I was thinking about yesterday, running around the block in the warmth, over sidewalks covered with the fallen pink-purple crab apple petals
Big Book Of Poetry
... link (one comment) ... comment
Recuerdo - Edna St. Vincent Millay
We were very tired, we were very merry– We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry. It was bare and bright, and smelled like a stable– But we looked into a fire, we leaned across a table, We lay on a hill-top underneath the moon; And the whistles kept blowing, and the dawn came soon.
We were very tired, we were very merry– We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry; And you ate an apple, and I ate a pear, From a dozen of each we had bought somewhere; And the sky went wan, and the wind came cold, And the sun rose dripping, a bucketful of gold.
We were very tired, we were very merry, We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry. We hailed, “Good morrow, mother!” to a shawl-covered head, And bought a morning paper, which neither of us read; And she wept, “God bless you!” for the apples and pears, And we gave her all our money but our subway fares.
Note: I am very tired but not so merry (as I was this past Saturday) but I thought I should post this poem before it slips from my mind. I found this poem after I chanced upon a phrase from it - "...all night on the ferry" - as I was getting off the Staten Island Ferry (swinging hands with N), written in large letters on the inside of the Whitehall Terminal, located at the southern tip of Manhattan, after a pleasurable (and free - yes, I am, um, chea-intelligent) sunset cruise, back and forth, across the gold speckled Upper New York Bay.
Also searching for this poem lead me, via this page, to a great audio open-source archive called LibriVox. Go listen to a poem, an essay, or even a book.
Big Book Of Poetry
... link (no comments) ... comment
As Suggested By The Calculations Of Copernicus - Jason Guriel
This first kiss on this cold street
could have jailed Galileo
for the heavenly point it proves
but tonight, merely moves
our two souls into steady revolution
around and about the warm fixed fact
of our brilliant lips.
Note: N pointed to me this poem in a Toronto subway carriage on Friday night as we were returning drunk and high on the Raga Bhoop and Shivranjani, as explored on the santoor and the tabla by Shiv Kumar Sharma and Zakir Hussain. I immediately Google-d it on return to my room but couldn't find its trace. N, however, suggested that it would show up again on the subway when I ride it next.
And her prophesy came true the very next afternoon when we found ourselves taking the subway to go see the painting exhibit of a Canadian wild woman at the AGO. This time I made a point to quickly scribble the poem down - thankfully it was a short poem for we only had two subway stops between our origin and destination.
Big Book Of Poetry
... link (one comment) ... comment