hermeticmelancholy

[hermeticmelancholy]

David Gascoyne "And the Seventh Dream is the Dream of Isis"

1 white curtains of infinite fatigue dominating the starborn heritage of the colonies of St Francis white curtains of tortured destinies inheriting the calamities of the plagues of the desert encourage the waistlines of women to expand and the eyes of men to enlarge like pocket-cameras teach children to sin at the age of five to cut out the eyes of their sisters with nail-scissors to run into the streets and offer themselves to unfrocked priests teach insects to invade the deathbeds of rich spinsters and to engrave the foreheads of their footmen with purple signs for the year is open the year is complete the year is full of unforeseen happenings and the time of earthquakes is at hand

today is the day when the streets are full of hearses and when women cover their ring fingers with pieces of silk when the doors fall off their hinges in ruined cathedrals when hosts of white birds fly across the ocean from america and make their nests in the trees of public gardens the pavements of cities are covered with needles the reservoirs are full of human hair fumes of sulphur envelop the houses of ill-fame out of which bloodred lilies appear.

across the square where crowds are dying in thousands a man is walking a tightrope covered with moths

2 there is an explosion of geraniums in the ballroom of the hotel there is an extremely unpleasant odour of decaying meat arising from the depetalled flower growing out of her ear her arms are like pieces of sandpaper or wings of leprous birds in taxis and when she sings her hair stands on end and lights itself with a million little lamps like glow-worms you must always write the last two letters of her christian name upside down with a blue pencil she was standing at the window clothed only in a ribbon she was burning the eyes of snails in a candle she was eating the excrement of dogs and horses she was writing a letter to the president of france

3 the edges of leaves must be examined through microscopes in order to see the stains made by dying flies at the other end of the tube is a woman bathing her husband and a box of newspapers covered with handwriting when an angel writes the word tobacco across the sky the sea becomes covered with patches of dandruff the trunks of trees bust open to release streams of milk little girls stick photographs of genitals to the windows of their homes prayerbooks in churches open themselves at the death service and virgins cover their parents' beds with tealeaves there is an extraordinary epidemic of tuberculosis in yorkshire where medical dictionaries are banned from public libraries and salt turns a pale violet colour every day at seven o'clock when the hearts of troubadours unfold like soaked mattresses when the leaven of the gruesome slum-visitors and the wings of private airplanes look like shoeleather shoeleather on which pentagrams have been drawn shoeleather covered with vomitings of hedgehogs shoeleather used for decorating wedding-cakes and the gums of queens like glass marbles queens whose wrists are chained to the walls of houses and whose fingernails are covered with little drawings of flowers we rejoice to receive the blessing of criminals and we illuminate the roofs of convents when they are hung we look through a telescope on which the lord's prayer has been written and we see an old woman making a scarecrow on a mountain near a village in the middle of spain we see an elephant killing a stag-beetle by letting hot tears fall onto the small of its back we see a large cocoa-tin full of shapeless lumps of wax there is a horrible dentist walking out of a ship's funnel and leaving behind him footsteps which make noises on account of his accent he was discharged from the sanatorium and sent to examine the methods of cannibals so that wreaths of passion-flowers were floating in the darkness giving terrible illnesses to the possessors of pistols so that large quantities of rats disguised as pigeons were sold to various customers from neighbouring towns who were adepts at painting gothic letters on screens and at tying up parcels with pieces of grass we told them to cut off the buttons on their trousers but they swore in our faces and took off their shoes whereupon the whole place was stifled with vast clouds of smoke and with theatres and eggshells and droppings of eagles and the drums of the hospitals were broken like glass and glass were the faces in the last looking-glass.

#poem #poetry #surrealism #david gascoyne #surrealist #symbolism

[hermeticmelancholy]

Richard Brautigan "Love's Not the Way to Treat a Friend"

Love's not the way to treat a friend. I wouldn't wish that on you. I don't want to see your eyes forgotten on a rainy day, lost in the endless purse of those who can remember nothing.

Love's not the way to treat a friend. I don't want to see you end up that way with your body being poured like wounded marble into the architecture of those who make bridges out of crippled birds.

Love's not the way to treat a friend. There are so many better things for you than to see your feelings sold as magic lanterns to somebody whose body casts no light.

#richard brautigan #poem #poetry #rommel drives on deep into egypt

[hermeticmelancholy]

Ted Hughes "Pike"

Pike, three inches long, perfect Pike in all parts, green tigering the gold. Killers from the egg: the malevolent aged grin. They dance on the surface among the flies.

Or move, stunned by their own grandeur, Over a bed of emerald, silhouette Of submarine delicacy and horror. A hundred feet long in their world.

In ponds, under the heat-struck lily pads - Gloom of their stillness: Logged on last year's black leaves, watching upwards. Or hung in an amber cavern of weeds

The jaws' hooked clamp and fangs Not to be changed at this date; A life subdued to its instrument; The gills kneading quietly, and the pectorals.

Three we kept behind glass, Jungled in weed: three inches, four, And four and a half: fed fry to them - Suddenly there were two. Finally one

With a sag belly and the grin it was born with. And indeed they spare nobody. Two, six pounds each, over two foot long. High and dry in the willow-herb -

One jammed past its gills down the other's gullet: The outside eye stared: as a vice locks - The same iron in his eye Though its film shrank in death.

A pond I fished, fifty yards across, Whose lilies and muscular tench Had outlasted every visible stone Of the monastery that planted them -

Stilled legendary depth: It was as deep as England. It held Pike too immense to stir, so immense and old That past nightfall I dared not cast

But silently cast and fished With the hair frozen on my head For what might move, for what eye might move. The still splashes on the dark pond,

Owls hushing the floating woods Frail on my ear against the dream Darkness beneath night's darkness had freed, That rose slowly towards me, watching.

#poem #poetry #ted hughes #pike #yorkshire

[hermeticmelancholy]

R. S. Thomas "Welsh Landscape"

To live in Wales is to be conscious At dusk of the spilled blood That went into the making of the wild sky, Dyeing the immaculate rivers In all their courses. It is to be aware, Above the noisy tractor And hum of the machine Of strife in the strung woods, Vibrant with sped arrows. You cannot live in the present, At least not in Wales. There is the language for instance, The soft consonants Strange to the ear. There are cries in the dark at night As owls answer the moon, And thick ambush of shadows, Hushed at the fields’ corners. There is no present in Wales, And no future; There is only the past, Brittle with relics, Wind-bitten towers and castles With sham ghosts; Mouldering quarries and mines; And an impotent people, Sick with inbreeding, Worrying the carcase of an old song.

#poetry #r. s. thomas #r s thomas #poem #cymru #wales #welsh landscape

[hermeticmelancholy]

Francis Ponge "The Oyster"

The oyster, the size of an average pebble, looks tougher, its colour is less uniform, brilliantly whitish. It is a stubbornly closed world. And yet, it can be opened: one must then hold it in the hollow of a dish towel, use a jagged and rather tricky knife, repeat this many times. Curious fingers cut themselves on it, nails break on it: it’s tough going. Hitting it that way leaves white circles, like halos, on its envelope.

Inside, one finds a whole world to drink and eat: under a nacreous firmament (strictly speaking), the heavens above recline on the heavens below and form a single pool, a viscous and greenish bag, that flows in and out when you smell it or look at it, fringed with blackish lace along the edges.

Sometimes, a very rare formula pearls in their nacreous throat, and right away you have an ornament.

#poetry #francis ponge #poem #prose poetry #prose poem #surrealism

[hermeticmelancholy]

Paul Auster "Northern Lights"

These are the words that do not survive the world. And to speak them is to vanish

into the world. Unapproachable light that heaves above the earth, kindling the brief miracle

of the open eye—

and the day that spreads like a fire of leaves through the first chill wind of October

consuming the world

in the plain speech of desire.

#poetry #paul auster #poem #post modernism #post-modernism

[hermeticmelancholy]

Charles Bukowski "notice"

the swans drown in bilge water, take down the signs, test the poisons, barricade the cow from the bull, the peony from the sun, take the lavender kisses from my night, put the symphonies out on the streets like beggars, get the nails ready, flog the backs of the saints, stun frogs and mice for the cat, burn the enthralling paintings, piss on the dawn, my love is dead.

#poetry #charles bukowski #poem #transgressive #realism

[hermeticmelancholy]

Paul Éluard "The Lover"

She is standing on my eyelids And her hair is in my hair, She has the shape of my hands, The colour of my eyes, She is absorbed in my shadow Like a stone within the sky.

Her eyes she keeps always open And doesn’t let me sleep. Her dreams in broad daylight Make the suns evaporate, Make me laugh, weep and laugh, And speak, with nothing to say.

(Trans: Mary Ann Caws)

#poetry #paul éluard #paul eluard #poem #surrealism #dada

[hermeticmelancholy]

Guillaume Apollinaire  "I Had the Courage"

I had the courage to look backward The ghosts of my days Mark my way and I mourn them Some lie mouldering in Italian churches Or in little woods of citron trees Which flower and bear fruit At the same time and in every season Other days wept before dying in taverns Where ardent odes became jaded Before the eyes of a mulatto girl who inspired poetry And the roses of electricity open once more In the garden of my memory

(Trans. Daisy Aldan)

#poetry #guillaume apollinaire #apollinaire #poem #orphism #surrealism #fin de siècle #symbolism

[hermeticmelancholy]

Percy Bysshe Shelley "The flower that smiles to-day"

The flower that smiles to-day       To-morrow dies; All that we wish to stay,       Tempts and then flies. What is this world's delight? Lightning that mocks the night,     Brief even as bright.

Virtue, how frail it is!       Friendship how rare! Love, how it sells poor bliss       For proud despair! But we, though soon they fall, Survive their joy and all     Which ours we call.

Whilst skies are blue and bright,       Whilst flowers are gay, Whilst eyes that change ere night       Make glad the day, Whilst yet the calm hours creep, Dream thou – and from thy sleep     Then wake to weep.

#poetry #percy bysshe shelley #p. b. shelley #poem #romantic poetry #romantic period #romanticism #the flower that smiles to-day #mutability #pb shelley