St. Sebastian

alfred eisenstaedt

The Love Song of St. Sebastian (excerpt)
T.S. Eliot


I would come with a towel in my hand
And bend your head beneath my knees;
Your ears curl back in a certain way
Like no one’s else in all the world.
When all the world shall melt in the sun,
Melt or freeze,
I shall remember how your ears were curled.
I should for a moment linger
And follow the curve with my finger
And your head beneath my knees---
I think that at last you would understand.
There would be nothing more to say.
You would love me because I should have strangled you
And because of my infamy;
And I should love you the more because I mangled you
And because you were no longer beautiful
To anyone but me.

excerpted from Inventions of the March Hare
[copyright Valerie Eliot, 1996]

Ghost of Youth

alfred eisenstaedt

Opera
T.S. Eliot

Tristan and Isolde
And the fatalistic horns
The passionate violins
And ominous clarinet;
And love torturing itself
To emotion for all there is in it,
Writhing in and out
Contorted in paroxysms,
Flinging itself at the last
Limits of self-expression.

We have the tragic? oh no!
Life departs with a feeble smile
Into the indifferent.
These emotional experiences
Do not hold good at all,
And I feel like the ghost of youth
At the undertakers’ ball.

excerpted from Inventions of the March Hare
[copyright Valerie Eliot, 1996]

Suite Clownesque

t.s.eliot

for the critic

Suite Clownesque
T.S.Eliot

Across the painted colonnades
Among the terra cotta fawns
Among the potted palms, the lawns,
The cigarettes and serenades

Here’s the comedian again
With broad dogmatic vest, and nose
Nose that interrogates the stars,
Impressive, skeptic, scarlet nose;
The most expressive, real of men,
A jellyfish impertinent,
A jellyfish without repose.

Leaning across the orchestra
Just while he ponders, legs apart,
His belly sparkling and immense:
It’s all philosophy and art.
Nose that interrogates the stars
Interrogates the audience
Who still continue in suspense

Who are so many entities
Inside a ring of lights!
Here’s one who has the world at rights
Here’s one who gets away with it
By simple spreading of the toes,
A self-embodied role, his soul
Concentred in his vest and nose.

excerpted from Inventions of the March Hare
[copyright Valerie Eliot, 1996]

para mi corazon

alfred eisenstaedt

XII Para Mi Corazon
Pablo Neruda (translation w.s. merwin)

Your breast is enough for my heart,
and my wings for your freedom.
What was sleeping above your soul will rise
out of my mouth to heaven.

In you is the illusion of each day.
You arrive like the dew to the cupped flowers.
You undermine the horizon with your absence.
Eternally in flight like the wave.

I have said that you sang in the wind
like the pines and like the masts.
Like them you are tall and taciturn,
and you are sad, all at once, like a voyage.

You gather things to you like an old road.
You are peopled with echoes and nostalgic voices.
I awoke and at times birds fled and migrated
that had been sleeping in your soul.


[copyright w.s.merwin, 1969]

Love Dogs

alfred eisenstaedt

Listen to the moan of a dog for its master.
That whining is the connection.

There are love dogs
no one knows the names of.

Give your life
to be one of them.

-excerpt from Love Dogs by Rumi (translation Coleman Barks)

Just Once

alfred eisenstaedt

Just Once
by Anne Sexton

Just once I knew what life was for.
In Boston, quite suddenly, I understood;
walked there along the Charles River,
watched the lights copying themselves,
all neoned and strobe-hearted, opening
their mouths as wide as opera singers;
counted the stars, my little campaigners,
my scar daisies, and knew that I walked my love
on the night green side of it and cried
my heart to the eastbound cars and cried
my heart to the westbound cars and took
my truth across a small humped bridge
and hurried my truth, the charm of it, home
and hoarded these constants into morning
only to find them gone.

December 1st

by Anne Sexton

As we kissed good-bye
you made a little frown.
Now Christ's lights are
twinkling all over town.
The cornstalks are broken
in the field, broken and brown.
The pond at the year's end
turns her gray eyelid down.
Christ's lights are
twinkling all over town.

A cat-green ice spreads
out over the front lawn.
The hemlocks are the only
young thing left. You are gone.
I hibernated under the covers
last night, not sleeping until dawn
came up like twilight and the oak leaves
whispered like money, those hangers on.
The hemlocks are the only
young thing left. You are gone.

[copyright 1967 by Anne Sexton]

Again, Again, Again

alfred eisenstaedt

One should say before sleeping, "I have lived many lives. I have been a slave and a prince. Many a beloved has sat upon my knees and I have sat upon the knees of many a beloved. Everything that has been shall be again."




-excerpt from an essay by W.B. Yeats

Dust Bowl

Dust Bowl

read this and other poems in Taylor's upcoming book of poetry, Bombshell Bohemia: poems from the underground.