voicelesspiedebates

[voicelesspiedebates]

Interior

It sheds a shy solemnity,

This lamp in our poor room.

O grey and gold amenity, --

Silence and gentle gloom!

Wide from the world, a stolen hour

We claim, and none may know

How love blooms like a tardy flower

Here in the day's after-glow.

And even should the world break in

With jealous threat and guile,

The world, at last, must bow and win

Our pity and a smile.

–Harold Hart Crane–

[voicelesspiedebates]

Never Return These Hours

Meadows I cover with flowers for you,

Come, my lover of flowers!

Come, let me gather fresh jasmine for you,

Never return these hours!

Lilacs have bloomed by the river for you,

Deeply the world is asleep,

Still, though, no answer has reached me from you,

Garlands of green I keep.

What if they speak only evil of me?

Who has been able to change destiny?

Come, my lover of flowers!

–Habbah Khātūn–

(Habba Khatoon)

[voicelesspiedebates]

Lineage

Margaret Walker

My grandmothers were strong. They followed plows and bent to toil. They moved through fields sowing seed. They touched earth and grain grew. They were full of sturdiness and singing My grandmothers were strong. My grandmothers are full of memories Smelling of soap and onions and wet clay With veins rolling roughly over quick hands They have many clean words to say. My grandmothers were strong. Why am I not as they?

[voicelesspiedebates]

INSCRIBED ON THE WALL OF AN INN

NORTH OF TA-YÜ MOUNTAIN

They say that wildgeese, flying southward,

Here turn back, this very month . . .

Shall my own southward journey 

Ever be retraced, I wonder?

. . . The river is pausing at ebb-tide

And the woods are thick with clinging mist-

But tomorrow morning, over the mountain,

Dawn will be white with the plum-trees of home.

Sung Chih-wên

This is poem 73 in The Jade Mountain, published by Doubleday Anchor, including calligraphy by Thomas Eoyang and translations by Witter Bynner.