And my lips are petals, spinning
Down the wind that has beginning
Where the crumpled beeches start
In a fringe of salty reeds;
When my arms are elder-bushes,
And the rangy lilac pushes
Upward, upward through my heart;
Light your tinsel moon, and call on
Your performing stars to fall on
Headlong through your paper sky;
Nevermore shall I be cursed
By a flushed and amorous slattern,
With her dusty laces' pattern
Trailing, as she straggles by.
~ Dorothy Parker
Interior
ReplyDeleteHer mind lives in a quiet room,
A narrow room, and tall,
With pretty lamps to quench the gloom
And mottoes on the wall.
There all the things are waxen neat,
And set in decorous lines,
And there are posies, round and sweet,
And little, straightened vines.
Her mind lives tidily, apart
From cold and noise and pain,
And bolts the door against her heart,
Out wailing in the rain.
Lovely!
ReplyDeleteStill, the heat seems more apropos to Dottie's summer slattern than her decorous maiden with the winter's heart.
Hope you are enjoying your travels!
Dot got it right poetically.
ReplyDeleteMidday shadows fall
Windows lit up blazing bright
Not mid-day: midnight!
Full Sturgeon moon sails the sky
Great galleon, silver-white!
Sullen August sun
And mewling peacock cries
Summertime passing.
We're certainly getting about 97 degrees-worth of sullen August sun today; too much for my pale Northwest constitution...
ReplyDeleteThis is really turning into a Parker poetry thread. Any other candidates for favorite Dottie verse?
ReplyDeleteHere's mine:
Ballade at Thirty-five
This, no song of an ingénue,
This, no ballad of innocence;
This, the rhyme of a lady who
Followed ever her natural bents.
This, a solo of sapience,
This, a chantey of sophistry,
This, the sum of experiments, --
I loved them until they loved me.
Decked in garments of sable hue,
Daubed with ashes of myriad Lents,
Wearing shower bouquets of rue,
Walk I ever in penitence.
Oft I roam, as my heart repents,
Through God's acre of memory,
Marking stones, in my reverence,
"I loved them until they loved me."
Pictures pass me in long review,--
Marching columns of dead events.
I was tender, and, often, true;
Ever a prey to coincidence.
Always knew I the consequence;
Always saw what the end would be.
We're as Nature has made us -- hence
I loved them until they loved me.
I love the wry and bitter wisdom about the foolishness of love in these four short lines:
I was tender, and, often, true;
Ever a prey to coincidence.
Always knew I the consequence;
Always saw what the end would be.
What a delight it must have been to listen to her in full spate...
Yeah...I oiled my Aussie style raincoat today to use the heat. Oh, and my poem is not Dottie's work. I am not up to her standard...that poor haikai exhibit is my own.
ReplyDeleteI am in a posting-mad state today, must have beent the effect of finally getting a full night's sleep, haha!
Labrys - wow! You iz a poet and I didn't know it!
ReplyDeleteKidding aside, that's beautiful. Thank you. Lovely!
Yes, you have chosen a wonderful specimen in "35", and thanks -- I am enjoying the reduction in heat. I don't really mind the heat until it surpasses body temp, which it did throughout July (though Mediterranean climate would be ideal.)
ReplyDeleteIt is so easy to be the cynic (though not the poet), which is why to believe in spite of it all is so subversive ;)
Thanks, Chief. I wrote 100 haiku and haikai this summer, as a challenge to do 100 posts on the same sort of topic/thing.
ReplyDeleteSome were crap and venting, lol....but here and there was one that even I liked.