The Collected Poems of Barbara Guest. Barbara Guest

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СКАЧАТЬ my prompter’s arms this shako,

      wandering as I am into clouds and air

      rushing into darkness as corridors

      who do not fear the melancholy of the stair.

Piazzas

       for Mary Abbot Clyde

      In the golden air, the risky autumn,

      leaves on the piazza, shadows by the door

      on your chair the red berry

      after the dragonfly summer

      we walk this mirroring air our feet chill

      and silver and golden a portrait

      by Pinturicchio we permanently taste the dark

      grapes and the seed pearls glisten

      as the flight of those fresh brown birds

      an instant of vision that the coupling mind

      and heart see in their youth

      with thin wings attacking a real substance

      as Pinturicchio fixed his air.

      After all dragonflies do as much

      in midsummer with a necessary water

      there is always a heaviness of wings.

      To remember

      now that the imagination’s at its turning

      how to recall those Pierrots of darkness

      (with the half-moon like a yellow leg of a pantaloon)

      I would see you again (like the purple P

      of piazza).

      Imagination

      thunder in the Alps yet we flew above it

      then met a confusion of weather and felt

      the alphabet turning over when we landed

      in Pekin. I read the late Empress’s letters

      and thought they were yours,

      that impeccable script followed by murders

      real or divined

      as the youth leaning over the piazza

      throwing stones at his poems. He reads

      his effigy in the one that ricochets

      he weeps into the autumn air

      and that stone becomes golden as a tomb

      beware the risky imagination

      that lines its piazzas

      with lambswool or for sheer disturbance

      places mirrors for Pinturicchio

      to draw his face at daybreak

      when the air is clear of shadows

      and no one walks the piazza.

All Grey-haired My Sisters

      All grey-haired my sisters

      what is it in the more enduring

      clime of Spring that waits?

      The tiger his voice once prayerful

      around the lax ochre sheen

      finally in withering sleep

      its calendar,

      Relatives

      delicious plumages your scenery

      has a black musical depth

      the cardinal flies into

      he learns to repeat on an empty

      branch your distillations. Sombre

      mysteries the garden illumines

      a shape of honey hive

      the vigorous drones lighting

      up your face as fortunes pour

      from your cold pockets into the heat

      and glaze, fortresses

      for those memories brisk

      in the now doubling air,

      Adventuresses

      guided by the form and scent

      of tree and flower blossoming

      the willow once frail now image

      cut of stone so to endure,

       My darlings

       you walked into the wars

       with wreaths of pine cones, you lay

       by the sea and your sweet dresses

       were torn by waves as over each receded

       and pebbles were lifted at your feet

       in the foam,

       Ancestress

       with blond boating hair

       as daisies drop at your wrists

       which flight are you making?

       down the lime aisles

       I see your sashes disappear.

      Why should I count you more equinoctal, sun?

      Smoothly the oars into the bay

      the ultramarine fast as a castle, or rock

      its soul plunged to craters virginal

      the rapid twist of spume to all-forgetting

      wrecks, intensely now that story’s done.

      Mermaids СКАЧАТЬ