with cecilia, up in my bedroom

Ophelia
I
When the stars sleep in the calm black stream,
Like some great lily, pale Ophelia floats,
Slowly floats, wound in her veils like a dream.
--Half heard in the woods, halloos from distant throats.

A thousand years has sad Ophelia gone
Glimmering on the water, a phantom fair;
A thousand years her soft distracted song
Has waked the answering evening air.

The wind kisses her breasts and shakes
Her long veils lying softly on the stream;
The shivering willows weep upon her cheeks
Across her dreaming brows the rushes lean.

The wrinkled water lilies round her sigh;
And once she wakes a nest of sleeping things
And hears the tiny sound of frightened wings;
Mysterious music falls from the starry sky.
II
O pale Ophelia, beautiful as snow!
Yes, die, child, die, and drift away to sea!
For from the peaks of Norway cold winds blow
And whisper low of bitter liberty;

For a breath that moved your long heavy hair
Brought strange sounds to your wandering thoughts;
Your heart heard Nature singing everywhere,
In the sighs of trees and the whispering of night.

For the voice of seas, endless and immense,
Breaks your young breast, too human and too sweet;
For on an April morning a pale young prince,
Poor lunatic, sat wordless at your feet!

Sky! Love! Liberty! What a dream, poor young
Thing! You sank before him, snow before fire,
Your own great vision strangling your tongue,
Infinity flaring in your blue eye!
III
And the poet says that by starlight you came
To pick the flowers you loved so much, at night,
And he saw, wound in her veils like a dream,
Like some great lily, pale Ophelia float.
Rimbaud

I threw myself out of bed and ran away from the room that was growing around me like a web, seizing upon my imagination, gnawing around me like a web, seizing upon my imagination, gnawing into my memory so that I would forget in five minutes who I was and whom I loved.
Anais

Lady Lazarus
I have done it again.
One year in every ten
I manage it-----

A sort of walking miracle, my skin
Bright as a Nazi lampshade,
My right foot

A paperweight,
My featureless, fine
Jew linen.

Peel off the napkin
O my enemy.
Do I terrify?-------

The nose, the eye pits, the full set of teeth?
The sour breath
Will vanish in a day.

Soon, soon the flesh
The grave cave ate will be
At home on me

And I a smiling woman.
I am only thirty.
And like the cat I have nine times to die.

This is Number Three.
What a trash
To annihilate each decade.

What a million filaments.
The Peanut-crunching crowd
Shoves in to see

Them unwrap me hand and foot ------
The big strip tease.
Gentleman , ladies

These are my hands
My knees.
I may be skin and bone,

Nevertheless, I am the same, identical woman.
The first time it happened I was ten.
It was an accident.

The second time I meant
To last it out and not come back at all.
I rocked shut

As a seashell.
They had to call and call
And pick the worms off me like sticky pearls.

Dying
Is an art, like everything else.
I do it exceptionally well.

I do it so it feels like hell.
I do it so it feels real.
I guess you could say I've a call.

It's easy enough to do it in a cell.
It's easy enough to do it and stay put.
It's the theatrical

Come back in broad day
To the same place, the same face, the same brute
Amused shout:

'A miracle!'
That knocks me out.
There is a charge

For the eyeing my scars, there is a charge
For the hearing of my heart---
It really goes.

And there is a charge, a very large charge
For a word or a touch
Or a bit of blood

Or a piece of my hair on my clothes.
So, so, Herr Doktor.
So, Herr Enemy.

I am your opus,
I am your valuable,
The pure gold baby

That melts to a shriek.
I turn and burn.
Do not think I underestimate your great concern.

Ash, ash---
You poke and stir.
Flesh, bone, there is nothing there----

A cake of soap,
A wedding ring,
A gold filling.

Herr God, Herr Lucifer
Beware
Beware.

Out of the ash
I rise with my red hair
And I eat men like air.
SYLVIA (o Sylvia)


‘God, it drives me mad to think what you would be like when everything falls away.…of falling…in darkness and knowing nothing.’
Henry Miller



Maybe I’ll Save You<<
Would you write me loveletters
From across great distances
On faded, crumbling paper of crushed lavender
Would you notice the weight of my smile
The melancholic shade of each eyelid
Would you hold out your hand
When I’ve fallen down when I’ve
Lost my way, my will—Would you know
When I’ve misplaced how to say I
Need you?
Would you take note of what I am, which
Is to say what I love, love?
Would you leave me lonely?
Would you let me fill you with my crackling
Fire
Would you trust me that I’d never burn you
On purpose?
Would you tell me I’m beautiful when I cry
Would you want me as the mother of your children?


One cannot escape from one’s own nature, although Henry said yesterday, ‘There are flaws in your goodness.’ Flaws. What a relief. Fissures. I may escape through them.
Anais


http://www.geographis.ch/~podouphis/Delaroche_martyre.jpg