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| Frits Thaulow, "Red Church Wall in Venice" (1894) |
From the rotting fish,
from the lazy cats,
beneath the squashed summer fruits,
your glory grows:
Maria della Salute, Ca d'Oro,
Colleoni, Pallazo Ducale...
I count my coins on the steps,
place my ham on the dry bread
and remember the Giorgione
with its fretful tattered clouds
bearing the title:
"la tempesta."
Thomas Bernhard (1931-1989). On Earth and in Hell. Translated by Peter Waugh. New York City: Three Rooms Press, 2015.
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| Tadeusz Makowski, "Study of a nude (Female half-nude)" (1912). |
In front of the sombre mountains, a faint, lost ribbon of
rainbow
And between us and it, the thunder;
And down below, in the green wheat, the laborers
Stand like dark stumps, still in the green wheat.
You are near to me, and your naked feet in the sandals,
And through the scent of the balcony's naked timber
I distinguish the scent of your hair; so now the limber
Lightning falls from heaven.
Adown the pale-green, glacier-river floats
A dark boat through the gloom—and whither?
The thunder roars. But still we have each other.
The naked lightnings in the heavens dither
And disappear. What have we but each other?
The boat has gone.
D.H. Lawrence (1885-1930). Poetry: A magazine of verse. Vol. III, no. 4. January, 1914. Chicago: Harriet Monroe.
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| Turner, "The fighting temeraire tugged to her last berth to be broken up, 1838 (1839) |
The gold stars are sleeping,
The mirror-pond trembles,
The dawn light comes creeping
And heaven's net reddens.
The birch-tree smiles sleepily,
Her silk locks free-flowing,
Green earrings are rustling,
And silver dew glowing.
Tall nettles by the fencing
Their bright pearls are flauting
And whispering merrily:
"Good morning!"
1914
Sergei Esenin (1895-1925). Selected Poetry. Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1982. Translated by Peter Tempest.
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| Sarah Goodridge, "Beauty Revealed" (1828) |
"WHY should beauty endure,
Once in its perfect act
Manifest and secure?
"Although to-day retract
The breath that yesterday
Informed the body's fact,
"Still from the angry clay
Some ripe significance
Is reaped and laid away,
"Out of the husk of chance
Drawn clear, and purified
Of earthy circumstance."
So they said. I tried
To believe what they said,
Because my friend had died...
But the dead are dead.
E. R. Dodds (1893-1979). Coterie, A Quarterly. Art. Prose and Poetry. No. 3, December, 1919. London: Hendersons.
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| Piero di Cosimo, "Portrait de femme dit de Simonetta Vespucci" (c. 1480) |
How have I labored?
How have I not labored?
To bring her soul to birth,
To give theses elements a name and a centre!
She is beautiful as the sunlight, and as fluid.
She has no name, and no place.
How have I laboured to bring her soul into separation;
To give her a name and her being!
Surely you are bound and entwined,
You are mingled with the elements unborn;
I have loved a stream and a shadow.
I beseech you enter your life.
I beseech you learn to say "I"
When I question you:
For you are no part, but a whole;
No portion, but a being.
Ezra Pound (1885-1972). Poetry: A Magazine of Verse. Vol. II, No. I, April, 1913. Chicago: Harriet Monroe.
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| Hans Baldung "Death and the Woman" (1520-25) |
I
The stars were wild that summer evening
As on the low lake shore stood you and I
And every time I caught your flashing eye
Or heard your voice discourse on anything
It seemed a star went burning down the sky.
I looked into your heart that dying summer
And found your silent woman's heart grown wild
Whereupon you turned to me and smiled
Saying you felt afraid but that you were
Weary of being muted and undefiled.
II
I spoke to you that last winter morning
Watching the wind smoke snow across the ice
Told of how the beauty of your spirit, flesh,
And smile had made day break at night and spring
Burst beauty in the wasting winter's place.
You did not answer when I spoke, but stood
As if that wistful part of you, your sorrow,
Were blown about in fitful winds below;
Your eyes replied your worn heart wished it could
Again be white and silent as the snow.
Galway Kinnell (1927-2014). Poems. Classic Poetry Series, 2012.
