1/26/09

The lady comes to the gate dressed in lavender and leather
Looking North to the sea she finds the weather fine
She hears the steeple bells ringing through the orchard
All the way from town
She watches seagulls fly
Silver on the ocean stitching through the waves
The edges of the sky

Many people wander up the hills
From all around you
Making up your memories and thinking they have found you
They cover you with veils of wonder as if you were a bride
Young men holding violets are curious to know if you have cried
And tell you why
And ask you why
Any way you answer

Lace around the collars of the blouses of the ladies
Flowers from a Spanish friend of the family
The embroid'ry of your life holds you in
And keeps you out but you survive
Imprisoned in your bones
Behind the isinglass windows of your eyes

And in the night the iron wheels rolling through the rain
Down the hills through the long grass to the sea
And in the dark the hard bells ringing with pain
Come away alone

Even now by the gate with you long hair blowing
And the colors of the day that lie along your arms
You must barter your life to make sure you are living
And the crowd that has come
You give them the colors
And the bells and wind and the dream

Will there never be a prince who rides along the sea and the mountains
Scattering the sand and foam into amethyst fountains
Riding up the hills from the beach in the long summer grass
Holding the sun in his hands and shattering the isinglass?

Day and night and day again and people come and go away forever
While the shining summer sea dances in the glass of your mirror
While you search the waves for love and your visions for a sign
The knot of tears around your throat is crystallizing into your design

And in the night the iron wheels rolling through the rain
Down the hills through the long grass to the sea
And in the dark the hard bells ringing with pain
Come away alone
Come away alone...with me.

Albatross, Judy Collins


Wrenching its way towards, longing for --


Summer ends now; now, barbarous in beauty, the stooks arise
Around; up above, what wind-walks! what lovely behaviour
Of silk-sack clouds! has wilder, wilful-wavier
Meal-drift moulded ever and melted across skies?
I walk, I lift up, I lift up heart, eyes,
Down all that glory in the heavens to glean our Saviour;
And, éyes, heárt, what looks, what lips yet gave you a
Rapturous love’s greeting of realer, of rounder replies?
And the azurous hung hills are his world-wielding shoulder
Majestic—as a stallion stalwart, very-violet-sweet!—
These things, these things were here and but the beholder
Wanting; which two when they once meet,
The heart rears wings bold and bolder
And hurls for him, O half hurls earth for him off under his feet.

Hurrahing in Harvest, Gerald Manley Hopkins


I have so many things to find today, to sort today, to invent and wrench out and wait upon -- and I don't know; I've never known and I never shall. I bury my face in my hands and think for as long as I can stand, and eventually I reach a point where I just have to guess and run with it.
That's all.

Oh, but I'm so tired...tired of standing up and being cold and having eyes that look like this. How does one say, "alone...with me," and who would ever answer?

I'm sorry...I am trying to make my head more malleable, to wrap it around the wills of those stronger than I -- but it's been too long in this one place; last time the changes were rapid-fire and I never settled on one, so it wasn't too hard. But I can't get my head around it this time, rewrite everything I ever wanted like it's only inscribed in blue dry-erase marker. I'm trying, and I will come to it -- for it does fit, and it will be good, and I understand it all intellectually. I just have to run away first -- I'll come back, I promise. Somehow. I have always been able to talk myself into things. It just takes longer now.

Oh, love, I'm sorry...I will reach it, for you, I will...