Ilustração de Majalin

Knowledge

Now that I know

That passion warms little

Of flesh in the mold,

And treasure is brittle,

I’ll lie here and learn

How, over their ground,

Trees make a long shadow

And a light sound.

                             Louise Bogan 

Song For The Last Act

Now that I have your face by heart, I look
Less at its features than its darkening frame
Where quince and melon, yellow as young flame,
Lie with quilled dahlias and the shepherd's crook.
Beyond, a garden, There, in insolent ease
The lead and marble figures watch the show
Of yet another summer loath to go
Although the scythes hang in the apple trees.

Now that I have your face by heart, I look.

Now that I have your voice by heart, I read
In the black chords upon a dulling page
Music that is not meant for music's cage,
Whose emblems mix with words that shake and bleed.
The staves are shuttled over with a stark
Unprinted silence. In a double dream
I must spell out the storm, the running stream.
The beat's too swift. The notes shift in the dark.

Now that I have your voice by heart, I read.

Now that I have your heart by heart, I see
The wharves with their great ships and architraves;
The rigging and the cargo and the slaves
On a strange beach under a broken sky.
O not departure, but a voyage done!
The bales stand on the stone; the anchor weeps
Its red rust downward, and the long vine creeps
Beside the salt herb, in the lengthening sun.

Now that I have your heart by heart, I see. 

Louise Bogan

Words For Departure
.

1
Nothing was remembered, nothing forgotten.

When we awoke, wagons were passing on the warm summer pavements,

The window-sills were wet from rain in the night,

Birds scattered and settled over chimneypots

As among grotesque trees.

Nothing was accepted, nothing looked beyond.

Slight-voiced bells separated hour from hour,

The afternoon sifted coolness

And people drew together in streets becoming deserted.

There was a moon, and light in a shop-front,

And dusk falling like precipitous water.

Hand clasped hand

Forehead still bowed to forehead--

Nothing was lost, nothing possessed

There was no gift nor denial.

.

2

I have remembered you.

You were not the town visited once,

Nor the road falling behind running feet.

You were as awkward as flesh

And lighter than frost or ashes.

You were the rind,

And the white-juiced apple,

The song, and the words waiting for music.

.

3

You have learned the beginning;

Go from mine to the other.

Be together; eat, dance, despair,

Sleep, be threatened, endure.

You will know the way of that.

But at the end, be insolent;

Be absurd--strike the thing short off;

Be mad--only do not let talk

Wear the bloom from silence.

And go away without fire or lantern

Let there be some uncertainty about your departure.

.

.

Louise Bogan

LBLouise Bogan