246 Mythology poems

might have been. Certainly these ashes might have been pleasures. Pilgrims on their way to the Holy Places remark this place. Isn’t it plain to all that these mounds were palaces? This was once a city among men, a gathering together of spirit. It was measured by the Lord and found wanting. It was measured by the Lord and found wanting, destroyd by the angels that inhabit longing. Surely this is Great Sodom where such cries as if men were birds flying up from the swamp ring in our ears, where such fears that were once desires walk, almost spectacular, stalking the desolate circles, red eyed. This place rumord to have been a City surely was, separated from us by the hand of the Lord. The devout have laid out gardens in the desert, drawn water from springs where the light was blighted. How tenderly they must attend these friendships or all is lost. All is lost. Only the faithful hold this place green. Only the faithful hold this place green where the crown of fiery thorns descends. Men that once lusted grow listless. A spirit wrappd in a cloud, ashes more than ashes, fire more than fire, ascends. Only these new friends gather joyous here, where the world like Great Sodom lies under fear. The world like Great Sodom lies under Love and knows not the hand of the Lord that moves. This the friends teach where such cries as if men were birds fly up from the crowds gatherd and howling in the heat of the sun. In the Lord Whom the friends have named at last Love the images and loves of the friends never die. This place rumord to have been Sodom is blessd in the Lord’s eyes.

(excerpt) SCENE. —A Ravine of Icy Rocks in the Indian Caucasus. Prometheus is discovered bound to the Precipice. Panthea and Ione are seated at his feet. Time, night. During the Scene, morning slowly breaks. Prometheus . Monarch of Gods and Dæmons, and all Spirits But One, who throng those bright and rolling worlds Which Thou and I alone of living things Behold with sleepless eyes! regard this Earth Made multitudinous with thy slaves, whom thou Requitest for knee-worship, prayer, and praise, And toil, and hecatombs of broken hearts, With fear and self-contempt and barren hope. Whilst me, who am thy foe, eyeless in hate, Hast thou made reign and triumph, to thy scorn, O'er mine own misery and thy vain revenge. Three thousand years of sleep-unsheltered hours, And moments aye divided by keen pangs Till they seemed years, torture and solitude, Scorn and despair,—these are mine empire:— More glorious far than that which thou surveyest From thine unenvied throne, O Mighty God! Almighty, had I deigned to share the shame Of thine ill tyranny, and hung not here Nailed to this wall of eagle-baffling mountain, Black, wintry, dead, unmeasured; without herb, Insect, or beast, or shape or sound of life. Ah me! alas, pain, pain ever, for ever! No change, no pause, no hope! Yet I endure. I ask the Earth, have not the mountains felt? I ask yon Heaven, the all-beholding Sun, Has it not seen? The Sea, in storm or calm, Heaven's ever-changing Shadow, spread below, Have its deaf waves not heard my agony? Ah me! alas, pain, pain ever, for ever! The crawling glaciers pierce me with the spears Of their moon-freezing crystals, the bright chains Eat with their burning cold into my bones. Heaven's wingèd hound, polluting from thy lips His beak in poison not his own, tears up My heart; and shapeless sights come wandering by, The ghastly people of the realm of dream, Mocking me: and the Earthquake-fiends are charged To wrench the rivets from my quivering wounds When the rocks split and close again behind: While from their loud abysses howling throng The genii of the storm, urging the rage Of whirlwind, and afflict me with keen hail. And yet to me welcome is day and night, Whether one breaks the hoar frost of the morn, Or starry, dim, and slow, the other climbs The leaden-coloured east; for then they lead The wingless, crawling hours, one among whom —As some dark Priest hales the reluctant victim— Shall drag thee, cruel King, to kiss the blood From these pale feet, which then might trample thee If they disdained not such a prostrate slave. Disdain! Ah no! I pity thee. What ruin Will hunt thee undefended through wide Heaven! How will thy soul, cloven to its depth with terror, Gape like a hell within! I speak in grief, Not exultation, for I hate no more, As then ere misery made me wise. The curse Once breathed on thee I would recall. Ye Mountains, Whose many-voicèd Echoes, through the mist Of cataracts, flung the thunder of that spell! Ye icy Springs, stagnant with wrinkling frost, Which vibrated to hear me, and then crept Shuddering through India! Thou serenest Air, Through which the Sun walks burning without beams! And ye swift Whirlwinds, who on poisèd wings Hung mute and moveless o'er yon hushed abyss, As thunder, louder than your own, made rock The orbèd world! If then my words had power, Though I am changed so that aught evil wish Is dead within; although no memory be Of what is hate, let them not lose it now! What was that curse? for ye all heard me speak.

In the warmth of night I put feet to my plan: waited for my brothers to sleep. They’d spent the day sharpening their hooks, repairing the great net, filling gourds with fresh water. They’d bundled taro wrapped in leaves sitting below the cross seats. The bundles and the net would cover me, especially if I said the chant to slow my movement and my breathing. The moon became brighter like a big fish eye as the chant hooked me. I was holding my grandmother’s hook so tightly a little cut welled red between my closed knuckles. “Goodmorning, brothers,” I called and they cussed and moaned until the next chant took us a further hundred miles and then another until my chanting made them gasp as we settled on a patch of ocean black with fish. They forgave me, not that it matters. I took the bloody hook and said my business to the ocean. It worked. The fish rose and our descent was secured.

Highlight Actions Enable or disable annotations O what can ail thee, knight-at-arms, Alone and palely loitering? The sedge sedge Grasslike or rushlike plant that grows in wet areas. has withered from the lake, And no birds sing. O what can ail thee, knight-at-arms, So haggard haggard Wild looking and so woe- begone begone To happen, occur, transpire ? The squirrel’s granary is full, And the harvest’s done. I see a lily on thy brow, With anguish moist and fever-dew, And on thy cheeks a fading rose Fast withereth too. I met a lady in the meads meads Meadow , Full beautiful—a faery’s child, Her hair was long, her foot was light, And her eyes were wild. I made a garland for her head, And bracelets too, and fragrant zone; She looked at me as she did love, And made sweet moan made sweet moan Compare "virgin-choir to make delicious moan" from Ode to Psyche(30), written between April 21 and 30, 1819. Noted by John Barnard in John Keats: The Complete Poems(Penguin, 2003). I set her on my pacing steed, And nothing else saw all day long, For sidelong would she bend, and sing A faery’s song. She found me roots of relish sweet, And honey wild, and manna-dew honey wild, and manna-dew Echoes manna in the Bible, first described in Exodus, 16:14-21, 31. The Israelites eat the manna, a food miraculously supplied in the wilderness after the dew has lifted, in the morning: “The house of Israel called it manna; it was like coriander seed, white, and the taste of it was like wafers made with honey” (Exodus 16:31, NRSV). , And sure in language strange she said— ‘I love thee true’. She took me to her Elfin grot Elfin grot An elf’s grotto , And there she wept and sighed full sore, And there I shut her wild wild eyes With kisses four. And there she lullèd me asleep, And there I dreamed—Ah! woe betide!— The latest dream I ever dreamt On the cold hill side. I saw pale kings and princes too, Pale warriors, death-pale were they all; They cried—‘ La Belle Dame sans Merci La Belle Dame sans Merci This phrase—and the poem’s title—is from Alain Chartier’s courtly French ballad, “La Belle Dame sans Merci” (1424). Keats wrote the poem in a letter to George and Georgiana Keats, April 21, 1819. Thee hath Thee hath The version of this poem has “Thee hath” (see The Letters of John Keats, 1814-1821, ed. H. E. Rollins, 1958); though other versions of this poem reads “Hath thee” in thrall!’ I saw their starved lips in the gloam gloam Twilight; Keats coined the word from “gloaming” , With horrid warning gapèd wide, And I awoke and found me here, On the cold hill’s side. And this is why I sojourn sojourn To stay or visit temporarily here, Alone and palely loitering, Though the sedge is withered from the lake, And no birds sing.

Where the slow river meets the tide, a red swan lifts red wings and darker beak, and underneath the purple down of his soft breast uncurls his coral feet. Through the deep purple of the dying heat of sun and mist, the level ray of sun-beam has caressed the lily with dark breast, and flecked with richer gold its golden crest. Where the slow lifting of the tide, floats into the river and slowly drifts among the reeds, and lifts the yellow flags, he floats where tide and river meet. Ah kingly kiss— no more regret nor old deep memories to mar the bliss; where the low sedge is thick, the gold day-lily outspreads and rests beneath soft fluttering of red swan wings and the warm quivering of the red swan's breast.

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“The Knights of the Joyous Venture”—Puck of Pook’s Hill What is a woman that you forsake her, And the hearth-fire and the home-acre, To go with the old grey Widow-maker? She has no house to lay a guest in— But one chill bed for all to rest in, That the pale suns and the stray bergs nest in. She has no strong white arms to fold you, But the ten-times-fingering weed to hold you— Out on the rocks where the tide has rolled you. Yet, when the signs of summer thicken, And the ice breaks, and the birch-buds quicken, Yearly you turn from our side, and sicken— Sicken again for the shouts and the slaughters. You steal away to the lapping waters, And look at your ship in her winter-quarters. You forget our mirth, and talk at the tables, The kine in the shed and the horse in the stables— To pitch her sides and go over her cables. Then you drive out where the storm-clouds swallow, And the sound of your oar-blades, falling hollow, Is all we have left through the months to follow. Ah, what is Woman that you forsake her, And the hearth-fire and the home-acre, To go with the old grey Widow-maker ?

All Greece hates the still eyes in the white face, the lustre as of olives where she stands, and the white hands. All Greece reviles the wan face when she smiles, hating it deeper still when it grows wan and white, remembering past enchantments and past ills. Greece sees unmoved, God’s daughter, born of love, the beauty of cool feet and slenderest knees, could love indeed the maid, only if she were laid, white ash amid funereal cypresses.

i We lived on a lake with Muscovy ducks. Interior decorators flush with furniture plans, the ducks thrust with the thrust of youth. ii We met at the gay community center, called Compass, in Lake Worth, where they sponsored “The Coming Out Group,” with Forest, our skilled leader. Transsexuals met before. You were fifty, I thirty-nine— somewhat late to begin a life together for the first time; we had begun to see announcements in the New York Times, so we knew it was possible to print: “Paul O’Shaughnessy and Spencer Reece were joined on a celery green love-seat . . .” Five years we had, not forever, but something still. iii Our consent took a long time. There were lulls. We played Scrabble: I arranged the tiles and you kept score. Sometimes we rolled the dice and read the I Ching. We went about our days unseen and we loved that. I placed too many books against the walls— Capote,Madame Bovary, a biography of Anne Boleyn. You complained about the clutter. “Where will guests put their suitcases?” you asked. Sometimes, we squabbled about money. Often, you stretched out upon the double bed, your skin no longer young, pebbled, freckled, known by me. iv The city was jammed under your nails from construction work, callused hands that knew bar-joists. Yours was an Irish body formed and punished by the tin-colored rains around Croagh Patrick. Beyond you, manatees, scarred by propellers, huddled in the power plant’s warm waters. Palm fronds and their shadows shook wildly as pornography. v On the edges of our dreams was the sea, which the moon walked across with soft footsteps. vi Our dog, a Lab-mix named Butch, chewed a bone at your bare feet. Butch moved like a shadow on the sea’s floor. Big and black, he came to us abused— who does such a thing and why is it permanent? We fed him a daily Xanax tablet before he pulled us on his manic journeys that had no arrivals. vii When we visited your Aunt Annie in the nursing home, her walker dominated the room like an empty kennel. She did not know who I was, her senility rendering me oblique. Long ago, when your mother died, your father sent a letter and a photograph of the four children to Killeen, asking Aunt Annie to come. As she strove across the sea, she watched the Connemara ponies disappear, then Knock, Letterfrack, Roundstone, and Cashel Bay blurred, blurred and blurred until they were nothing but green. She left Ireland for good and raised you and your three sisters—Joan, Ann, and Maureen. In America, she went about her days unseen. On her day off, she lit four candles for each one of you at the Shrine of St. Anthony on Arch Street, in Boston. She never married. She adored you. When we visited, she kept saying: “Paul, Paul, I have to get the cows across the stream.” viii We overlooked Pelican Lake in Juno Beach where caregivers and patients from the Alzheimer’s Support Group awkwardly commenced their semi-detached dates, eating potato chips off paper plates and feeding their broken bits to the ducks. Eyes vacantly connected in Florida, where born-agains with failed marriages sent pamphlets to Jews so they could be saved by Christ: to conquer and subdue was what Florida was for. There, we napped while the ducks strutted and preened with greasy black-green plumes and speckled red pates; it looked like they had mashed crayons on their heads— a sort of evolutionary mishap. Developers demanding more room, the ducks were sated, companioned, unbundling with poop. ix A retired couple volunteered, instructing residents in the tango— the lady had white stained tights, the man a tambourine. The tango emoted from a boom box as the residents gathered in a crescent moon of wheelchairs. Aunt Annie watched and talked about her cows, the stream. We stood behind her like groomsmen. Out the windows, Boston pontificated. x You were distracted, distracted until one day you said, “I do not desire you.” You had always been honest. You wanted a younger man, between twenty and twenty-five. The day blued around us— our book of changes came to a close. Your Christ-kiss issued no more. You were what you had always been, only more so— Irish and unavailable, darling. xi The horizon became a handsaw. When I could not reach what I loved the world was rent. xii A friend had a stillborn, and her marriage ended. She did not name the infant. I had coffee with her at the Greek restaurant we liked. She talked about going back to teach at Dreyfoos, the arts high school, and one student, in particular, an effeminate male with acne who dreamt of Juilliard, a way out. Florida luxuriated out the window— the fire bush, the cornflower blue plumbago, the Mexican petunia. I sold my library, my piano. I boarded a train. Seagulls diminished, gray specks, gray motes. The therapist in Fort Lauderdale made no more appointments for us. The migrant day laborers out in Pahokee and Canal Point on Lake Okeechobee gleaned and went about their days unseen. The orange groves’ fragile hemispheres wobbled on their stems. Sugar cane fields burned. Electrical poles gleamed. Buck hoists and bucket trucks broke through the possum’s sedge. The Everglades sighed its nervous extinction. xiii Aunt Annie had lost her index finger in Coventry, during the Blitz. Repeatedly, she rubbed the stump. xiv Perhaps you walk now there with your young men, meaty St. Augustine grass under your feet, moving discreetly, undetected, perhaps you speak of dissatisfactions, of politics. The Atlantic narrowing to a flushed, sanguine strip, the fishing boats alone in the dark, murmuring, hooking, perhaps the young men love you at first sight and plead with you to stay. I95 and a1a pulsing down Palm Beach County’s spits like blood, perhaps your face tightens tenderly in response to what you see.

From Mars cruel god of war The desire to tie the corpse to the chariot And drag it around each morning, From Mercury the idea to put a stop to that And buy the body back. Because everything sooner or later becomes a musical Or a collectible card or figurine Hitler or the Fierce Saladin Dracula the Impaler All stripped of any awareness of suffering: There is no voice in stones No word that turns to flesh or blood. (At that auction held at Bolaffi, Those intriguing heart-shaped or "C" postmarks Stamped after their arrival in Florence On two letters sent from the field to the family Of a student volunteer at Curtatone.)