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Employed against my will by the factory of ideas
I refused to clock in
Likewise mobilised in the army of ideas
I deserted.
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Posted by: Marianna Mansueto
in Poems (Author's Poems)
To fall asleep,
my love, and wake up a hundred years later... "
" No,
my century doesn't scare me.
I'm not a deserter.
My miserable,
shameful century,
my daring,
grand,
heroic century.
I never regretted I was born too soon.
I'm a child of the twentieth century
and proud of it.
It's enough for me
to join the ranks in the twentieth century
on our side
and fight for a new world... "
" No, earlier--in spite of everything
And my dying, dawning century,
when those who laugh last will laugh best
(my awful night that come to light with rising cries),
will be all sunshine,
like your eyes... "
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Posted by: Silvana Stremiz
in Poems (Author's Poems)
Lay your sleeping head, my love
Human on my faithless arm;
Time and fevers burn away
Individual beauty from
Thoughtful children, and the grave
Proves the child ephemeral;
But in my arms till break of day
Let the living creature lie:
Mortal, guilty, but to me
The entirely beautiful.
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Posted by: Marzia Ornofoli
in Poems (Author's Poems)
The Gods are dead: no longer do we bring
To grey-eyed Pallas crowns of olive-leaves!
Demeter's child no more hath tithe of sheaves,
And in the noon the careless shepherds sing,
For Pan is dead, and all the wantoning
By secret glade and devious haunt is o'er:
Young Hylas seeks the water-springs no more;
Great Pan is dead, and Mary's Son is King.
And yet--perchance in this sea-trancèd isle,
Chewing the bitter fruit of memory,
Some God lies hidden in the asphodel.
Ah Love! if such there be then it were well
For us to fly his anger: nay, but see
The leaves are stirring: let us watch a-while.
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Posted by: Marzia Ornofoli
in Poems (Author's Poems)
Tread lightly, she is near
Under the snow,
Speak gently, she can hear
The daisies grow.
All her bright golden hair
Tarnished with dust,
She that was young and fair
Fallen to dust.
Lily-white, white as snow,
She hardly knew
She was a woman, so
Sweetly she grew.
Coffin-board, heavy stone,
Lie on her breast.
I vex my heart alone,
She is at rest.
Peace, Peace, she cannot hear
Lyre or sonnet.
All my life's buried here,
Heap earth upon it.
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Posted by: Marzia Ornofoli
in Poems (Author's Poems)
I stood by the unvintageable sea
Till the wet waves drenched face and hair with spray,
The long red fires of the dying day
Burned in the west; the wind piped drearily;
And to the land the clamorous gulls did flee:
"Alas! " I cried, "my life is full of pain,
And who can garner fruit or golden grain,
From these waste fields which travail ceaselessly!"
My nets gaped wide with many a break and flaw
Nathless I threw them as my final cast
Into the sea, and waited for the end.
When lo! a sudden glory! and I saw
The argent splendor of white limbs ascend,
And in that joy forgot my tortured past.
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Posted by: Marzia Ornofoli
in Poems (Author's Poems)
Not that I love thy children, whose dull eyes
See nothing save their own unlovely woe,
Whose minds know nothing, nothing care to know,
But that the roar of thy Democracies,
Thy reigns of Terror, thy great Anarchies,
Mirror my wildest passions like the sea
And give my rage a brother! Liberty!
For this sake only do thy dissonant cries
Delight my discreet soul, else might all kings
By bloody knout or treacherous cannonades
Rob nations of their rights inviolate
And I remain unmoved and yet, and yet,
These Christs that die upon the barricades,
God knows it I am with them, in some things.
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Posted by: Marzia Ornofoli
in Poems (Author's Poems)
It is full winter now: the trees are bare,
Save where the cattle huddle from the cold
Beneath the pine, for it doth never wear
The autumn's gaudy livery whose gold
Her jealous brother pilfers, but is true
To the green doublet; bitter is the wind, as though it blew
From Saturn's cave; a few thin wisps of hay
Lie on the sharp black hedges, where the wain
Dragged the sweet pillage of a summer's day
From the low meadows up the narrow lane;
Upon the half-thawed snow the bleating sheep
Press close against the hurdles, and the shivering house-dogs creep
From the shut stable to the frozen stream
And back again disconsolate, and miss
The bawling shepherds and the noisy team;
And overhead in circling listlessness
The cawing rooks whirl round the frosted stack,
Or crowd the dripping boughs; and in the fen the ice-pools crack
Where the gaunt bittern stalks among the reeds
And flaps his wings, and stretches back his neck,
And hoots to see the moon; across the meads
Limps the poor frightened hare, a little speck;
And a stray seamew with its fretful cry
Flits like a sudden drift of snow against the dull grey sky.
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Posted by: Marzia Ornofoli
in Poems (Author's Poems)
To drift with every passion till my soul
Is a stringed lute on which all winds can play,
Is it for this that I have given away
Mine ancient wisdom, and austere control?
Methinks my life is a twice-written scroll
Scrawled over on some boyish holiday
With idle songs for pipe and virelay,
Which do but mar the secret of the whole.
Surely there was a time I might have trod
The sunlit heights, and from life's dissonance
Struck one clear chord to reach the ears of God:
Is that time dead? lo! with a little rod
I did but touch the honey of romance --
And must I lose a soul's inheritance?
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Posted by: Marzia Ornofoli
in Poems (Author's Poems)
The sea is flecked with bars of grey,
The dull dead wind is out of tune,
And like a withered leaf the moon
Is blown across the stormy bay.
Etched clear upon the pallid sand
Lies the black boat: a sailor boy
Clambers aboard in careless joy
With laughing face and gleaming hand.
And overhead the curlews cry,
Where through the dusky upland grass
The young brown-throated reapers pass,
Like silhouettes against the sky.
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