The Collected Poems of Barbara Guest. Barbara Guest
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lines its piazzas
with lambswool or for sheer disturbance
places mirrors for Pinturicchio
to draw his face at daybreak
when the air is clear of shadows
and no one walks the piazza.
All Grey-haired My Sisters
All grey-haired my sisters
what is it in the more enduring
clime of Spring that waits?
The tiger his voice once prayerful
around the lax ochre sheen
finally in withering sleep
its calendar,
Relatives
delicious plumages your scenery
has a black musical depth
the cardinal flies into
he learns to repeat on an empty
branch your distillations. Sombre
mysteries the garden illumines
a shape of honey hive
the vigorous drones lighting
up your face as fortunes pour
from your cold pockets into the heat
and glaze, fortresses
for those memories brisk
in the now doubling air,
Adventuresses
guided by the form and scent
of tree and flower blossoming
the willow once frail now image
cut of stone so to endure,
My darlings
you walked into the wars
with wreaths of pine cones, you lay
by the sea and your sweet dresses
were torn by waves as over each receded
and pebbles were lifted at your feet
in the foam,
Ancestress
with blond boating hair
as daisies drop at your wrists
which flight are you making?
down the lime aisles
I see your sashes disappear.
Why should I count you more equinoctal, sun?
Smoothly the oars into the bay
the ultramarine fast as a castle, or rock
its soul plunged to craters virginal
the rapid twist of spume to all-forgetting
wrecks, intensely now that story’s done.
Mermaids your hair is green. I recognize
the powerful daylight heat. My savages
a cooling torpor rearranges,
as at its southern margins, the oak.
From your journals
He said: “In nymphic barque”
She replied: “A porcupine.”
And later,
“Reason selects our otherness.”
In the broad strange light,
a region of silences. The delphic
clouded tree knows its decline,
if you were to forget animosities, girls,
and in the pagan grass slide heedlessly
blossoms would return such songs
as I’ve sung of you, the youthful ashes
fling upward settling fragrant
brightness on your dusky marquetry,
All grey-haired my sisters
this afternoon’s seraphicness
is also fading. Linger while
I pass you quickly lest the cherry’s
bloom changed to white
fall upon my head.
Windy Afternoon
Through the wood
on his motorcycle piercing
the hawk, the jay
the blue-coated policeman
Woods, barren woods,
as this typewriter without an object
or the words that from you
fall soundless
The sun lowering
and the bags of paper
on the stoney ledge
near the waterfall
Voices down the roadway
and leaves falling over there
a great vacancy
a huge leftover
The quality of the day
that has its size in the North
and in the South
a low sighing that of wings
Describe that nude, audacious line
most lofty, practiced street
you are no longer thirsty
turn or go straight.
Russians at the Beach
The long long accent
the short vowel
that thing wrapped around a palm tree
is it this water, or this jetty?
The blue, in air dismal
to the face further than sand
then green rolling its own powder
you will provide you stranger
The cargo intimate cargo
of lashes and backs bent like a crew
the miles are vast and the isthmus
shows five-toed feet
erect thunders all afternoon
You have traveled
more than this shore where
the long bodies
wait
their thin heads
do not understand
They are bent
the breeze is light
as the step of a native is heavy
you are tired
but you breathe
and you eat
and you sleep where the stream is narrow