| More Writers Continued |
| "pity this busy monster,manunkind" pit this busy monster,manunkind, not. Progress is a comfortable disease; your victim (death and life safely beyond) plays with the bigness of his littleness --electrons deify one razorblade into a mountainrange;lenses extend unwish through curving wherewhen till unwish returns on its unself. A world of made is not a world of born--pity poor flesh and trees,poor stars and stones,but never this fine specimen of hypermagical ultraomnipotence. We doctors know a hopeless case if--listen: there's a hell of a good universe next door,let's go *e.e. cummings |
| "Mushrooms" Overnight, very Whitely, discreetly Very quietly Our toes, our noses Take hold on the loam. Acquire the air. Nobody sees us, Stops us, betrays us; The small grains make room. Soft fists insist on Heaving the needles, The leafy bedding, Even the paving. Our hammers, our rams, Earless and eyeless, Perfectly voiceless, Widen the crannies, Shoulder through holes. We Diet on water, On crumbs of shadow, Bland-mannered, asking Little or nothing. So many of us! So many of us! We are shelves, we are Tables, we are meek, We are edible, Nudgers and shovers In spite of ourselves. Our kind muliplies: We shall by morning Inherit the earth. Our foot's in the door. *Sylvia Plath |
| "Evening Ebb" The ocean has not been so quiet for a long while; five night-herons fly shorelong voiceless in the hush of the air over the calm of an ebb that almost mirrors their wings. The sun has gone down, and the water has gone down from the weed-clad rock, but the distant cloud-wall rises. The ebb whispers. Great cloud-shadows float in the opal water. Through rifts in the screen of the world pale gold gleams, and the evening star suddenly glides like a flying torch. As if we had not been meant to see her; rehearsing behind the screen of the world for another audience. *Robinson Jeffers |
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| "Warming Her Pearls
" for Judith Radstone Next to my own skin, her pearls. My mistress bids me wear them, warm then, until evening when I'll brush her hair. At six, I place them round her cool, white throat. All day I think of her, resting in the Yellow Room, contemplating silk or taffeta, which gown tonight? She fans herself whilst I work willingly, my slow heat entering each pearl. Slack on my neck, her rope. She's beautiful. I dream about her in my attic bed; picture her dancing with tall men, puzzled by my faint, persistent scent beneath her French perfume, her milky stones. I dust her shoulders with a rabbit's foot, watch the soft blush seep through her skin like an indolent sigh. In her looking-glass my red lips part as though I want to speak. Full moon. Her carriage brings her home. I see her every movement in my head. . .Undressing, taking off her jewels, her slim hand reaching for the case, slipping naked into bed, the way she always does. . .And I lie here awake, knowing the pearls are cooling even now in the room where my mistress sleeps. All night I feel their absence and I burn. *Carol Ann Duffy |