Wednesday, June 17, 2020

Houses I Love in New Orleans & Two Poems

THE SECOND COMING
By William Butler Yeats

Turning and turning in the widening gyre   
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere   
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst   
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.   
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out   
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert   
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,   
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,   
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it   
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.   
The darkness drops again; but now I know   
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,   
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,   
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

…………………………

Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night
By  Dylan Thomas

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day; 
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right, 
Because their words had forked no lightning they 
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright 
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay, 
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight, 
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way, 
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight 
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay, 
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height, 
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray. 
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.













Sunday, June 14, 2020

Hurricane Season...







HURRICANE CHILD, A MAM POEM
By Marion

I were born a hurricane child
strong 'n furious, dark 'n wild.
Come here ass first, bloody & gleamin'
not cryin' but laughin'; Mam were screamin'.

Windows imploded, spewin' glass,
wind was howlin', (it wouldn't last).
Rain was peltin' like fallin' knives
cuttin' out ditches & stealin' lives.

My face were masked with a glistenin' caul,
Mam's was faded a peculiar pall
She be a special one, the midwife said---
Shut yore hole, cried Mam from the bed,

Ain't no gift, it's a burdensome curse
a'knowin' most things & havin' no thirst
fer mystery. Havin' the sight can be a fright
and thieve the best years from yore life!

And a'top all this the moon she's full
so my babe here daily will feel her pull.
She'll be called crazy, lunatic, insane
oftener than folks say her given name.

Hurricane Audrey, she blowed outside
a whippin' & a shriekin'---were we safe inside?
The floor were sparklin' with glass & rain
& I were birthed feet-first in the Hurricane's pain...

July, 2015