Erotic Passage of the Day

[Ligeia]

Helen, thy beauty is to me
Like those Nicean barks of yore
That gently, o'er a perfumed sea,
The weary, way-worn wanderer bore
To his own native shore.

On desperate seas long wont to roam,
Thy hyacinth hair, thy classic face,
Thy Naiad airs have brought me home
To the glory that was Greece,
And the grandeur that was Rome.

Lo, in yon brilliant window-niche
How statue-like I see thee stand,
The agate lamp within thy hand,
Ah! Psyche, from the regions which
Are Holy Land!

To Helen - Edgar Allan Poe

[Ligeia]

Heart, we will forget him!
You and I, tonight!
You may forget the warmth he gave,
I will forget the light.

When you have done, pray tell me
That I my thoughts may dim;
Haste! lest while you're lagging.
I may remember him!

Heart, we will forget him! - Emily Dickinson

[Neurospaston]

Fires of St John

Our fate: spilled lead; our fate can’t change –
nothing’s to be done.
They spilled the lead in water under the stars, and may the fires burn.

If you stand naked before a mirror at midnight you see,
you see a man moving through the mirror’s depths
the man destined to rule your body
in loneliness and silence, the man
of loneliness and silence
and may the fires burn.

At the hour when one day ends and the next has not begun
at the hour when time is suspended
you must find the man who then and now, from the very beginning, ruled your body
you must look for him so that someone else at least
will find him, after you are dead.

It is the children who light the fires and cry out before the flames in the hot night
(Was there ever a fire that some child did not light, O Herostratus*)
and throw salt on the flames to make them crackle
(How strangely the houses – crucibles for men – suddenly
stare at us when the flame’s reflection caresses them).

But you who knew the stone’s grace on the sea-whipped rock
the evening when stillness fell
heard from far off the human voice of loneliness and silence
inside your body
that night of St John
when all the fires went out
and you studied the ashes under the stars.

George Seferis

■ Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard in their translation of the Collected Poems of George Seferis regarding the Fires of St John write: ‘On the eve of the feast day of St John (24 June), it was customary in Seferis’ childhood village of Skala near the town of Vourla in Asia Minor – as in other Greek villages generally – for the children to light small fires in the streets after sunset and jump over them for good luck. Among the various divinatory rituals practiced by unmarried girls on this feast day are the two mentioned in the poem: 1) The girl drops molten lead into a container filled with “silent” water (i.e. water brought secretly from a spring by a young girl or boy who is forbidden to speak to anyone on the way), and the shape the lead takes on cooling indicates the trade or profession the girl’s future husband will follow; 2) The girl undresses at midnight and stands naked before a mirror, invoking St John and asking him to reveal the man she will marry; the first name she hears on waking the next morning is that of her future husband.'

*Herostratus, in 346 BC, burned down the famous Temple of Artemis at Ephesus in order to make his name immortal.

[Jezetha]

Light and air


an open window
is the beloved woman
an open window
out of loneliness

the maternal distance
azures through her

and every touch
is breath

--J.Z. Herrenberg (translated from the Dutch)

[Ligeia]

MARINA OF THE ROCKS

You have a taste of tempest on your lips—But where did you wander
All day long in the hard reverie of stone and sea?
An eagle-bearing wind stripped the hills
Stripped your longing to the bone
And the pupils of your eyes received the message of chimera
Spotting memory with foam!
Where is the familiar slope of short September
On the red earth where you played, looking down
At the broad rows of the other girls
The corners where your friends left armfuls of rosemary.

But where did you wander
All night long in the hard reverie of stone and sea?
I told you to count in the naked water its luminous days
On your back to rejoice in the dawn of things
Or again to wander on yellow plains
With a clover of light on you breast, iambic heroine.

You have a taste of tempest on your lips
And a dress red as blood
Deep in the gold of summer
And the perfume of hyacinths—But where did you wander
Descending toward the shores, the pebbled bays?

There was cold salty seaweed there
But deeper a human feeling that bled
And you opened your arms in astonishment naming it
Climbing lightly to the clearness of the depths
Where your own starfish shone.

Listen. Speech is the prudence of the aged
And time is a passionate sculptor of men
And the sun stands over it, a beast of hope
And you, closer to it, embrace a love
With a bitter taste of tempest on your lips.

It is not for you, blue to the bone, to think of another summer,
For the rivers to change their bed
And take you back to their mother
For you to kiss other cherry trees
Or ride on the northwest wind.

Propped on the rocks, without yesterday or tomorrow,
Facing the dangers of the rocks with a hurricane hairstyle
You will say farewell to the riddle that is yours

Odysseus Elytis

[gveranon]

In the house of breathings lies that word, all fairness. The walls are of rubinen and the glittergates of elfinbone. The roof herof is of massicious jasper and a canopy of Tyrian awning rises and still descends to it. A grape cluster of lights hangs therebeneath and all the house is filled with the breathings of her fairness, the fairness of fondance and the fairness of milk and rhubarb and the fairness of roasted meats and uniomargrits and the fairness of promise with consonantia and avowals. There lies her word, you reder! The height herup exalts it and the lowness her down abaseth it. It vibroverberates upon the tegmen and prosplodes from pomoeria. A window, a hedge, a prong, a hand, an eye, a sign, a head and keep your other augur on her paypaypay. And you have it, old Sem, pat as ah be seated! And Sunny, my gander, he's coming to land her. The boy which she now adores. She dores. Oh backed von dem zug. Make weg for their tug!

-- James Joyce, Finnegans Wake

[Bleak&Icy]

"By T'ing Yang Waterfall" by Hsieh Ling Yuen (385-433, Six Dynasties period), trans. K. Rexroth

A strange, beautiful girl
Bathes her white feet in the flowing water.
The white moon, in the midst of the clouds,
Is far away, beyond the reach of man.

[Bleak&Icy]

"Green Jade Plum Trees in Spring" by Ou Yang Hsiu (1007-1072, Sung Dynasty), trans. K. Rexroth

Spring comes early to the gardens
Of the South, with dancing flowers.
The gentle breeze carries the sound
Of horses whinnying. The blue
Green plums are already as large
As beans. The willow leaves are long,
And really are curved like a girl's
Eyebrows. Butterflies whirl in the
Long sunlight. In the evening the
Mist lies heavy on the flowers.
The grass is covered with dew.
Girls in their transparent dresses,
Indolent and lascivious,
Lounge in their hammocks. Swallows, two
By two, nest under the painted eaves.

[Steve Dekorte]

Let us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky

- J. Alfred Prufrock

[Steve Dekorte]

I went to the Garden of Love,
And saw what I never had seen:
A Chapel was built in the midst,
Where I used to play on the green.

And the gates of this Chapel were shut,
And `Thou shalt not' writ over the door;
So I turn'd to the Garden of Love,
That so many sweet flowers bore,

And I saw it was filled with graves,
And tomb-stones where flowers should be:
And Priests in black gowns were walking their rounds,
And binding with briars my joys and desires.

- William Blake