Showing posts with label poems. Show all posts
Showing posts with label poems. Show all posts

Monday, April 9, 2018

Born today...Charles Pierre Baudelaire, poet, April 9, 1821, Paris, France


The Spiritual Dawn

When upon revellers the stained dawn breaks 
The fierce ideal comes with it; at that hour, 
Stirred by some terrible avenging power, 
An angel in the sated brute awakes. 
Above the stricken, suffering man there glow 
Far azure plains of unimagined bliss 
Which draw his dreaming spirit like the abyss. 
O pure, beloved Goddess, even so 
O'er the smoked wrecks of stupid scenes of shame 
Brighter and rosier thy sweet memory 
Hovers before my wide eyes hauntingly...
The Sun has dimmed and charred the candles' flame, 
And thus, my glorious all-conquering one, 
Thy shade is peer to the immortal Sun

~ Fleurs du mal / Flowers of Evil

image: Carlo Farneti (1892-1961) illustration for Les Fleurs du Mal 1935






Monday, June 5, 2017

Alastair (Baron Hans Henning Voigt) (1887-1969) ... illustration for Red Skeletons, selected poems of Harry Crosby 1927







Temple De La Douleur - Poem by Harry Crosby


My soul has suffered breaking on the wheel,
Flogging with lead, and felt the twinging ache
Of barbéd hooks and jagged points of steel,
Peine forte et dure, slow burning at the stake,
Blinding and branding, stripping on the rack,
The canque and kourbash and the torquéd screw,
The boot and branks, red scourging on the back,
The gallows and the gibbet. All for you.



These tortures are as nothing to the pain
That I have suffered when you gaze at me
With cold disdainful eyes. You do not deign
To smile or talk or even set me free-
Yet once you let me hold your perfumed hand
And danced with me a stately saraband.



Monday, October 26, 2015

Andrei Bely ... “Overview of Blok’s poetry”, 1923.





Andrei Bely ~ “Overview of Blok’s poetry”. Illustration to “Lectures about Blok”, 1923. Pencil, coloured pencil and watercolour on paper.





Born today... Andrei Bely, 26 October 1880, Moscow Russia







Once upon a time there were no grasses, nor "Earths", nor flints, nor granites; it was - flamy; laminae of flying gas diffused through the Cosmos; the earth was gurgling like a fiery flower; it was developing, confluing from the Cosmic sphere; and these gestures of the fires later duplicated themselves: in the petals of flowers; because of this the cosmic light is - the colored flower of the fields; all flowers/colors are - memories about the fires of the limitless, cosmic sphere; all words are - memories of the sound of an ancient meaning.


Once upon a time there were no concepts in our sense: a conceptual crust surrounded the image of the word; once there was not even the image itself of the word; later the images surrounded the imageless root; previously there had been no root; all roots are - serpent skins; the living serpent is - the tongue; once that snake had been streams, the palate had been - the sail of rhythms, carried along; the cosmos, as it firmed up, became the cavity of the mouth; a stream of air - this dancer of the world is - our tongue.

Glossolalia~ A Poem about Sound 1922



Wednesday, September 23, 2015

Ithell Colquhoun.... Autumnal Equinox, oil on canvas 1949







Muin (Sept 2nd-30th)
I am the month of Muin, month of the vine
Exhilaration is mine through the garland of fruit
Draped from the right shoulder across the swell
Of a belly like Primavera's; yet mine of early
Fall is the realm. On the head too are grapes
And the vine-leaves wreathing my autumn-coloured hair
My robe the bluish mist of a sky pregnant
With the first heavy dews.


How calm I am! Yet is there perhaps hidden
AN anger that gives authority to my poise?
I drank from the horn-cup and swam into a trance
So deep that only attraction amethystine
Recalls me, after a voyage through gates of horn


I come now to bless and renew dreams that are true
-Ithell Colquhoun




Tuesday, February 3, 2015

Born today... Georg Trakl ,February 3, 1887, Salzburg, Austria, Self portrait & poems


Mourning 

The dark eagles, sleep and death, 
Rustle all night around my head: 
The golden statue of man 
Is swallowed by the icy comber 
Of eternity. On the frightening reef 
The purple remains go to pieces, 
And the dark voice mourns 
Over the sea. 
Sister in my wild despair 
Look, a precarious skiff is sinking 
Under the stars, 
The face of night whose voice is fading.




Georg Trakl, self portrait, 1913



Whispered In The Afternoon


Feebly glints the sun's thin ray,
From the tree the ripe fruit falleth,
In the deep blue distance dwelleth
Silence--'tis an endless day.


Sharp a shot the stillness cleaves,
Prone to earth its victim bringing.
Harsh refrain of brown girls singing
Dies amid the fall of leaves.


Dream-wings o'er God's forehead play,
And He thinketh but in color.
Shadows round the hill grow duller,
Bordered by a dim decay.


Twilight, drunken with repose;
Sad guitar-notes trickle faintly.
Back unto his lamplight saintly
In a dream the wanderer goes.




Song of the Departed


To Karl Borromaeus Heinrich



The flight of birds is full of harmonies. At evening
The green forests have gathered to more silent huts;
The crystal meadows of the doe.
A dark shape calms the ripple of the brook, the damp shadows,


And the flowers of summer which ring beautifully in the wind. 
Already the brow of the pondering man grows dark. 
And goodness, a small lamp, shines in his heart 
And the peace of the meal; because bread and wine are sanctified 
By God's hands, and out of nocturnal eyes 
The brother silently gazes at you, so that he rests from thorny wanderings. 
O the dwelling in the soulful blueness of night. 


The silence in the room also lovingly embraces the shadows of ancestors, 
The purple martyrs, lament of a mighty race 
That now dies piously in the lonely grandchild. 
Because from black minutes of insanity the long-sufferer 
Always awakens more radiant at the petrified threshold 
And the cool blueness embraces him enormously and the bright decline of autumn, 


The still house and the telling of the forest, 
Measure and law and the lunar paths of the departed.





Springtime of the Soul


Outcry in sleep; through black alleys the wind falls,
The blue of spring beckons through breaking branches,
Purple night-dew and stars extinguish all around.
Greenish the river dawns, silverly the old avenues
And the towers of the city. O gentle drunkenness
In the gliding boat and the dark calls of the blackbird
In innocent gardens. Already, the rosy veil thins.


Solemnly the waters murmur. O the moist shadows of the floodplain,
The striding animal; greening shapes, flowering branches
Touch the crystal forehead; shimmering boat-sway.
Quietly the sun sounds in the rose-colored clouds by the hill.
Great is the stillness of the fir forest, the earnest shadows at the river.


Purity! Purity! Where are the terrible paths of death,
Of gray stony silence, the rocks of night
And the peaceless shadows? Abyss radiant with sun.


Sister, when I found you at the lonely clearing
In the forest, it was midday and the silence of the animal great;
Whiteness under wild oak, and the thorn bloomed silver.
Enormous dying and the singing flame in the heart.


Darker the waters flow around the beautiful play of fishes.
Hour of mourning, silent vision of the sun;
The soul is a strange shape on earth. Spiritually blueness
Dusks over the pruned forest; and a dark bell rings
Long in the village; peaceful escort.
Silently the myrtle blooms over the white eyelids of the dead.
Softly the waters whisper in the subsiding afternoon
And the wilderness on the bank greens more darkly; joy in the rosy wind;
The brother's gentle song by the evening hill.





Sunday, February 1, 2015

Born today...Hugo von Hofmannsthal February 1, 1874, Landstraße, Vienna, Austria




Creatures of Flame

We are all creatures of flame. The butterfly: the intensity of a short life and fragility
become color. My death is like shadow, my life aquiver, a pulse in the light; I am so 
close to death it makes me proud, cruel and demonic.
Unmoved, I flutter from Helen's lips to Adonis' wound. 
I love my death, the flame, more than anything.




Creature of the Flood
Poem of the Mussels

We are alone in the dark. You up there have lips, rolled-up leaves, hands entwined with rosy blood and bluish veins, we are alone and cannot touch. We live our life fully, our fate is to resist the waves, that is what we become, and triumph and pain color us as the reflection of fall and of the sun colors the waves there near the surface.


Tuesday, January 20, 2015

Paul Holman... Tara Morgana, excerpt, 2014










from Tara Morgana by Paul Holman published by Scarlet Imprint and illustrated by the photography of Paul Lambert


Sunday, January 4, 2015

Rikki Ducornet ...poem and watercolour & gouache ... 1989







The lunatic algebra
of Love.
The frenzied orbits
of Mood.
The malarial temperatures
of Wound.
Symbols of the Cult
of Seizure:
This flesh, this amulet
incised.
This hot spoor
of predators.
This zodiac savaged
in the sky.


The Cult of Seizure 1989


Thursday, October 2, 2014

Born Today ... Rosaleen Miriam "Roie" Norton, October 2, 1917, Dunedin, New Zealand






image: The Hag , watercolour



...My home is the house of winds,
With great songs of Space ringing wild in my ears
Whose shouting heart leaps to their tune.
I mock at the shapes, plodding thickly, through lamplight:
stupid and cruel - or kind -
They are alien, Other, I'm touched with uneasiness...
Fear of these human.... and glide away sidelong:
Yet joying in fear, in my stealthy aloofness,
To know they are They and I'm I.
Towers of old cities are spiralling over me, Night-conjured,
rising from Time
And I hear, through the seething of luminous silence -
Secretive, vibrant, the sound of the Solitude -
Calling of others like me
Quietly they come, flitting softly as secrets; light-footed,
velvety, swift...
With eyes gleaming green, lambent flame of the Opal.
Kindred... we signal our quick recognition.
I am I ... but I know we are we
Panther of silence; god of Night; Lord of the wild inhuman
stars:
You are my own; teeming soul of solitude.
Here is no loneliness, secret Master -
You, Dark Spirit are with me. RN


Sunday, November 3, 2013

Georg Trakl (1887-1914)... Self Portrait & poem. .. 1913


Born, February 3, 1887 - Died, November 3, 1914


 photo Paintedprobablyon11301913InnsbruckinthestudioofMaxvonEsterle_zps0035346b.jpg

Painted Probably on 11.30.1913, Innsbruck in the studio of Max von Esterle


The Deep Song

From deep night I was released.
My soul is astonished in immortality,
My soul listens over space and time
To the melody of eternity!
Not day and lust, not night and suffering
Is the melody of eternity,
And since I listened to eternity,
I feel no more lust and suffering!


more HERE




Monday, March 18, 2013

Memento Mori... print & poem.. Christina Georgina Rossetti




 photo MementoMoriWochentage_zps87870b74.jpg


Memento Mori




Poor the pleasure
Doled out by measure,
Sweet though it be, while brief
As falling of the leaf;
Poor is pleasure
By weight and measure.

Sweet the sorrow
Which ends to-morrow;
Sharp though it be and sore,
It ends for evermore:
Zest of sorrow,
What ends to-morrow.

Christina Georgina Rossetti


Monday, March 4, 2013

Frans de Geetere & Arthur Rimbaud... The Stupra... 1925




 photo FransdeGeetere_zps21527d6d.jpg

Frans de Geetere ~ illustration for The Stupra 1925


The ancient beasts...


The ancient beasts bred even on the run,
Theirs glans encrusted with blood and excrement. 
Our forfathers displayed theirs members proudly
By the fold of the sheath and the grain of the scrotum.

In the middle ages, for a female, angel or sow,
A fellow whose gear was substantial was needed;
Even a Kléber, judging by his breeches which exagerate
Perhaps a little, can't have lacked resources.

Besides, man is equal to the proudest mammal;
We are wrong to be surprised at the hugeness of their members;
But a sterile hour has struck: the gelding

And the ox have bridled their ardours, and no one
Will dare again to raise his genital pride
In the copses teeming with comical children.

Arthur Rimbaud ~ The Stupra 1925



Wednesday, December 26, 2012

George Russell 'AE' (1867-1935)... Tired...drawing and poem



Photobucket

Tired, Ink and wash, 
                         



Star Teachers

EVEN as a bird sprays many-coloured fires,
The plumes of paradise, the dying light
Rays through the fevered air in misty spires
    That vanish in the heights.

These myriad eyes that look on me are mine;        
Wandering beneath them I have found again
The ancient ample moment, the divine,
    The God-root within men.

For this, for this the lights innumerable
As symbols shine that we the true light win:        
For every star and every deep they fill
    Are stars and deeps within.


George William (“A. E.”) Russell (1867–1935).  Collected Poems by A.E.  1913.


Saturday, November 24, 2012

M. Fröhlich... illustration... Else Lasker-Schüler 1907



LASKER-SCHUumlLERELSE1907 

illustration of Else Lasker-Schüler from "Tino of Baghdad" by Else Lasker-Schüler  1907


To the Barbarian



The rough drops of your blood

Bring sweetness to my skin.

Do not call my eyes traitresses

Because they’re floating around your skies;

I’m resting on your night, smiling

And teaching your stars how to play.

And I’m walking through the rusty gate

Of your bliss with a song.

I love you and am coming nearer, in white

And transfigured on pilgrimage toes,

I’m taking your haughty heart,

Pure chalice, with me to the angels.

I love you as if I’d died

And my soul were spread across you –

My soul took in all the pain,

Its bitter images will shatter you.

But there are so many roses in bloom

I’d like to give you;

I’d like to bring you all the gardens

Woven into a wreath.

I keep thinking of you

Until the clouds drop down;

We’d like to kiss,

Wouldn’t we?

by  Else Lasker-Schüler