She Walks in Beauty Read online

  I want it to confirm

  your worst fears about me,

  to show you how little I care about you

  or anything except what

  I want. When I find it, I’ll pull that garment

  from its hanger like I’m choosing a body

  to carry me into this world, through

  the birth-cries and the love-cries too,

  and I’ll wear it like bones, like skin,

  it’ll be the goddamned

  dress they bury me in.

  The Catch

  RICHARD WILBUR

  From the dress-box’s plashing tis-

  Sue paper she pulls out her prize,

  Dangling it to one side before my eyes

  Like a weird sort of fish

  That she has somehow hooked and gaffed

  And on the dock-end holds in air—

  Limp, corrugated, lank, a catch too rare

  Not to be photographed.

  I, in my chair, make shift to say

  Some bright, discerning thing, and fail,

  Proving once more the blindness of the male.

  Annoyed, she stalks away

  And then is back in half a minute,

  Consulting, now, not me at all

  But the long mirror, mirror on the wall.

  The dress, now that she’s in it,

  Has changed appreciably, and gains

  By lacy shoes, a light perfume

  Whose subtle field electrifies the room,

  And two slim golden chains.

  With a fierce frown and hard-pursed lips

  She twists a little on her stem

  To test the even swirling of the hem,

  Smooths down the waist and hips,

  Plucks at the shoulder-straps a bit,

  Then turns around and looks behind,

  Her face transfigured now by peace of mind.

  There is no question—it

  Is wholly charming, it is she,

  As I belatedly remark,

  And may be hung now in the fragrant dark

  Of her soft armory.

  Cosmetics Do No Good

  STEVE KOWIT

  after Vidyapati

  Cosmetics do no good:

  no shadow, rouge, mascara, lipstick—

  nothing helps.

  However artfully I comb my hair,

  embellishing my throat & wrists with jewels,

  it is no use—there is no

  semblance of the beautiful young girl

  I was

  & long for still.

  My loveliness is past.

  & no one could be more aware than I am

  that coquettishness at this age

  only renders me ridiculous.

  I know it. Nonetheless,

  I primp myself before the glass

  like an infatuated schoolgirl

  fussing over every detail,

  practicing whatever subtlety

  may please him.

  I cannot help myself.

  The God of Passion has his will of me

  & I am tossed about

  between humiliation & desire,

  rectitude & lust,

  disintegration & renewal,

  ruin & salvation.

  Face Lift

  SYLVIA PLATH

  You bring me good news from the clinic,

  Whipping off your silk scarf, exhibiting the tight white

  Mummy-cloths, smiling: I’m all right.

  When I was nine, a lime-green anesthetist

  Fed me banana gas through a frog-mask. The nauseous vault

  Boomed with bad dreams and the Jovian voices of surgeons.

  Then mother swam up, holding a tin basin.

  O I was sick.

  They’ve changed all that. Traveling

  Nude as Cleopatra in my well-boiled hospital shift,

  Fizzy with sedatives and unusually humorous,

  I roll to an anteroom where a kind man

  Fists my fingers for me. He makes me feel something precious

  Is leaking from the finger-vents. At the count of two

  Darkness wipes me out like chalk on a blackboard . . .

  I don’t know a thing.

  For five days I lie in secret,

  Tapped like a cask, the years draining into my pillow.

  Even my best friend thinks I’m in the country.

  Skin doesn’t have roots, it peels away easy as paper.

  When I grin, the stitches tauten. I grow backward. I’m twenty,

  Broody and in long skirts on my first husband’s sofa, my fingers

  Buried in the lambswool of the dead poodle;

  I hadn’t a cat yet.

  Now she’s done for, the dewlapped lady

  I watched settle, line by line, in my mirror—

  Old sock-face, sagged on a darning egg.

  They’ve trapped her in some laboratory jar.

  Let her die there, or wither incessantly for the next fifty years,

  Nodding and rocking and fingering her thin hair.

  Mother to myself, I wake swaddled in gauze,

  Pink and smooth as a baby.

  Fatigue

  HILAIRE BELLOC

  I’m tired of Love: I’m still more tired of Rhyme.

  But Money gives me pleasure all the time.

  The Great Lover

  RUPERT BROOKE

  I have been so great a lover: filled my days

  So proudly with the splendor of Love’s praise,

  The pain, the calm, and the astonishment,

  Desire illimitable, and still content,

  And all dear names men use, to cheat despair,

  For the perplexed and viewless streams that bear

  Our hearts at random down the dark of life.

  Now, ere the unthinking silence on that strife

  Steals down, I would cheat drowsy Death so far,

  My night shall be remembered for a star

  That outshone all the suns of all men’s days.

  Shall I not crown them with immortal praise

  Whom I have loved, who have given me, dared with me

  High secrets, and in darkness knelt to see

  The inenarrable godhead of delight?

  Love is a flame:—we have beaconed the world’s night.

  A city:—and we have built it, these and I.

  An emperor:—we have taught the world to die.

  So, for their sakes I loved, ere I go hence,

  And the high cause of Love’s magnificence.

  And to keep loyalties young, I’ll write those names

  Golden for ever, eagles, crying flames,

  And set them as a banner, that men may know,

  To dare the generations, burn, and blow

  Out on the wind of Time, shining and streaming. . . .

  These I have loved:

  White plates and cups, clean-gleaming,

  Ringed with blue lines; and feathery, faëry dust;

  Wet roofs, beneath the lamp-light; the strong crust

  Of friendly bread; and many-tasting food;

  Rainbows; and the blue bitter smoke of wood;

  And radiant raindrops couching in cool flowers;

  And flowers themselves, that sway through sunny hours,

  Dreaming of moths that drink them under the moon;

  Then, the cool kindliness of sheets, that soon

  Smooth away trouble; and the rough male kiss

  Of blankets; grainy wood; live hair that is

  Shining and free; blue-massing clouds; the keen

  Unpassioned beauty of a great machine;

  The benison of hot water; furs to touch;

  The good smell of old clothes; and other such—

  The comfortable smell of friendly fingers,

  Hair’s fragrance, and the musty reek that lingers

  About dead leaves and last year’s ferns. . . .

  Dear names,

  And thousand others throng to me! Royal flames;

&
nbsp; Sweet water’s dimpling laugh from tap or spring;

  Holes in the ground; and voices that do sing:

  Voices in laughter, too; and body’s pain,

  Soon turned to peace: and the deep-panting train;

  Firm sands; the little dulling edge of foam

  That browns and dwindles as the wave goes home;

  And washen stones, gay for an hour; the cold

  Graveness of iron; moist black earthen mold;

  Sleep; and high places; footprints in the dew;

  And oaks; and brown horse-chestnuts, glossy-new;

  And new-peeled sticks; and shining pools on grass;—

  All these have been my loves. And these shall pass,

  Whatever passes not, in the great hour,

  Nor all my passion, all my prayers, have power

  To hold them with me through the gate of Death.

  They’ll play deserter, turn with the traitor breath,

  Break the high bond we made, and sell Love’s trust

  And sacramental covenant to the dust.

  —Oh, never a doubt but, somewhere, I shall wake,

  And give what’s left of love again, and make

  New friends now strangers. . . .

  But the best I’ve known

  Stays here, and changes, breaks, grows old, is blown

  About the winds of the world, and fades from brains

  Of living men, and dies.

  Nothing remains.

  O dear my loves, O faithless, once again

  This one last gift I give: that after men

  Shall know, and later lovers, far-removed

  Praise you, “All these were lovely”; say, “He loved.”

  Patterns

  AMY LOWELL

  I walk down the garden paths,

  And all the daffodils

  Are blowing, and the bright blue squills.

  I walk down the patterned garden-paths

  In my stiff, brocaded gown.

  With my powdered hair and jeweled fan,

  I too am a rare

  Pattern. As I wander down

  The garden paths.

  My dress is richly figured,

  And the train

  Makes a pink and silver stain

  On the gravel, and the thrift

  Of the borders.

  Just a plate of current fashion,

  Tripping by in high-heeled, ribboned shoes.

  Not a softness anywhere about me,

  Only whalebone and brocade.

  And I sink on a seat in the shade

  Of a lime tree. For my passion

  Wars against the stiff brocade.

  The daffodils and squills

  Flutter in the breeze

  As they please.

  And I weep;

  For the lime-tree is in blossom

  And one small flower has dropped upon my bosom.

  And the plashing of waterdrops

  In the marble fountain

  Comes down the garden-paths.

  The dripping never stops.

  Underneath my stiffened gown

  Is the softness of a woman bathing in a marble basin,

  A basin in the midst of hedges grown

  So thick, she cannot see her lover hiding,

  But she guesses he is near,

  And the sliding of the water

  Seems the stroking of a dear

  Hand upon her.

  What is Summer in a fine brocaded gown!

  I should like to see it lying in a heap upon the ground.

  All the pink and silver crumpled up on the ground.

  I would be the pink and silver as I ran along the paths,

  And he would stumble after,

  Bewildered by my laughter.

  I should see the sun flashing from his sword-hilt and the buckles on his shoes.

  I would choose

  To lead him in a maze along the patterned paths,

  A bright and laughing maze for my heavy-booted lover.

  Till he caught me in the shade,

  And the buttons of his waistcoat bruised my body as he

  clasped me,

  Aching, melting, unafraid.

  With the shadows of the leaves and the sundrops,

  And the plopping of the waterdrops,

  All about us in the open afternoon—

  I am very like to swoon

  With the weight of this brocade,

  For the sun sifts through the shade.

  Underneath the fallen blossom

  In my bosom,

  Is a letter I have hid.

  It was brought to me this morning by a rider from the Duke.

  “Madam, we regret to inform you that Lord Hartwell

  Died in action Thursday se’nnight.”

  As I read it in the white, morning sunlight,

  The letters squirmed like snakes.

  “Any answer, Madam,” said my footman.

  “No,” I told him.

  “See that the messenger takes some refreshment.

  No, no answer.”

  And I walked into the garden,

  Up and down the patterned paths,

  In my stiff, correct brocade.

  The blue and yellow flowers stood up proudly in the sun,

  Each one.

  I stood upright too,

  Held rigid to the pattern

  By the stiffness of my gown.

  Up and down I walked,

  Up and down.

  In a month he would have been my husband.

  In a month, here, underneath this lime,

  We would have broke the pattern;

  He for me, and I for him,

  He as Colonel, I as Lady,

  On this shady seat.

  He had a whim

  That sunlight carried blessing.

  And I answered, “It shall be as you have said.”

  Now he is dead.

  In Summer and in Winter I shall walk

  Up and down

  The patterned garden-paths

  In my stiff, brocaded gown.

  The squills and daffodils

  Will give place to pillared roses, and to asters, and to snow.

  I shall go

  Up and down,

  In my gown.

  Gorgeously arrayed,

  Boned and stayed.

  And the softness of my body will be guarded from embrace

  By each button, hook, and lace.

  For the man who should loose me is dead,

  Fighting with the Duke in Flanders,

  In a pattern called a war.

  Christ! What are patterns for?

  Crocheted Bag

  ROSEMARY CATACALOS

  Habibi, I want to live the string bag from Bahrain—a birthday

  you say—

  with its brazen blue mouth and deep yellow light always rising

  from

  below. Clearly a woman’s work, stitches through which the air

  shines,

  and the things within are apparent from without. A woman’s days

  laced together, only closed enough to contain her faith. A woman’s

  fishing net, her dream, which, if slept upon, would mark the skin

  with equal-armed crosses that say the center is everywhere.

  As grape

  leaves the world over are seasoned with the same sun. As no child

  anywhere should ever want to die. A woman’s prayer, with

  handles

  top and bottom so always the load can be slung between two

  walkers on the same path.

  Delight in Disorder

  ROBERT HERRICK

  A sweet disorder in the dress

  Kindles in clothes a wantonness:

  A lawn about the shoulders thrown

  Into a fine distraction:

  An erring lace, which here and there

  Enthrals the crimson stomacher:

  A cuff neglectful, and thereby

  Ribbons to flow confuse
dly:

  A winning wave, deserving note,

  In the tempestuous petticoat:

  A careless shoe-string, in whose tie

  I see a wild civility:

  Do more bewitch me than when art

  Is too precise in every part.

  The Rhodora

  On Being Asked, Whence Is the Flower?

  RALPH WALDO EMERSON

  In May, when sea-winds pierced our solitudes,

  I found the fresh Rhodora in the woods,

  Spreading its leafless blooms in a damp nook,

  To please the desert and the sluggish brook.

  The purple petals, fallen in the pool,

  Made the black water with their beauty gay;

  Here might the red-bird come his plumes to cool,

  And court the flower that cheapens his array.

  Rhodora! if the sages ask thee why

  This charm is wasted on the earth and sky,

  Tell them, dear, that if eyes were made for seeing,

  Then Beauty is its own excuse for being:

  Why thou wert there, O rival of the rose!

  I never thought to ask, I never knew:

  But, in my simple ignorance, suppose

  The self-same Power that brought me there brought you.

  Roses Only

  MARIANNE MOORE

  You do not seem to realize that beauty is a liability rather than

  an asset—that in view of the fact that spirit creates form we are

  justified in supposing

  that you must have brains. For you, a symbol of the unit, stiff

  and sharp,

  conscious of surpassing by dint of native superiority and liking

  for everything

  self-dependent, anything an

  ambitious civilization might produce: for you, unaided, to attempt

  through sheer

  reserve to confute presumptions resulting from observation is

  idle. You cannot make us

  think you a delightful happen-so. But rose, if you are brilliant,

  it

  is not because your petals are the without-which-nothing of pre-

  eminence. You would look, minus

  thorns—like a what-is-this, a mere

  peculiarity. They are not proof against a storm, the elements, or

  mildew

  but what about the predatory hand? What is brilliance without

  coordination? Guarding the