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Contemplative, I. L. Salomon, in English Clear filters

ContemplativeI. L. Salomon

Remonstrance

As often as I have been told To disesteem the shining gold In favor of a wayward star That burns to tell us what we are; And since my dust no less refined Than darker ore as yet unmined Will be assayed its final worth Long after the compulsive earth Has it immured, I think it may Not be impertinent to say The heart needs stars to live secure And a little gold to keep it pure!
ContemplativeI. L. Salomon

Indwelling

No one has ever heard The song of a brook reply To watersong that startles The listener passing by. And still the voice of the brook Sings in its varied course, Yet never the self-same voice Reveals the pulse at its source. Except for a surface freeze And a trickle or two in ice, No one has ever touched Running water twice. Music falls from the rock That yields not any response. Something like heaven's withheld To be touched, if at all, but once.
ContemplativeI. L. Salomon

Fallen Elm

Whoever had felled the elm Had not cut it clean at all, For it bled till falling snow Healed the wound with a silver caul. The trunk, enameled in ice Veined white as a crystal sheath, Lay stiff in face of the wind's New voice through its winter teeth. Whatever it was that warmed The elm to the roots in soil Was as merciful as spring Warming the heart of the bole Bound to the stump by a tongue Of wood like a navel cord, A mother sustaining a child In its embryonic world
ContemplativeI. L. Salomon

Green at Dusk

Green at dusk and nile at noon Have much to commend them for their hues; If choice of color is mine to choose Green at dusk is the one I make. Light of morning wakes rye to green The sun will bleach as day grows large; Let clouds erupt a powered charge, The shock turns fields to emerald. But twilight keeps a dyestuff for The heart's wry mood, as hills expose A nib of gold that burns and goes Out, embered in sunlit amber.
ContemplativeI. L. Salomon

Fit Remembrance

I should not want the quarried slate Or granite to perpetuate My memory when I am gone. It is not fit. I fought with stone Too long to have its weight upon The locked earth underneath whose sod I measure less than half a rod. To know I was, may my bones be Tied to the anonymity Of hidden roots so intertwined The man I was becomes defined In one tall maple tree whose shade Falls gratefully where I am laid.
ContemplativeI. L. Salomon

World in the Woods

Though the ill-used path and trodden fern Told of no song, the animate word Of water like a chattering bird Livened the brook at tree-root and turn. And here where the sun seldom achieves Solar perspective, a young deer's skull Lay topside up—an unbeautiful Relic allotted to last year's leaves. With my boot I gingerly touched the thin Papery bone that flaked at once, As a knob of snow after winter suns Trickled drop by drop on the under-chin. Music the bird-voiced water told Closed on my heart, not unaware Of the useless skull, as the brook's loud air And the intimate song in the vein ran cold.
ContemplativeI. L. Salomon

I Lie Alone

I lie alone: I breathe, I think, I dream. I wake in nightmare at the dawn of sleep To silences unspeakable as noise Filtrating solitude that has me creep Under the cover to snuggle in the flesh Of my beloved in drowse, as on the shelves The moonlight whitens Frost and Foscolo. I lie alone, yet lie with many selves. I lie with all my selves : I breathe, I think. I dream, not sleeping, as if dream were all; I drown whole worlds and it is I I drown; My third eye oversees the ritual : My soul would fly my flesh, my flesh my soul Myself World-Light for the enormous Light I catch a glimpse of in my universe. I lie alone in an unending night.
ContemplativeI. L. Salomon

A Place Gone By

Where the river makes an oxbow turn A house had a secure beginning; Whatever the reason, the homestead's bare. A surly wind is having its inning: Its thumbs have depressed the gabled roof; The clapboards are black with cracks between, The flaky paint is most rained off— Yet the unworked land is showing green. The earth will be cared for whether or not There are living to tend a place gone by, For the grass will grow to refute the fact An abandoned house has been left to die.
ContemplativeI. L. Salomon

Song for the Greenwood Fawn

The greenwood fawn at the hidden brook In the green green wood, O lovely! Shudders a fly off her dappled coat And watches a leaf, light raft afloat, Skip and swirl to the edge of the pool, Where the shadows of stone are shaded cool, Nor ever moves on her hornèd hooves In the green green wood, O lovely! The greenwood fawn sees her own shy face The silver water mirrors, And the water washes her black furred nose, As a dragonfly in emerald clothes Darts from a branch to a stunted hedge And swoops past a shrub to light on a ledge, Where a trout shoots by, sleek submarine, Dark green against the summer green,
ContemplativeI. L. Salomon

Churchyard at Deptford

From the stone coffin, I Scooped up limed grit and sand Of what had been a man; I held him in my hand. I held him in my hand, Who suffered me to know What air had burnt to dust Three hundred years ago.

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