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Stunt Double
A strange thing, how every day
I am private eye for a statue,
set up in exchange after I fell
to writing, to morrow, to bed.
Poems on the topic: statue
Poems on the topic “statue” on Poets.by.
Crushed
My first crush was a statue:
strong and silent, noble
to a fault. Realer
than the dead general
he memorialized, for his triumph
was far less fleeting.
He kept his chin up
no matter what, weathering
every pigeon. His head
was like a moon, blotchy
with seas. As for me,
I didn’t want to be seen
with my head of a beast
like an ass-backwards sphynx.
Small dogs assaulted
the space I’d left
Marble Torso of a Roman Youth
His flesh, pale as the marble
Fashioned into the destiny of his days,
Is on display in the show window
Of a nearby antiques store on
The Alameda de Hércules.
As for his soul, if he had one,
No one is sure what merchant
Might now possess it.
Two centuries after Christ,
Someone did make sure that a block
Of purest stone render him immortal,
Like the flight of birds
Or the ebb and flow of the tides.
I invited him to dine with me,
To share lamb,
And his story and the stories
Men Improve with the Years
I am worn out with dreams;
A weather-worn, marble triton
Among the streams;
And all day long I look
Upon this lady's beauty
As though I had found in book
A pictured beauty,
Pleased to have filled the eyes
Or the discerning ears,
Delighted to be but wise,
For men improve with the years;
And yet and yet
Is this my dream, or the truth?
O would that we had met
When I had my burning youth;
But I grow old among dreams,
Autumn
I shall remember only these leaves falling
Small and incessant in the still air,
Yellow leaves on the dark green water resting
And the marble Venus there--
Is she pointing to her breasts or trying to hide them?
There is no god to care.
The colonnade curves close to the leaf-strewn water
And its reflection seems
Lost in the mass of leaves and unavailing
As a dream lost among dreams;
The colonnade curves close to the leaf-strewn water
A dream lost among dreams.
Statue and Birds
Here, in the withered arbor, like the arrested wind,
Straight sides, carven knees,
Stands the statue, with hands flung out in alarm
Or remonstrances.
Over the lintel sway the woven bracts of the vine
In a pattern of angles.
The quill of the fountain falters, woods rake on the sky
Their brusque tangles.
The birds walk by slowly, circling the marble girl,
The golden quails,
The pheasants closed up in their arrowy wings.
Dragging their sharp tails.
The inquietudes of the sap and of the blood are spent.
What is forsaken will rest.
But her heel is lifted, — she would flee, — the whistle of the birds
Fails on her breast.
The Saint-Gaudens Statue in Rock Creek Cemetery, Washington
Are there no tears for other hearts to shed?
Those heavy eyes have drained the world of grief,
And yet no solace found, no drear relief.
Such as my heart would seek, and find, I know,
Had I been given the weight of that vast woe,
And wept through pain to peace! But you, instead,
Have drowned all healing in a shoreless sea
Of unforgiven wrong, whose every breath
Lifts windy clamor through the soul's hushed space.
Fanning to greater grief, to swifter glow.
The flame that smolders still in that bronze face,
Sadder than life, and sadder far than death,
Because of love renounced and joy to be.
And faith and hope and immortality.
The Contest
Your stature is modelled
with straight tool-edge:
you are chiselled like rocks
that are eaten into by the sea.
With the turn and grasp of your wrist
and the chords' stretch,
there is a glint like worn brass.
The ridge of your breast is taut,
and under each the shadow is sharp,
and between the clenched muscles
of your slender hips.
From the circle of your cropped hair
there is light,
and about your male torse
and the foot-arch and the straight ankle.
You stand rigid and mighty--
Visions 1
I saw a vision of beauty.
My eyes looked through the mists of ages,
Back to the glorious years when Beauty itself was God.
And I saw the waves of the blue Ægean,
Turquoise, sapphire, jacinth and amethyst mingled,
And I heard the singing of the water,
As of playing of distant pipes
By slender shepherd lads among the hills.
Then I turned away from the shore
And I saw the pediment of a great temple
Standing white against the sky,
And beneath the pediment rows of marble columns
Like giant trees in a forest of frozen beauty.
Statues gleamed amid the dark foliage of cypress and olive trees,
Statues of gods and goddesses, youths and maidens,
Horses of ruddy bronze and chariots of beaten brass.
Streets Too Old
I WALKED among the streets of an old city and the
streets were lean as the throats of hard seafish
soaked in salt and kept in barrels many years.
How old, how old, how old, we are : — the walls went
on saying, street walls leaning toward each other
like old women of the people, like old midwives
tired and only doing what must be done.
The greatest the city could offer me, a stranger, was
statues of the kings, on all corners bronzes of
kings — ancient bearded kings who wrote books
and spoke of God's love for all people — and young
kings who took forth armies out across the frontiers
splitting the heads of their opponents and
enlarging their kingdoms.
Strangest of all to me, a stranger in this old city, was
Mise en Scene
When I think of you. Beloved,
I see a smooth and stately garden
With parterres of gold and crimson tulips
And bursting lilac leaves.
There is a low-lipped basin in the midst.
Where a statue of veined cream marble
Perpetually pours water over her shoulder
From a rounded urn.
When the wind blows.
The water-stream blows before it
And spatters into the basin with a light tinkling.
And your shawl — the colour of red violets —
Flares out behind you in great curves
Like the swirling draperies of a painted Madonna.
The Broken Fountain
Oblong, its jutted ends rounding into circles.
The old sunken basin lies with its flat, marble lip
An inch below the terrace tiles.
Over the stagnant water
Slide reflections :
The blue-green of coned yews ;
The purple and red of trailing fuchsias
Dripping out of marble urns ;
Bright squares of sky
Ribbed by the wake of a swimming beetle.
Through the blue-bronze water
Wavers the pale uncertainty of a shadow.
An arm flashes through the reflections,
A breast is outlined with leaves.
Outstretched in the quiet water
The statue of a Goddess slumbers.
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