09-29-2015, 11:26 AM
Speaking of Gluck, I love the opening poem "The Wild Iris" from her Leider cycle book of poetry under the same name...
The Wild Iris
Hear me out: that which you call death
I remember.
Overhead, noises, branches of the pine shifting.
Then nothing. The weak sun
flickered over the dry surface.
It is terrible to survive
as consciousness
buried in the dark earth.
Then it was over: that which you fear, being
a soul and unable
to speak, ending abruptly, the stiff earth
bending a little. And what I took to be
birds darting in low shrubs.
You who do not remember
passage from the other world
I tell you I could speak again: whatever
returns from oblivion returns
to find a voice:
from the center of my life came
a great fountain, deep blue
shadows on azure seawater.
I always loved this stanza...
It is terrible to survive
as consciousness
buried in the dark earth.
...it was like the poetic definition of a state of acute anxiety to me.
Anyway...
The Wild Iris
Hear me out: that which you call death
I remember.
Overhead, noises, branches of the pine shifting.
Then nothing. The weak sun
flickered over the dry surface.
It is terrible to survive
as consciousness
buried in the dark earth.
Then it was over: that which you fear, being
a soul and unable
to speak, ending abruptly, the stiff earth
bending a little. And what I took to be
birds darting in low shrubs.
You who do not remember
passage from the other world
I tell you I could speak again: whatever
returns from oblivion returns
to find a voice:
from the center of my life came
a great fountain, deep blue
shadows on azure seawater.
I always loved this stanza...
It is terrible to survive
as consciousness
buried in the dark earth.
...it was like the poetic definition of a state of acute anxiety to me.
Anyway...
You can't hate me more than I hate myself. I win.
"When the spirit of justice eloped on the wings
Of a quivering vibrato's bittersweet sting."
"When the spirit of justice eloped on the wings
Of a quivering vibrato's bittersweet sting."