Moonlight Poems Quotes

She wore the moonlight like lingerie. 

who knows if the moon's a balloon,coming out of a keen city in the sky--filled with pretty people? ( and if you and I should get into it,if they should take me and take you into their balloon, why then we'd go up higher with all the pretty people than houses and steeples and clouds: go sailing away and away sailing into a keen city which nobody's ever visited,where always it's Spring)and everyone's in love and flowers pick themselves

Follow your inner moonlight, don’t hide the madness.

moonlight disappears down the hills mountains vanish into fog and i vanish into poetry.

Don't compare her to sunshine and roses when she's clearly orchids and moonlight.

Put a girl in moonlight and tell only truths and every man becomes a poet.

all people start to come apart finally and there it is: just empty ashtrays in a room or wisps of hair on a comb in the dissolving moonlight.

when I finally begin to drift into sleep your memory is the...first and the moonlight the last, to kiss my face.

Rejoice with glitters of ashes tonight Sparkling for moon's spiced silver bite Upon skin of darkness, loving night more Storm begins unlocking cold wind's door

You should be more careful when you move, my dear what with you... spilling moonlight into my poem, with a mere flick of your hand.

The moon seems unaware of night's dark hitting on the damp warm rain misguiding owl's spitting A thunder light of love raising hearts beating while weather learns more from rain lovers meeting

Although the wind blows terribly here, the moonlight also leaks between the roof planks of this ruined house.

That night, how could I sleep? I lay and watched the lonely gloom; And watched the moonlight creep From wall to basin, round the room. All night I could not sleep.

You made the sobbing white of lilies too, tumbling lightly across a sea of sighs on their dreamy way to weeping moonlight through the azure incense of the pale horizon!

The next poem will be pulled from the moonlight. It will be a falling star It will be a burning branch. The next poem will climb down from the mango tree while I'm dreaming and sneak away before I wake. The next poem I will plant beneath my own skin. I will walk in the rain and allow her to bloom. The next poem I won't even write. It will descend with the sun, it will be a walk home next to my shadow.

When you left you left behind a field of silent flowers under a sky full of unstirred clouds...you left a million butterflies mid-silky flutters You left like midnight rain against my dreaming ears Oh and how you left leaving my coffee scentless and my couch comfortless leaving upon my fingers the melting snow of you you left behind a calendar full of empty days and seasons full of aimless wanders leaving me alone with an armful of sunsets your reflection behind in every puddle your whispers upon every curtain your fragrance inside every petal you left your echoes in between the silence of my eyes Oh and how you left leaving my sands footless and my shores songless leaving me with windows full of moistened moonlight nights and nights of only a half-warmed soul and when you left... you left behind a lifetime of moments untouched the light of a million stars unshed and when you left you somehow left my poem...unfinished. (Published in Taj Mahal Review Vol.11 Number 1 June 2012)

If in the moonlight from the silent bough Suddenly with precision speak your name The nightingale, be not assured that now His wing is limed and his wild virtue tame. Beauty beyond all feathers that have flown Is free; you shall not hood her to your wrist, Nor sting her eyes, nor have her for your own In any fashion; beauty billed and kissed Is not your turtle; tread her like a dove - She loves you not; she never heard of love.

I am made from the creaking beams and rusted nails of a lonely vessel on a lonely sea. I am covered and coated, dusted with old salt water and the frail residue of moonlight.

So Mr Brain opened his mouth to let a moonbeam into his head.

Evening Solace The human heart has hidden treasures, In secret kept, in silence sealed;­ The thoughts, the hopes, the dreams, the pleasures, Whose charms were broken if revealed. And days may pass in gay confusion, And nights in rosy riot fly, While, lost in Fame's or Wealth's illusion, The memory of the Past may die. But, there are hours of lonely musing, Such as in evening silence come, When, soft as birds their pinions closing, The heart's best feelings gather home. Then in our souls there seems to languish A tender grief that is not woe; And thoughts that once wrung groans of anguish, Now cause but some mild tears to flow. And feelings, once as strong as passions, Float softly back-­a faded dream; Our own sharp griefs and wild sensations, The tale of others' sufferings seem. Oh ! when the heart is freshly bleeding, How longs it for that time to be, When, through the mist of years receding, Its woes but live in reverie ! And it can dwell on moonlight glimmer, On evening shade and loneliness; And, while the sky grows dim and dimmer, Feel no untold and strange distress­ Only a deeper impulse given By lonely hour and darkened room, To solemn thoughts that soar to heaven, Seeking a life and world to come.

Spend the glittering moonlight there Pursuing down the soundless deep Limbs that gleam and shadowy hair, Or floating lazy, half-asleep. Dive and double and follow after, Snare in flowers, and kiss, and call, With lips that fade, and human laughter And faces individual, Well this side of Paradise! . . . There's little comfort in the wise.

Here is the soundless cypress on the lawn: It listens, listens. Taller trees beyond Listen. The moon at the unruffled pond Stares. And you sing, you sing. That star-enchanted song falls through the air From lawn to lawn down terraces of sound, Darts in white arrows on the shadowed ground; And all the night you sing. My dreams are flowers to which you are a bee As all night long I listen, and my brain Receives your song, then loses it again In moonlight on the lawn. Now is your voice a marble high and white, Then like a mist on fields of paradise, Now is a raging fire, then is like ice, Then breaks, and it is dawn.

But we, with our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see, Our souls with high music ringing: O men! it must ever be That we dwell, in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. We are afar with the dawning And the suns that are not yet high, And out of the infinite morning Intrepid you hear us cry — How, spite of your human scorning, Once more God's future draws nigh, And already goes forth the warning That ye of the past must die. Great hail! we cry to the comers From the dazzling unknown shore; Bring us hither your sun and your summers; And renew our world as of yore; You shall teach us your song's new numbers, And things that we dreamed not before: Yea, in spite of a dreamer who slumbers, And a singer who sings no more.

Moon is a superstar to a neon light Both are in doubt of their lifeless plight One envies the sun, the other one’s scared But to face the dark they’re always prepared

She wore moonlight like lingerie.

Spring-water in the green creek is clear Moonlight on Cold Mountain is white Silent knowledge—the spirit is enlightened of itself Contemplate the void: this world exceeds stillness.

A Halloween flower, if ever there was one, would smell like an onion, have thorns like a rose. With charcoal black petals and vines that entangle, t'would grow under moonlight in mud, I suppose.

When will your sun come - to make everything reborn? -The burn of your fingers pressed against my being- I would like to fall asleep in your body again And make of your smiles an open source When my life is like a desolate desert I would like to fall asleep by the light sand of your skin. Your voice - your voice alone knows how to put an end to my anger As your lips faint on the pains of my yesterday When will you come to drape me in your radiant sun? So that I find life in its first taste (-The glow of your hair is a roof of moonlight.)

I,it,was,that,saw, God,dancing,on,phosphorescent,toes, Among,the,strawberries. It,could,have,been,moonlight,or, Daylight—or,no,light,at,all. His,feet,cast,light,on,all. On,phosphorescent,feet, On,phosphorescent,feet,He,danced, And,His,eyes,were,closed: He,made,the,strawberries,tremble! Yet,He,hurt,not,the,little,one, But,gave,them,ripeness,all.

The inkstand is full of ink, and the paper lies white and unspotted, in the round of light thrown by a candle. Puffs of darkness sweep into the corners, and keep rolling through the room behind his chair. The air is silver and pearl, for the night is liquid with moonlight. See how the roof glitters, like ice! Over there, a slice of yellow cuts into the silver-blue, and beside it stand two geraniums, purple because the light is silver-blue, to-night.

Campfire Companions” poem: “What a longing they touched in me! Ah, would that I could lose myself in the wilderness, become a ghost of smoke and shadow, moving so subtly through the lucid moonlight that all my edges wore away.

Nothing is left in my memory of a summer that promised nothing. except the ominous end of it. But I remember clearly that autumn when darkness came to lend its cover to a killing season seeing at last these ill-at-ease petals estranged from moonlight and still related to it: outcasts of metal, of steel

For a moment she was truly terrified. This was Abbadon the Cruel. The Angel of Destruction. He could and would destroy her if he had to. If he felt like it. He had destroyed worlds before. He had decimated Paradise in the name of the Morningstar. She trembled in his grasp. All his gentleness, all his kindness, all the bright shining gorgeousness of his love, he had always given to someone else. He had adored Gabrielle, had worshiped her, had written her poems and sang her songs, and for Schuyler there were novels and love notes and sweet kisses and furtive tender meetings by a fireplace. But for his twin, Azrael, he had shown nothing but his anger and violence. His strength and destruction. He saved the best of himself for those who did not deserve it. Never showed his true face to those damnable Daughters of the Light. For Azrael, there was only darkness and annihilation. Rape and carnage. War and pillage. A tear escaped from her eye and glittered in the moonlight.

Drop by drop rain slaps the banana leaves, Praise whoever sketched this desolate scene: the lush, dark canopies of the gnarled trees, the long river, sliding smooth and white. I lift my wine flask, drunk with rivers and hills. My backpack, breathing moonlight, sags with poems. Look, and love everyone. Whoever sees this landscape is stunned.

And therefore to-day is thrilling With a past day's late fulfilling; And the multitudes are enlisted In the faith that their fathers resisted, And, scorning the dream of to-morrow, Are bringing to pass, as they may, In the world, for its joy or its sorrow, The dream that was scorned yesterday.

A Cathedral Façade at Midnight Along the sculptures of the western wall I watched the moonlight creeping: It moved as if it hardly moved at all Inch by inch thinly peeping Round on the pious figures of freestone, brought And poised there when the Universe was wrought To serve its centre, Earth, in mankind’s thought. The lunar look skimmed scantly toe, breast, arm, Then edged on slowly, slightly, To shoulder, hand, face; till each austere form Was blanched its whole length brightly Of prophet, king, queen, cardinal in state, That dead men’s tools had striven to simulate; And the stiff images stood irradiate. A frail moan from the martyred saints there set Mid others of the erection Against the breeze, seemed sighings of regret At the ancient faith’s rejection Under the sure, unhasting, steady stress Of Reason’s movement, making meaningless.

In every step, in every breath of yours, you’ll feel me… I will always be in every sight you see, in ever voice you hear… Your ears will be always filled with my whispers, my laughter and my cries… My fights and tantrums will never leave your mind… My footsteps, my shadow, will haunt you in every corner you go… I will be your mornings, your days and nights… I am the breeze that wraps your body in the morning… I am the moonlight that bathes your body at night… I am the fire that will burn you. I am the storm that you cannot handle… I am the rain that will wash away the dust from your soul… I am in your reflection. I am your shadow… Your heart whispers my name in every beat… Every word you say, echoes my name… I am the secret you want to hide, but the secret that the world knows… I am your dream… I am your nightmare… I am your darkest sin... I am you…

Behind each thing a shadow lies; Beauty hath e'er its cost: Within the moonlight-flooded skies How many stars are lost!

In Moonlight No Soft sweet paw on my cheek No Fur curled under my chin Just A sad space left behind - Gray cat gone away. [Ellie's poem]

1) Did the people of Viet Nam use lanterns of stone? 2) Did they hold ceremonies to reverence the opening of buds? 3) Were they inclined to quiet laughter? 4) Did they use bone and ivory, jade and silver, for ornament? 5) Had they an epic poem? 6) Did they distinguish between speech and singing? 1) Sir, their light hearts turned to stone. It is not remembered whether in gardens stone lanterns illumined pleasant ways. 2) Perhaps they gathered once to delight in blossom, but after the children were killed there were no more buds. 3) Sir, laughter is bitter to the burned mouth. 4) A dream ago, perhaps. Ornament is for joy. All the bones were charred. 5) It is not remembered. Remember, most were peasants; their life was in rice and bamboo. When peaceful clouds were reflected in the paddies and the water buffalo stepped surely along terraces, maybe fathers told their sons old tales. When bombs smashed those mirrors there was time only to scream. 6) There is an echo yet of their speech which was like a song. It was reported their singing resembled the flight of moths in moonlight. Who can say? It is silent now.

Poem of Thanks Years later, long single, I want to turn to his departed back, and say, What gifts we had of each other! What pleasure — confiding, open-eyed, fainting with what we were allowed to stay up late doing. And you couldn’t say, could you, that the touch you had from me was other than the touch of one who could love for life — whether we were suited or not — for life, like a sentence. And now that I consider, the touch that I had from you became not the touch of the long view, but like the tolerant willingness of one who is passing through. Colleague of sand by moonlight — and by beach noonlight, once, and of straw, salt bale in a barn, and mulch inside a garden, between the rows — once- partner of up against the wall in that tiny bathroom with the lock that fluttered like a chrome butterfly beside us, hip-height, the familiar of our innocence, which was the ignorance of what would be asked, what was required, thank you for every hour. And I accept your thanks, as if it were a gift of yours, to give them — let’s part equals, as we were in every bed, pure equals of the earth.

I respond to many names. Sometimes I am different people. Sometimes I am the me that howls in the night. Sometimes I am the sickening silence. I wear moonlight in my hair and bare my teeth.

most common people oft he market-place much prefer light literature to improving books. The problem is, that so many romances contain slanderous anecdotes about sovereigns and ministers or cast aspersions upon man’s wives and daughters so that they are packed with sex and violence. Even worse are those writers of the breeze-and-moonlight school, who corrupt the young with pornography and filth. As for books of the beauty-and-talented-scholar type, a thousand are written to a single pattern and none escapes bordering on indecency. They are filled with allusions to handsome, talented young men and beautiful, refined girls in history; but in order to insert a couple of his own love poems, the author invents stereotyped heroes and heroines with the inevitable low character to make trouble between them like a clown in a play, and makes even the slave girls talk pedantic nonsense. So all these novels are full of contradictions and absurdly unnatural.

If there must be a god in the house, must be, Saying things in the rooms and on the stair, Let him move as the sunlight moves on the floor, Or moonlight, silently, as Plato's ghost Or Aristotle's skeleton. Let him hang out His stars on the wall. He must dwell quietly.

I'll come to thee by moonlight," Connor said, quoting her favorite poem. "Though hell should bar the way." He kissed her quickly. "And don't fall out," he added. "Don't die," she replied sleepily. "Dude," Quinn grinned. "Did you just recite poetry?" "Shut it," Connor shot back amiably.

There is so much silence all around that I think I can hear moonlight crashing against the windows. A foreign voice awakes inside my breast, singing a longing which is not my own. They say that ancestors, who died before their time, with young blood in their veins, with great passions in their blood, with living sun in passions, return, return to live inside us their unspent lives. There is so much silence all around that I think I can hear moonlight crashing against the windows. Oh, who knows, my soul -in whose breast you too will sing, in centur- ies to come, on sweet strings of silence on a harp of darkness, your smothered longing and your broken joy of life? Who knows? Who knows?

Daddy-by Nancy B. Brewer When I used to say, speak up you are as good as they, You would just smile and say, let them have their way. When in my foolish youth, I so often disobeyed, He would just smile and say, let her have her way. When summer passed and winter overcame. He was not afraid, never once did he say. When in the moonlight his final hour came, He just smiled and said Lord I'll go your way.

Even at brightest noon, it’s always Full moon in my country. In these streets of Tropic stone and Malay blood, daylight is Moonlight mugging me on every corner Where human shadows loll in an atmosphere Both lunar and lunatic. And while from either pole we’re Half a world and seas away, this Might as well be An arctic archipelago, where as The sun burns the colder it gets. This might as well be Equatorial Antarctica...

BEAVER MOON—THE SUICIDE OF A FRIEND When somewhere life breaks like a pane of glass, and from every direction casual voices are bringing you the news, you say: I should have known. You say: I should have been aware. That last Friday he looked so ill, like an old mountain-climber lost on the white trails, listening to the ice breaking upward, under his worn-out shoes. You say: I heard rumors of trouble, but after all we all have that. You say: what could I have done? and you go with the rest, to bury him. That night, you turn in your bed to watch the moon rise, and once more see what a small coin it is against the darkness, and how everything else is a mystery, and you know nothing at all except the moonlight is beautiful— white rivers running together along the bare boughs of the trees— and somewhere, for someone, life is becoming moment by moment unbearable.

Moonlight I know when the sun is in China because the night shining other-light crawls into my bed. She is moon. Her eyes slit and yellow she is the last one out of a dingy bar in Albuquerque— Fourth Street, or from similar avenues in Hong Kong. Where someone else has also awakened, the night thrown back and asked, 'where is the moon, my lover'? And from here I always answer in my dreaming, 'the last time I saw her was in the arms of another sky'.

Amaranth" There are no starfish in the sky tonight, But there is one below your belly, And there are cold evenings in your eyes. If I could get to your house I would look under the bed of your childhood, The tongueless loafer without laces or eyes, The cave of your young foot With its odor of moon, its dampness Coming from underground, your shoe Which also bled and is now an island. You have to remember these are the memories Of a survivor, you have to remember. You could be looking for clay to haul away, Fill for the deep washouts of your love. All your old loves, they bled to death, too. Your hair is like a cemetery full of hands, Fingers in the moonlight. When you come down to the heart Bring your post-hole diggers and crowbar. Do not set a corner, a fence won’t last. Do not bury our first child there, Or set a post, Although I have tasted blood on the lips of a stranger, At night and in the rain.

The Letter" Little cramped words scrawling all over the paper Like draggled fly’s legs, What can you tell of the flaring moon Through the oak leaves? Or of my uncertain window and the bare floor Spattered with moonlight? Your silly quirks and twists have nothing in them Of blossoming hawthorns, And this paper is dull, crisp, smooth, virgin of loveliness Beneath my hand. I am tired, Beloved, of chafing my heart against The want of you; Of squeezing it into little inkdrops, And posting it. And I scald alone, here, under the fire Of the great moon.

Juliet and Romeo Awake the scene, a twilight chamber’d dream, Two angels both alike in dignity: One imaged misadventure on the screen; The second struck by moonlight’s alchemy. A pair of star-crossed lovers spends their night; He in deed dreams such a sight as she, Swing crystal scales to crispest fair delight. In his eyes her merry fragrant dance: she Civil thoughts and civil music meet; on Fair Lansdowne Street where love lays its scene, Romeo and Juliet did greet; within Their airy eyes on hopes and thoughts unseen. The curtain lifts on this sweet poem with woe, For love to find Juliet and her Romeo.

Throne of my lonely niche, my wealth, my love, my moonlight. My most sincere friend, my confidant, my very existence, my Sultan, my one and only love. The most beautiful among the beautiful… My springtime, my merry faced love, my daytime, my sweetheart, laughing leaf… My plants, my sweet, my rose, the one only who does not distress me in this world… My Constantinople, my Caraman, the earth of my Anatolia My Badakhshan, my Baghdad and Khorasan My woman of the beautiful hair, my love of the slanted brow, my love of eyes full of mischief… I’ll sing your praises always I, lover of the tormented heart, Muhibbi of the eyes full of tears, I am happy.

When first we faced, and touching showed How well we knew the early moves, Behind the moonlight and the frost, The excitement and the gratitude, There stood how much our meeting owed To other meetings, other loves. The decades of a different life That opened past your inch-close eyes Belonged to others, lavished, lost; Nor could I hold you hard enough To call my years of hunger-strife Back for your mouth to colonise. Admitted: and the pain is real. But when did love not try to change The world back to itself–no cost, No past, no people else at all– Only what meeting made us feel, So new, and gentle-sharp, and strange? - When first we faced, and touching showed

VII" Oh you can make fun of the splendors of moonlight, But what would the human heart be if it wanted Only the dark, wanted nothing on earth But the sea’s ink or the rock’s black shade? On a summer night to launch yourself into the silver Emptiness of air and look over the pale fields At rest under the sullen stare of the moon, And to linger in the depths of your vision and wonder How in this whiteness what you love is past Grief, and how in the long valley of your looking Hope grows, and there, under the distant, Barely perceptible fire of all the stars, To feel yourself wake into change, as if your change Were immense and figured into the heavens’ longing. And yet all you want is to rise out of the shade Of yourself into the cooling blaze of a summer night When the moon shines and the earth itself Is covered and silent in the stoniness of its sleep.

Tom O’ Bedlam among the Sunflowers" To have gold in your back yard and not know it. . . I woke this morning before your dream had shredded And found a curious thing: flowers made of gold, Six-sided—more than that—broken on flagstones, Petals the color of a wedding band. You are sleeping. The morning comes up gold. Perhaps I made those flowers in my head, For I have counted snowflakes in July Blowing across my eyes like bits of calcium, And I have stepped into your dream at night, A stranger there, my body steeped in moonlight. I watched you tremble, washed in all that silver. Love, the stars have fallen into the garden And turned to frost. They have opened like a hand. It is the color that breaks out of the bedsheets. This morning the garden is littered with dry petals As yellow as the page of an old book. I step among them. They are brittle as bone china.

Ernst of Edelsheim I'll tell the story, kissing   This white hand for my pains: No sweeter heart, nor falser   E'er filled such fine, blue veins. I'll sing a song of true love,   My Lilith dear! to you; Contraria contrariis—   The rule is old and true. The happiest of all lovers   Was Ernst of Edelsheim; And why he was the happiest,   I'll tell you in my rhyme. One summer night he wandered   Within a lonely glade, And, couched in moss and moonlight,   He found a sleeping maid. The stars of midnight sifted   Above her sands of gold; She seemed a slumbering statue,   So fair and white and cold. Fair and white and cold she lay   Beneath the starry skies; Rosy was her waking   Beneath the Ritter's eyes. He won her drowsy fancy,   He bore her to his towers, And swift with love and laughter   Flew morning's purpled hours. But when the thickening sunbeams   Had drunk the gleaming dew, A misty cloud of sorrow   Swept o'er her eyes' deep blue. She hung upon the Ritter's neck, S he wept with love and pain, She showered her sweet, warm kisses   Like fragrant summer rain. "I am no Christian soul," she sobbed,   As in his arms she lay; "I'm half the day a woman,   A serpent half the day. "And when from yonder bell-tower   Rings out the noonday chime, Farewell! farewell forever,   Sir Ernst of Edelsheim!" "Ah! not farewell forever!"   The Ritter wildly cried, "I will be saved or lost with thee,   My lovely Wili-Bride!" Loud from the lordly bell-tower   Rang out the noon of day, And from the bower of roses   A serpent slid away. But when the mid-watch moonlight   Was shimmering through the grove, He clasped his bride thrice dowered   With beauty and with love. The happiest of all lovers   Was Ernst of Edelsheim— His true love was a serpent   Only half the time!

Radar Data #12 It was in the absence of light as when near new moon and no moonlight; as when a part of a picture is in shadow (as opposed to a light); as when in the condition of being hidden from view, obscure, or unknown—in concealment, or else without knowledge as regards to some particular; and of the weather, season, air, sky, sea, etc., characterized by tempest; in times, events, circumstances etc. subject to tempers; inflamed, indicative, predictive, or symbolical of strife (harbinger of coming trouble)—a period of darkness occurring between one day & the next during which a place receives no light from the sun, and what if it is all behind us? I no longer fear the rain will never end, but doubt our ability to return to what lies passed. On the radar, a photopresent scraggle of interference, as if the data is trying to pretend something’s out there where everything is lost.

A Walk in the Country" To walk anywhere in the world, to live now, to speak, to breathe a harmless breath: what snowflake, even, may try today so calm a life, so mild a death? Out in the country once, walking the hollow night, I felt a burden of silver come: my back had caught moonlight pouring through the trees like money. That walk was late, though. Late, I gently came into town, and a terrible thing had happened: the world, wide, unbearably bright, had leaped on me. I carried mountains. Though there was much I knew, though kind people turned away, I walked there ashamed— into that still picture to bring my fear and pain. By dawn I felt all right; my hair was covered with dew; the light was bearable; the air came still and cool. And God had come back there to carry the world again. Since then, while over the world the wind appeals events, and people contend like fools, like a stubborn tumbleweed I hold, hold where I live, and look into every face: Oh friends, where can one find a partner for the long dance over the fields?

Cannery Row in Monterey in California is a poem, a stink, a grating noise, a quality of light, a tone, a habit, a nostalgia, a dream. Cannery Row is the gathered and scattered, tin and iron and rust and splintered wood, chipped pavement and weedy lots and junk heaps, sardine canneries of corrugated iron, honky-tonks, restaurants and whore-houses, and little crowded groceries, and laboratories and flop-houses. Its inhabitants are, as the man once said, "whores, pimps, gamblers, and sons of bitches," by which he meant Everybody. Had the man looked through another peep-hole he might have said: "Saints and angels and martyrs and holy men," and he would have meant the same thing. In the morning when the sardine fleet has made a catch, the purse-seiners waddle heavily into the bay blowing their whistles. The deep-laden boats pull in against the coast where the canneries dip their tails into the bay. The figure is advisedly chosen, for if the canneries dipped their mouths into the bay the canned sardines which emerge from the other end would be metaphorically, at least, even more horrifying. Then cannery whistles scream and all over the town men and women scramble into their clothes and come running down to the Row to go to work. Then shining cars bring the upper classes down: superintendents, accountants, owners who disappear into offices. Then from the town pour Wops and Chinamen and Polaks, men and women in trousers and rubber coats and oilcloth aprons. They come running to clean and cut and pack and cook and can the fish. The whole street rumbles and groans and screams and rattles while the silver rivers of fish pour in out of the boats and the boats rise higher and higher in the water until they are empty. The canneries rumble and rattle and squeak until the last fish is cleaned and cut and cooked and canned and then the whistles scream again and the dripping, smelly, tired Wops and Chinamen and Polaks, men and women, straggle out and droop their ways up the hill into the town and Cannery Row becomes itself again-quiet and magical. Its normal life returns. The bums who retired in disgust under the black cypress-tree come out to sit on the rusty pipes in the vacant lot. The girls from Dora's emerge for a bit of sun if there is any. Doc strolls from the Western Biological Laboratory and crosses the street to Lee Chong's grocery for two quarts of beer. Henri the painter noses like an Airedale through the junk in the grass-grown lot for some pan or piece of wood or metal he needs for the boat he is building. Then the darkness edges in and the street light comes on in front of Dora's-- the lamp which makes perpetual moonlight in Cannery Row. Callers arrive at Western Biological to see Doc, and he crosses the street to Lee Chong's for five quarts of beer. How can the poem and the stink and the grating noise-- the quality of light, the tone, the habit and the dream-- be set down alive? When you collect marine animals there are certain flat worms so delicate that they are almost impossible to capture whole, for they break and tatter under the touch. You must let them ooze and crawl of their own will on to a knife blade and then lift them gently into your bottle of sea water. And perhaps that might be the way to write this book-- to open the page and to let the stories crawl in by themselves.

The Dream" I met her as a blossom on a stem Before she ever breathed, and in that dream The mind remembers from a deeper sleep: Eye learned from eye, cold lip from sensual lip. My dream divided on a point of fire; Light hardened on the water where we were; A bird sang low; the moonlight sifted in; The water rippled, and she rippled on. She came toward me in the flowing air, A shape of change, encircled by its fire. I watched her there, between me and the moon; The bushes and the stones danced on and on; I touched her shadow when the light delayed; I turned my face away, and yet she stayed. A bird sang from the center of a tree; She loved the wind because the wind loved me. Love is not love until love’s vulnerable. She slowed to sigh, in that long interval. A small bird flew in circles where we stood; The deer came down, out of the dappled wood. All who remember, doubt. Who calls that strange? I tossed a stone, and listened to its plunge. She knew the grammar of least motion, she Lent me one virtue, and I live thereby. She held her body steady in the wind; Our shadows met, and slowly swung around; She turned the field into a glittering sea; I played in flame and water like a boy And I swayed out beyond the white seafoam; Like a wet log, I sang within a flame. In that last while, eternity’s confine,

Toward an Organic Philosophy SPRING, COAST RANGE The glow of my campfire is dark red and flameless, The circle of white ash widens around it. I get up and walk off in the moonlight and each time I look back the red is deeper and the light smaller. Scorpio rises late with Mars caught in his claw; The moon has come before them, the light Like a choir of children in the young laurel trees. It is April; the shad, the hot headed fish, Climbs the rivers; there is trillium in the damp canyons; The foetid adder’s tongue lolls by the waterfall. There was a farm at this campsite once, it is almost gone now. There were sheep here after the farm, and fire Long ago burned the redwoods out of the gulch, The Douglas fir off the ridge; today the soil Is stony and incoherent, the small stones lie flat And plate the surface like scales. Twenty years ago the spreading gully Toppled the big oak over onto the house. Now there is nothing left but the foundations Hidden in poison oak, and above on the ridge, Six lonely, ominous fenceposts; The redwood beams of the barn make a footbridge Over the deep waterless creek bed; The hills are covered with wild oats Dry and white by midsummer. I walk in the random survivals of the orchard. In a patch of moonlight a mole Shakes his tunnel like an angry vein; Orion walks waist deep in the fog coming in from the ocean; Leo crouches under the zenith. There are tiny hard fruits already on the plum trees. The purity of the apple blossoms is incredible. As the wind dies down their fragrance Clusters around them like thick smoke. All the day they roared with bees, in the moonlight They are silent and immaculate. SPRING, SIERRA NEVADA Once more golden Scorpio glows over the col Above Deadman Canyon, orderly and brilliant, Like an inspiration in the brain of Archimedes. I have seen its light over the warm sea, Over the coconut beaches, phosphorescent and pulsing; And the living light in the water Shivering away from the swimming hand, Creeping against the lips, filling the floating hair. Here where the glaciers have been and the snow stays late, The stone is clean as light, the light steady as stone. The relationship of stone, ice and stars is systematic and enduring: Novelty emerges after centuries, a rock spalls from the cliffs, The glacier contracts and turns grayer, The stream cuts new sinuosities in the meadow, The sun moves through space and the earth with it, The stars change places. The snow has lasted longer this year, Than anyone can remember. The lowest meadow is a lake, The next two are snowfields, the pass is covered with snow, Only the steepest rocks are bare. Between the pass And the last meadow the snowfield gapes for a hundred feet, In a narrow blue chasm through which a waterfall drops, Spangled with sunset at the top, black and muscular Where it disappears again in the snow. The world is filled with hidden running water That pounds in the ears like ether; The granite needles rise from the snow, pale as steel; Above the copper mine the cliff is blood red, The white snow breaks at the edge of it; The sky comes close to my eyes like the blue eyes Of someone kissed in sleep. I descend to camp, To the young, sticky, wrinkled aspen leaves, To the first violets and wild cyclamen, And cook supper in the blue twilight. All night deer pass over the snow on sharp hooves, In the darkness their cold muzzles find the new grass At the edge of the snow.

She was an echo masquerading as a shadow and she followed me just the same. The night and its moon were her favor while the sunrise and sunlight the daggers that sliced her to ribbons. She looked through half closed eyes at a blind world filled with wide eyes staring at walls. She felt pity with no care while around here steamed a burden too dense to bear. In the hours before dawn her tears slide to her jaw as a soft song escapes from between her cracked lips. A barbed song of glory and woe that hugs her tight and steals her breath, each line a quiver, every word a bind. A cage in her image meant to be broken. Destroy and recreate, scar after scar shallow and deep, her dreams were her life and the nightmares her sleep. Dark circles under eyes that truly see, time while awake moves more slowly. It trickles past her, eroding her being and pulling on her delicate seams. She unravels a little each day, tucking the threads back in every which way. In the night she is flawless and clear, the moonlight dancing in swirls, throwing half formed monograms against her wall. She traces these curves and whispers her story, an imprint in an ocean of churning shadows. Her imagination plays a scene of a teary-eyed embrace on the shores of a former dream, where droplets of her soul fell wildly below, where they and her became a part of a much larger whole. A smile rips her taunt and clenched face, the memory of the feeling of an unreal embrace. She holds herself tightly in a corner with no light and shudders with every pinprick of the downpour of night. Though muffled by the glass of her self imposed flask, she hears the birds singing their song, the natural alarm of impending light. She waits patiently for the sun, counting the half seconds and making time slow, her grey eyes less than aimless and staring at the clouds. With half closed eyes now shining a golden haloed blue, she watches the sky change colors from soft to brilliant hue. The flood of life and color takes her by surprise every day and which way. The rip cuts a little more, her restless thoughts take note and pause. She just wants to scream. To swallow the vibrant light and flood her veins with all the color ever seen, a strange desire to fix what is broken and yet wanting to break. She loses count of the seconds in the wrinkles of her palms, mere dust to wind, ashes to gale. She recites the deadly seven and stops at lust, how different from love while still the same in a twisted way. Her knees press against the worn, wooden floor with no intent to pray, she just wants the numbness and the pain. There are some things right and a few that are wrong, feeling the breath of freedom tapered against the need to belong, The sun now vomits its light across the cragged horizon, illuminating manmade lines and verdurous fuzz, her rip widens in distaste and her mind frowns in disgust. Her heart hangs limp as a shattered mirror reflecting its own cracks, each inaudible beat a glimmer of a glimpse of something more than her created deceit. This is hope. In a fragile and faceted way, the reflects are abyss and ascension portrayed intertwined with no ties holding them together. She is the half second of the transition of the beat, the moment her heart begins to flex and show more than bones and maneuverable meat. She wonders about the subtle difference between spirit and soul and whether she needs only one or both to be whole. Shaking her head as if to dislodge her thoughts, they steer from the tracks and tumble and crash, destruction and turmoil birthing creation and a new path. She thinks about the way she thinks and comes full triangle, it feels right to be so jagged rather than unburdened as a circle. With a sigh and a breath, she stands against the weight of her shoulders and the unbalance of her feet. Her half closed eyes slowly fade to grey as the light and color in the sky changes and decays. She is the moments before the sun rises and sets-1-2-3

FALL, SIERRA NEVADA This morning the hermit thrush was absent at breakfast, His place was taken by a family of chickadees; At noon a flock of humming birds passed south, Whirling in the wind up over the saddle between Ritter and Banner, following the migration lane Of the Sierra crest southward to Guatemala. All day cloud shadows have moved over the face of the mountain, The shadow of a golden eagle weaving between them Over the face of the glacier. At sunset the half-moon rides on the bent back of the Scorpion, The Great Bear kneels on the mountain. Ten degrees below the moon Venus sets in the haze arising from the Great Valley. Jupiter, in opposition to the sun, rises in the alpenglow Between the burnt peaks. The ventriloquial belling Of an owl mingles with the bells of the waterfall. Now there is distant thunder on the east wind. The east face of the mountain above me Is lit with far off lightnings and the sky Above the pass blazes momentarily like an aurora. It is storming in the White Mountains, On the arid fourteen-thousand-foot peaks; Rain is falling on the narrow gray ranges And dark sedge meadows and white salt flats of Nevada. Just before moonset a small dense cumulus cloud, Gleaming like a grape cluster of metal, Moves over the Sierra crest and grows down the westward slope. Frost, the color and quality of the cloud, Lies over all the marsh below my campsite. The wiry clumps of dwarfed whitebark pines Are smoky and indistinct in the moonlight, Only their shadows are really visible. The lake is immobile and holds the stars And the peaks deep in itself without a quiver. In the shallows the geometrical tendrils of ice Spread their wonderful mathematics in silence. All night the eyes of deer shine for an instant As they cross the radius of my firelight. In the morning the trail will look like a sheep driveway, All the tracks will point down to the lower canyon. “Thus,” says Tyndall, “the concerns of this little place Are changed and fashioned by the obliquity of the earth’s axis, The chain of dependence which runs through creation, And links the roll of a planet alike with the interests Of marmots and of men.

The Poetry that Searches Poetry that paints a portrait in words, Poetry that spills the bottled emotions, Gives life to the feelings deep inside, Breaks through all the times wept, To sweep you in a whirling ecstatic delight. The chiseled marble of language, The paint spattered canvas, Where colors flow through words, Where emotions roll on a canvas, And it all begins with you. The canvas that portrays the trembling you, Through the feelings that splash, Through the words that spatter, All over the awaiting canvas. Such is the painting sketched with passion, Colored with the heart's unleashed emotions. The poetry that reads your trembling heart, The poetry that feeds the seed of your dreams, That poetry that reveals light within rain, Takes you to a place where beauty lies in stain. The poetry that whispers- "May you find the stars, in a night so dark, May you find the moon, so rich with silver, May you sip the madness and delight In a night berserk with a wailing agony". Such words that arise from spilling emotions, So recklessly you fall, in love with life again. So, you rise shedding your fears, To chase after your dreams, As you hear thunder in the rain, That carries your pain, Through the painting of words, colored with courage, Splashed with ferocity, amidst the lost battles. Such is the richest color splash in words, Laid down on papers, that stayed so empty, For ages and ages. At times, you may feel lost, Wandering homeless in the woods, But poetry that you write, To drink the moonlight and madness, Poetry that you spill on a canvas with words, Calls you to fall, for life again. The words that evoke the intense emotions, The painting that gives the richest revelation, The insight that deepens in a light so streaming, Is the poetry that reveals the truth and beauty, In a form so elemental, in a way so searching, For a beauty so emotive, Which trembles, With the poetry's deepest digging. The words that take your eyes to sleep, The poetry that stills your raging feelings, Is the portrait of words that carries you, In emotions bottled within, held so deep, For an era so long. Forgotten they seemed, yet they arose, With the word's deepest calling, To the soul sleeping inside. The poetry that traces your emotions with words, Is a poetry that traces your soul with its lips, To speak a language that your heart understands. The Ecstatic Dance of Soul Copyright 2020 Jayita Bhattacharjee

Half the Truth" The birds do not sing in these mornings. The skies are white all day. The Canadian geese fly over high up in the moonlight with the lonely sound of their discontent. Going south. Now the rains and soon the snow. The black trees are leafless, the flowers gone. Only cabbages are left in the bedraggled garden. Truth becomes visible, the architecture of the soul begins to show through. God has put off his panoply and is at home with us. We are returned to what lay beneath the beauty. We have resumed our lives. There is no hurry now. We make love without rushing and find ourselves afterward with someone we know well. Time to be what we are getting ready to be next. This loving, this relishing, our gladness, this being puts down roots and comes back again year after year.

Beloved' His eyes contain the history of the world Of all its inhabitants who come and go He yields his wisdom freely for all So human hearts may follow his well-worn tracks Peace and grace surround him As Nature shields him in her protective embrace She moves through him speaking softly Enchanting tales of her wilderness Quietly as a leaf finds the forest floor She brushes his cheek with faintest touch Reminding him she is his true home Guarding his footsteps over all terrain She brings him comfort when darkness falls Through flickering flames and dancing moonlight And when he closes his eyes to sleep She guides his dreams to his soul’s remembrance Of life as one with the Nature he loves

Mamua, when our laughter ends, And hearts and bodies, brown as white, Are dust about the doors of friends, Or scent ablowing down the night, Then, oh! then, the wise agree, Comes our immortality. Mamua, there waits a land Hard for us to understand. Out of time, beyond the sun, All are one in Paradise, You and Pupure are one, And Taü, and the ungainly wise. There the Eternals are, and there The Good, the Lovely, and the True, And Types, whose earthly copies were The foolish broken things we knew; There is the Face, whose ghosts we are; The real, the never-setting Star; And the Flower, of which we love Faint and fading shadows here; Never a tear, but only Grief; Dance, but not the limbs that move; Songs in Song shall disappear; Instead of lovers, Love shall be; For hearts, Immutability; And there, on the Ideal Reef, Thunders the Everlasting Sea! And my laughter, and my pain, Shall home to the Eternal Brain. And all lovely things, they say, Meet in Loveliness again; Miri's laugh, Teïpo's feet, And the hands of Matua, Stars and sunlight there shall meet, Coral's hues and rainbows there, And Teüra's braided hair; And with the starred tiare's white, And white birds in the dark ravine, And flamboyants ablaze at night, And jewels, and evening's after-green, And dawns of pearl and gold and red, Mamua, your lovelier head! And there'll no more be one who dreams Under the ferns, of crumbling stuff, Eyes of illusion, mouth that seems, All time-entangled human love. And you'll no longer swing and sway Divinely down the scented shade, Where feet to Ambulation fade, And moons are lost in endless Day. How shall we wind these wreaths of ours, Where there are neither heads nor flowers? Oh, Heaven's Heaven!—but we'll be missing The palms, and sunlight, and the south; And there's an end, I think, of kissing, When our mouths are one with Mouth.... Taü here, Mamua, Crown the hair, and come away! Hear the calling of the moon, And the whispering scents that stray About the idle warm lagoon. Hasten, hand in human hand, Down the dark, the flowered way, Along the whiteness of the sand, And in the water's soft caress, Wash the mind of foolishness, Mamua, until the day. Spend the glittering moonlight there Pursuing down the soundless deep Limbs that gleam and shadowy hair, Or floating lazy, half-asleep. Dive and double and follow after, Snare in flowers, and kiss, and call, With lips that fade, and human laughter And faces individual, Well this side of Paradise!... There's little comfort in the wise.

The Fury Of Guitars And Sopranos " This singing is a kind of dying, a kind of birth, a votive candle. I have a dream-mother who sings with her guitar, nursing the bedroom with a moonlight and beautiful olives. A flute came too, joining the five strings, a God finger over the holes. I knew a beautiful woman once who sang with her fingertips and her eyes were brown like small birds. At the cup of her breasts I drew wine. At the mound of her legs I drew figs. She sang for my thirst, mysterious songs of God that would have laid an army down. It was as if a morning-glory had bloomed in her throat and all that blue and small pollen ate into my heart violent and religious.

The deer and the dachshund are one. Well, the gods grow out of the weather. The people grow out of the weather; The gods grow out of the people. Encore, encore, encore les dieux … The distance between the dark steeple And cobble ten thousand and three Is more than a seven-foot inchworm Could measure by moonlight in June. Kiss, cats; for the deer and the dachshund Are one. My window is twenty-nine three And plenty of window for me. The steeples are empty and so are the people, There’s nothing whatever to see

One Day Eight Years Ago - Poem by Jibanananda Das It was heard: to the post-mortem cell he had been taken; last night—in the darkness of Falgoon-night When the five-night-old moon went down— he was longing for death. His wife lay beside—the child therewith; hope and love abundant__in the moonlight—what ghost did he see? Why his sleep broke? Or having no sleep at all since long—he now has fallen asleep in the post-mortem cell. Is this the sleep he’d longed for! Like a plagued rat, mouth filled with crimson froth now asleep in the nook of darkness; And will not ever awake anymore. ‘Never again will wake up, never again will bear the endless—endless burden of painful waking—’ It was told to him when the moon sank down—in the strange darkness by a silence like the neck of a camel that might have shown up at his window side. Nevertheless, the owl stays wide awake; The rotten still frog begs two more moments in the hope for another dawn in conceivable warmth. We feel in the deep tracelessness of flocking darkness The unforgiving enmity of the mosquito-net all around; The mosquito loves the stream of life awake in its monastery of darkness. From sitting in blood and filth, flies fly back into the sun; How often we watched moths and flies hovering in the waves of golden sun. The close-knit sky, as if—as it were, some scattered lives, possessed their hearts; The wavering dragonflies in the grasp of wanton kids Fought for life; As the moon went down, in the impending gloom With a noose in hand you approached the aswattha, alone, by yourself, For you’d learnt a human would ne’er live the life of a locust or a robin The branch of aswattha Had it not raged in protest? And the flock of fireflies Hadn’t they come and mingled with the comely bunch of daffodils? Hadn’t the senile blind owl come over and said: ‘the age-old moon seems to have been washed away by the surging waters? Splendid that! Let’s catch now rats and mouse! ’ Hadn’t the owl hooted out this cherished affair? Taste of life—the fragrance of golden corn of winter evening— seemed intolerable to you; — Content now in the morgue In the morgue—sultry with the bloodied mouth of a battered rat! Listen yet, tale of this dead; — Was not refused by the girl of love, Didn’t miss any joy of conjugal life, the bride went ahead of time and let him know honey and the honey of reflection; His life ne’er shivered in demeaning hunger or painful cold; So now in the morgue he lies flat on the dissection table. Know—I know woman’s heart—love—offspring—home—not all there is to things; Wealth, achievement, affluence apart there is some other baffling surprise that whirls in our veins; It tires and tires, and tires us out; but there is no tiring in the post mortem cell and so, there he rests, in the post mortem cell flat on the dissection table. Still I see the age-old owl, ah, Nightly sat on the aswattha bough Winks and echoes: ‘The olden moon seems to be carried away by the flooding waters? That’s splendid! Let’s catch now rats and mouse—’ Hi, granny dear, splendid even today? Let me age like you—and see off the olden moon in the whirlpool at the Kalidaha; Then the two of us will desert life’s abundant reserve.

He stepped back, away from her. He shook his head in disbelief. “You know, I shouldn’t try to go out with career women. You’re all stricken. A guy can really tell what life has done to you. I do better with women who have part-time jobs.” “Oh, yes?” said Zoe. She had once read an article entitled “Professional Women and the Demographics of Grief.” Or no, it was a poem: If there were a lake, the moonlight would dance across it in conniptions. She remembered that line. But perhaps the title was “The Empty House: Aesthetics of Bareness.” Or maybe “Space Gypsies: Girls in Academe.” She had forgotten.

In the moonlight and under the stars Somehow your face seems clearer I revere your presence and remember We are warriors Thrusted onto this plane We are strong We must use our strength While bearing compassion It's easy to get lost This place makes it so easy to get lost But- In the moonlight and under the stars Somehow your presence seems clearer And I remember We are warriors

In Moonlight No Soft sweet paw on my cheek No Fur curled under my chin Just A sad space left behind - Gray cat gone away. [Ellie's poem]

All my love poems are to her and everything and stupid" We built a Tesla coil to take x-rays of each other’s tongues or dew perspires on the inside. Hard work, being lovely at dawn, when the firing squad fires up. No blindfold for me, I’d watch lightning die in my arms if I could stand that tall. Then we fucked and x-rayed our panting after. Where she saw a horse, I saw moonlight braiding its hair. It’s possible a crow is a piece of the night crossing the day, a reconnaissance by dream, a renaissance of unity: she and I and every atom in this together, whatever this is, it’s lovely of her knees to bring her eyes to me to be as brown as I dare say dirt. The kind I hold and think, I owe you breath, that I could almost put in a bowl and eat without bothering to wait for the world after rain that will grow from it. Blackbird, Fall 2011 Vol. 10 No. 2

His land may burst the galling chain His people may be free again For them a thousand hopes remain But hope is dead for him Soft falls the moonlight on the sea Whose wild waves play at liberty And Gondal’s wind sings solemnly Its [native] midnight hymn Around his prison walls it sings His heart is stirred through all its string Because that sound remembrance brings Of scenes that once have been His soul has left the storm below And reached a realm of sunless snow The region of [unchanging] woe Made voiceless by despair

Song" The girl with the lovely face, goes, gathering olives. The wind, that towering lover, takes her by the waist. Four riders go by on Andalusian ponies, in azure and emerald suits, in long cloaks of shadow. ‘Come to Cordoba, sweetheart!’ The girl does not listen. Three young bullfighters go by, slim-waisted in suits of orange, with swords of antique silver. ‘Come to Sevilla, sweetheart!’ The girl does not listen. When the twilight purples, with the daylight’s dying, a young man goes by, holding roses, and myrtle of moonlight. ‘Come to Granada, my sweetheart!’ But the girl does not listen. The girl, with the lovely face, goes on gathering olives, while the wind’s grey arms are embracing her waist.

Gacela of Unexpected Love" No one understood the perfume of the shadow magnolia of your belly. No one knew you crushed completely a humming-bird of love between your teeth. There slept a thousand little persian horses in the moonlight plaza of your forehead, while, for four nights, I embraced there your waist, the enemy of snowfall. Between the plaster and the jasmines, your gaze was a pale branch, seeding. I tried to give you, in my breastbone, the ivory letters that say ever. Ever, ever: garden of my torture, your body, flies from me forever, the blood of your veins is in my mouth now, already light-free for my death.

Romance of the sleepwalker" Green, as I love you, greenly. Green the wind, and green the branches. The dark ship on the sea and the horse on the mountain. With her waist that’s made of shadow dreaming on the high veranda, green the flesh, and green the tresses, with eyes of frozen silver. Green, as I love you, greenly. Beneath the moon of the gypsies silent things are looking at her things she cannot see. Green, as I love you, greenly. Great stars of white hoarfrost come with the fish of shadow opening the road of morning. The fig tree’s rubbing on the dawn wind with the rasping of its branches, and the mountain cunning cat, bristles with its sour agaves. Who is coming? And from where...? She waits on the high veranda, green the flesh and green the tresses, dreaming of the bitter ocean. - 'Brother, friend, I want to barter your house for my stallion, sell my saddle for your mirror, change my dagger for your blanket. Brother mine, I come here bleeding from the mountain pass of Cabra.’ - ‘If I could, my young friend, then maybe we’d strike a bargain, but I am no longer I, nor is this house, of mine, mine.’ - ‘Brother, friend, I want to die now, in the fitness of my own bed, made of iron, if it can be, with its sheets of finest cambric. Can you see the wound I carry from my throat to my heart?’ - ‘Three hundred red roses your white shirt now carries. Your blood stinks and oozes, all around your scarlet sashes. But I am no longer I, nor is this house of mine, mine.’ - ‘Let me then, at least, climb up there, up towards the high verandas. Let me climb, let me climb there, up towards the green verandas. High verandas of the moonlight, where I hear the sound of waters.’ Now they climb, the two companions, up there to the high veranda, letting fall a trail of blood drops, letting fall a trail of tears. On the morning rooftops, trembled, the small tin lanterns. A thousand tambourines of crystal wounded the light of daybreak. Green, as I love you, greenly. Green the wind, and green the branches. They climbed up, the two companions. In the mouth, the dark breezes left there a strange flavour, of gall, and mint, and sweet basil. - ‘Brother, friend! Where is she, tell me, where is she, your bitter beauty? How often, she waited for you! How often, she would have waited, cool the face, and dark the tresses, on this green veranda!’ Over the cistern’s surface the gypsy girl was rocking. Green the bed is, green the tresses, with eyes of frozen silver. An ice-ray made of moonlight holding her above the water. How intimate the night became, like a little, hidden plaza. Drunken Civil Guards were beating, beating, beating on the door frame. Green, as I love you, greenly. Green the wind, and green the branches. The dark ship on the sea, and the horse on the mountain.

In icy footsteps do actors tread in moonlight's chill, In crystalline depth, The players set, To entertain and do no ill. © Stewart Stafford, 2020. All rights reserved.

Humphrey dimmed his flashlight and stayed where he was, quiet and still in the shadows of the bathing house. In the nearby clearing on the bank of the lake, glass lanterns had been strung from the branches and candles flickered in the warm night air. A girl on the threshold of adulthood was standing amongst them, feet bare and only the simplest of summer dresses grazing her knees. Her dark hair fell loose in waves over her shoulders and moonlight dripped over the scene to cast a luster along her profile. Humphrey could see that her lips were moving, as if she spoke the lines of a poem beneath her breath. Her face was exquisite, yet it was her hands that entranced him. While the rest of her body was perfectly still, her fingers were moving together in front of her chest, the small but graceful motions of a person weaving together invisible threads. He had known women before, beautiful women who flattered and seduced, but this girl was different. There was beauty in her focus, a purity of purpose that reminded him of a child's, though she was most certainly a woman. To find her in these natural surrounds, to observe the free flow of her body, the wild romance of her face, enchanted him. Humphrey stepped out of the shadows. The girl saw him but she didn't start. She smiled as if she'd been expecting him, and gestured towards the rippling lake. "There's something magical about swimming in the moonlight, don't you think?

We are the music makers, And we are the dreamers of dreams, Wandering by lone sea-breakers, And sitting by desolate streams; — World-losers and world-forsakers, On whom the pale moon gleams: Yet we are the movers and shakers Of the world for ever, it seems. With wonderful deathless ditties We build up the world's great cities, And out of a fabulous story We fashion an empire's glory: One man with a dream, at pleasure, Shall go forth and conquer a crown; And three with a new song's measure Can trample a kingdom down. We, in the ages lying, In the buried past of the earth, Built Nineveh with our sighing, And Babel itself in our mirth; And o'erthrew them with prophesying To the old of the new world's worth; For each age is a dream that is dying, Or one that is coming to birth. A breath of our inspiration Is the life of each generation; A wondrous thing of our dreaming Unearthly, impossible seeming — The soldier, the king, and the peasant Are working together in one, Till our dream shall become their present, And their work in the world be done. They had no vision amazing Of the goodly house they are raising; They had no divine foreshowing Of the land to which they are going: But on one man's soul it hath broken, A light that doth not depart; And his look, or a word he hath spoken, Wrought flame in another man's heart. And therefore to-day is thrilling With a past day's late fulfilling; And the multitudes are enlisted In the faith that their fathers resisted, And, scorning the dream of to-morrow, Are bringing to pass, as they may, In the world, for its joy or its sorrow, The dream that was scorned yesterday. But we, with our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see, Our souls with high music ringing: O men! it must ever be That we dwell, in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. For we are afar with the dawning And the suns that are not yet high, And out of the infinite morning Intrepid you hear us cry — How, spite of your human scorning, Once more God's future draws nigh, And already goes forth the warning That ye of the past must die. Great hail! we cry to the comers From the dazzling unknown shore; Bring us hither your sun and your summers; And renew our world as of yore; You shall teach us your song's new numbers, And things that we dreamed not before: Yea, in spite of a dreamer who slumbers, And a singer who sings no more.

Seeing the moonlight Spilling down Through these trees, My heart fills to the brim With autumn.

It will not hurt me when I am old, A running tide where moonlight burned Will not sting me like silver snakes; The years will make me sad and cold, It is the happy heart the breaks. The hearts asks more than life can give, When that is learned, then all is learned; The waves break fold on jewelled fold, But beauty itself is fugitive, It will not hurt me when I am old.

All For a Day" All day I have written words: My subject has been that. Words. And I am wrong. And the words. I burn Three pages of them. Words. And the moon, moonlight, that too I burn. —A poem remains. But in the words, in the words In the fire that is now words. I eat the words that remain. And am eaten. By nothing, By all that I have not made.

MANDOLINE.   The courtly serenaders,    The beauteous listeners, Sit idling 'neath the branches    A balmy zephyr stirs.   It's Tircis and Aminta,    Clitandre,--ever there!-- Damis, of melting sonnets    To many a frosty fair.   Their trailing flowery dresses,    Their fine beflowered coats, Their elegance and lightness,    And shadows blue,--all floats   And mingles,--circling, wreathing,    In moonlight opaline, While through the zephyr's harping    Tinkles the mandoline.

The Man-Moth Man-Moth: Newspaper misprint for “mammoth.” Here, above, cracks in the buildings are filled with battered moonlight. The whole shadow of Man is only as big as his hat. It lies at his feet like a circle for a doll to stand on, and he makes an inverted pin, the point magnetized to the moon. He does not see the moon; he observes only her vast properties, feeling the queer light on his hands, neither warm nor cold, of a temperature impossible to record in thermometers. But when the Man-Moth pays his rare, although occasional, visits to the surface, the moon looks rather different to him. He emerges from an opening under the edge of one of the sidewalks and nervously begins to scale the faces of the buildings. He thinks the moon is a small hole at the top of the sky, proving the sky quite useless for protection. He trembles, but must investigate as high as he can climb. Up the façades, his shadow dragging like a photographer’s cloth behind him he climbs fearfully, thinking that this time he will manage to push his small head through that round clean opening and be forced through, as from a tube, in black scrolls on the light. (Man, standing below him, has no such illusions.) But what the Man-Moth fears most he must do, although he fails, of course, and falls back scared but quite unhurt. Then he returns to the pale subways of cement he calls his home. He flits, he flutters, and cannot get aboard the silent trains fast enough to suit him. The doors close swiftly. The Man-Moth always seats himself facing the wrong way and the train starts at once at its full, terrible speed, without a shift in gears or a gradation of any sort. He cannot tell the rate at which he travels backwards. Each night he must be carried through artificial tunnels and dream recurrent dreams. Just as the ties recur beneath his train, these underlie his rushing brain. He does not dare look out the window, for the third rail, the unbroken draught of poison, runs there beside him. He regards it as a disease he has inherited the susceptibility to. He has to keep his hands in his pockets, as others must wear mufflers. If you catch him, hold up a flashlight to his eye. It’s all dark pupil, an entire night itself, whose haired horizon tightens as he stares back, and closes up the eye. Then from the lids one tear, his only possession, like the bee’s sting, slips. Slyly he palms it, and if you’re not paying attention he’ll swallow it. However, if you watch, he’ll hand it over, cool as from underground springs and pure enough to drink.

The first stanza of Eyes In Moonlight Drown, a poem from DeadVerse. With your face framed in a halo of stars, your hair melts into trailing clouds, and your eyes in moonlight drown. A man could lose himself in those freckled irises, reflecting the galaxies above; surely he could fall into their promise of eternity, of Heaven, of love. Your lips glisten, part, and beckon, a smile of warm invitation, a suggestion of sweet intensity, a loss of self in addictive agony. For we translate these aesthetics into something mystical; ideas of fantasy, of fiction, obscuring the clinical truth of chemical reactions, electric sparks, responses as sure as gravity, measurable yet beyond cold, above philosophy and below truth.

The Light of Love Each shining light above us   Has its own peculiar grace; But every light of heaven   Is in my darling's face. For it is like the sunlight,   So strong and pure and warm, That folds all good and happy things,   And guards from gloom and harm. And it is like the moonlight,   So holy and so calm; The rapt peace of a summer night,   When soft winds die in balm. And it is like the starlight;   For, love her as I may, She dwells still lofty and serene   In mystery far away.

At the beginning or end of the day, after you step away from tablets and phones and people, spend at least five minutes in solitude. Let yourself dwell in the pause, between consciousness and unconsciousness, between masculine and feminine. If you notice longing or sadness travel up to consciousness through the fissure of the transition, consider moving toward it instead of brushing it aside. Notice what thoughts arise in response to the feeling, then gently bring your attention to it as if it were a fairy or a precious gem. Within this intentional liminal zone, trust where your body wants to lead you. You may want to do some gentle yoga; you may want to dance. You may feel called to sit near an open window and listen to the wind or watch the stars. You may gravitate toward the moon. If you find yourself face-to-face with the moon, listen to her wisdom. Watch for a poem or painting that may arrive. Trust the feelings that long to emerge. Pay attention to longing. Honor the images that float from unconsciousness to consciousness. Even if you’re tired and really “should” get to bed, find a way to express what comes through. Write, paint, dance, breathe, do nothing. Even your silhouette next to the window, drenched in moonlight, is an expression of the divine. Simply being you is enough.

Performing magic behind a cloud on a breathless night confident you'll discover its indiscretion

The Letter" Little cramped words scrawling all over the paper Like draggled fly's legs, What can you tell of the flaring moon Through the oak leaves? Or of my uncertain window and the bare floor Spattered with moonlight? Your silly quirks and twists have nothing in them Of blossoming hawthorns, And this paper is dull, crisp, smooth, virgin of loveliness Beneath my hand. I am tired, Beloved, of chafing my heart against The want of you; Of squeezing it into little inkdrops, And posting it. And I scald alone, here, under the fire Of the great moon. Amy Lowell, Selected Poems of Amy Lowell. Edited by Melissa Bradshaw. (Rutgers University Press November 30, 2002)

Oaxaca 1925 You were a beautiful child With a troubled face, green eyelids And black lace stockings We met in a filthy bar You said "My name is Nada I don't want anything from you I will not take from you I will give you nothing" I took you home down alleys Splattered with moonlight and garbage and cats To your desolate disheveled room Your feet were dirty The lacquer was chipped on your fingernails We spent a week hand in hand Wandering entranced together Through a sweltering summer Of guitars and gunfire and tropical leaves And black shadows in the moonlight A lifetime ago

Moonlight washing up against our fragile bodies Stars collapsing from eager expectation as I touch taste tremble between passionate mouthfuls of your truth. A thousand misplaced kisses and yet only one of you.

Under the purple sky, fulgent stars, in subdued moonlight, surrounded by blinding darkness, on dewed grass, bare feet, I'll kiss you, I'll kiss you, to the testimony of stars and skies. I'll kiss you as such that love will erect from the soil, and coil around us, and our clays would become one.

me being no one in the air nothing but clouds in the moonlight with humans fucking underneath… .