Letter to N. Y.

George Luks                                                  

Fifth Avenue, New York

Letter to N.Y.
For Louise Crane

In your next letter I wish you'd say
where you are going and what you are doing;
how are the plays, and after the plays
what other pleasures you're pursuing:

taking cabs in the middle of the night,
driving as if to save your soul
where the road goes round and round the park
and the meter glares like a moral owl,

and the trees look so queer and green
standing alone in big black caves
and suddenly you're in a different place
where everything seems to happen in waves,

and most of the jokes you just can't catch,
like dirty words rubbed off a slate,
and the songs are loud but somehow dim
and it gets so terribly late,

and coming out of the brownstone house
to the gray sidewalk, the watered street,
one side of the buildings rises with the sun
like a glistening field of wheat.

—Wheat, not oats, dear. I'm afraid
if it's wheat it's none of your sowing,
nevertheless I'd like to know
what you are doing and where you are going.

~ Elizabeth Bishop ~

White Night

Montserrat Gudiol

Soldier

White Night

I did not lock the door
I didn’t light the candles.
You don’t know how, tired as I was,
I didn’t dare go to sleep.

To watch the streaks of light dying
in the twilight dark of the pines.
I am getting drunk on the sound
of a voice like yours echoing in the hall.

And to know that everything is lost,
that life – is a cursed hell.
O, I was so certain
you would come back.

~ Anna Akhmatova ~

Any Prince to Any Princess

Domenico Capriolo
Portrait of a Gentleman

Any Prince to Any Princess

August is coming

and the goose, I'm afraid,

is getting fat.

There have been

no golden eggs for some months now.

Straw has fallen well below market price

despite my frantic spinning

and the sedge is,

as you rightly point out,

withered.

I can't imagine how the pea

got under your mattress. I apologize

humbly. The chambermaid has, of course,

been sacked. As has the frog footman.

I understand that, during my recent fact-finding tour of the Golden River,

despite your nightly unavailing efforts,

he remained obstinately

froggish.

I hope that the Three Wishes granted by the General Assembly

will go some way towards redressing

this unfortunate recent sequence of events.

The fall in output from the shoe-factory, for example:

no one could have foreseen the work-to-rule

by the National Union of Elves. Not to mention the fact

that the court has been fast asleep

for the last six and a half years.

The matter of the poisoned apple has been taken up

by the Board of Trade: I think I can assure you

the incident will not be

repeated.

I can quite understand, in the circumstances,

your reluctance to let down your golden tresses. However

I feel I must point out

that the weather isn't getting any better

and I already have a nasty chill

from waiting at the base

of the White Tower. You must see

the absurdity of the

situation.

Some of the courtiers are beginning to talk,

not to mention the humble villagers.

It's been three weeks now, and not even

a word.

Princess,

a cold, black wind

howls through our empty palace.

Dead leaves litter the bedchamber;

the mirror on the wall hasn't said a thing

since you left. I can only ask, bearing all this in mind,

that you think again,

let down your hair,

reconsider.

~ Adrian Henri ~

Chance Meetings

Guy Pène du Bois

People

Chance Meetings

In the mazes of loitering people, the watchful and furtive,
The shadows of tree-trunks and shadows of leaves,
In the drowse of the sunlight, among the low voices,
I suddenly face you,

Your dark eyes return for a space from her who is with you,
They shine into mine with a sunlit desire,
They say an 'I love you, what star do you live on?'
They smile and then darken,

And silent, I answer 'You too--I have known you,--I love you!--'
And the shadows of tree-trunks and shadows of leaves
Interlace with low voices and footsteps and sunlight
To divide us forever.

~ Conrad Aiken ~

Sence You Went Away

Robert Henri

The Laundress

Sence You Went Away

Seems lak to me de stars don't shine so bright,

Seems lak to me de sun done loss his light,

Seems lak to me der's nothin' goin' right,

Sence you went away.

Seems lak to me de sky ain't half so blue,

Seems lak to me dat ev'ything wants you,

Seems lak to me I don't know what to do,

Sence you went away.

Seems lak to me dat ev'ything is wrong,

Seems lak to me de day's jes twice as long,

Seems lak to me de bird's forgot his song,

Sence you went away.

Seems lak to me I jes can't he'p but sigh,

Seems lak to me ma th'oat keeps gittin' dry,

Seems lak to me a tear stays in my eye,

Sence you went away.

~ James Weldon Johnson ~

He Wishes His Beloved Were Dead

Lucian Freud

Hotel Bedroom

He Wishes His Beloved Were Dead

Were you but lying cold and dead,
And lights were paling out of the West,
You would come hither, and bend your head,
And I would lay my head on your breast;
And you would murmur tender words,
Forgiving me, because you were dead:
Nor would you rise and hasten away,
Though you have the will of wild birds,
But know your hair was bound and wound
About the stars and moon and sun:
O would, beloved, that you lay
Under the dock-leaves in the ground,
While lights were paling one by one.

~ William Butler Yeats ~

To a Lady, Asking Him How Long He Would Love Her

Lovis Corinth

Innocentia

Moses Soyer

Cynthia with Hands on Breasts

To a Lady,
Asking Him How Long He Would Love Her

It is not, Celia, in our power

To say how long our love will last;

It may be we within this hour

May lose those joys we now do taste:

The blessed, that immortal be,

From change in love are only free.

Then, since we mortal lovers are,
Ask not how long our love will last,
But while it does, let us take care
Each minute be with pleasure past
Were it not madness to deny
To live, because w’are sure to die?

~ Sir George Etherege ~