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Dr. Dog – Distant Light
Untitled by Elizabeth Bishop
It is marvellous to wake up together
At the same minute; marvellous to hear
The rain begin suddenly all over the roof,
To feel the air suddenly clear
As if electricity had passed through it
From a black mesh of wires in the sky.
All over the roof the rain hisses,
And below, the light falling of kisses.
An electrical storm is coming or moving away;
It is the prickling air that wakes us up.
If lightning struck the house now, it would run
From the four blue china balls on top
Down the roof and down the rods all around us,
And we imagine dreamily
How the whole house caught in a bird-cage of lightning
Would be quite delightful rather than frightening;
And from the same simplified point of view
Of night and lying flat on one’s back
All things might change equally easily,
Since always to warn us there must be these black
Electrical wires dangling. Without surprise
The world might change to something quite different,
As the air changes or the lightning comes without our blinking,
Change as the kisses are changing without our thinking.It may not have mattered or been clear to the reader that this was a lesbian love poem,
but it apparently did so to Bishop, who censored herself, being still uncertain about
her sexual inclinations at the time. It was written, according to Alice Quinn’s detailed
and invaluable notes, either in the late 1930s for Louise Crane, a college friend,
or for Marjorie Stevens, a woman she was living with in Key West between 1941 and 1946.
(from NYRB 27.04.2006)This poem is thought to have been inspired by the breakdown of marriage negotiations
between Queen Elizabeth I and Francis, Duke of Anjou in 1581.
She was quite fond of him and called him her “frog”.On Monsieur’s Departure
by Queen Elizabeth II grieve and dare not show my discontent,
I love and yet am forced to seem to hate,
I do, yet dare not say I ever meant,
I seem stark mute but inwardly do prate.
I am and not, I freeze and yet am burned,
Since from myself another self I turned.My care is like my shadow in the sun,
Follows me flying, flies when I pursue it,
Stands and lies by me, doth what I have done.
His too familiar care doth make me rue it.
No means I find to rid him from my breast,
Till by the end of things it be supprest.Some gentler passion slide into my mind,
For I am soft and made of melting snow;
Or be more cruel, love, and so be kind.
Let me or float or sink, be high or low.
Or let me live with some more sweet content,
Or die and so forget what love ere meant.70’s country rock and flute
for an Aisling lookalikeThis just had to be done
I love it
two minds have met in the middle and have produced this ->
toro toro taxi see you tomorrow my sonfor a retro foodie Aisling look-a-like
love ya to bits and back …it’s about time ….
more Riff Raff on KEXP !
The Monkey Puzzler
by Marianne MooreA kind of monkey or pine-lemur,
not of interest to the monkey,
but to the animal higher up which resembles it,
in a kind of Flaubert’s Carthage, it defies one —
this ” Paduan cat with lizard, ” this ” tiger in a bamboo thicket. ”
” An interwoven somewhat, ” it will not come out.
Ignore the Foo dog and it is forthwith more than a dog,
its tail superimposed upon itself in a complacent half spiral,
incidentally so witty;
but this pine-tree — this pine-tiger, is a tiger, not a dog.
It knows that if a nomad may have dignity,
Gibraltar has had more —
that ” it is better to be lonely than unhappy. ”
A conifer contrived in imitation of the glyptic work of jade and
hard-stone cutters,
a true curio in this bypath of curio-collecting,
it is worth its weight in gold, but no one takes it
from these woods in which society’s not knowing is colossal,
the lion’s ferocious chrysanthemum head seeming kind in
comparison.
This porcupine-quilled, infinitely complicated starkness —
this is beauty — ” a certain proportion in the skeleton which gives
the best results. ”
One is at a loss, however, to know why it should be here,
in this morose part of the earth —
to account for its origin at all;
but we prove, we do not explain our birth.1925
In a moment of pain,
she threw away the key.
She said, there ain’t a love out there
that’s big enough for meMandolin Orange cover Neil Young’s Unknown Legend
…she rides a Harley Davidson
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