BOGAN, Louise


Song for the Last Act

Now that I have your face by heart, I look

Less as its features than its darkening frame

Where quince and melon, yellow as young flame,

Lie with quilled dahlias and the shepherd's crook.

Beyond, a garden. There, in insolent ease

The lead and marble figures watch the show

Of yet another summer loath to go

Although the scythes hang in the apple trees.

Now that I have your face by heart, I look.

Now that I have your voice by heart, I read

In the black chords upon a dulling page

Music that is not meant for music's cage,

Whose emblems mix with words that shake and bleed.

The staves are shuttled over with a stark

Unprinted silence. In a double dream

I must spell out the storm, the running stream.

The beat's too swift. The notes shift in the dark.

Now that I have your voice by heart, I read.

Now that I have your heart by heart, I see

The wharves with their great ships and architraves;

The rigging and the cargo and the slaves

On a strange beach under a broken sky.

O not departure, but a voyage done!

The bales stand on the stone; the anchor weeps

Its red rust downward, and the long vine creeps

Beside the salt herb, in the lengthening sun.

Cassandra

To me one silly task is like another.

I bare the shambling tricks of lust and pride.

This flesh will never give a child its mother,-

Song like a wing tears through my breast, my side,

And madness chooses out my voice again,

Again I am the chosen no hand saves:

The shrieking heaven lifted over men,

Not the dumb earth wherein they set their graves.


After The Persian

I.

I have wept with the spring storm;

Burned with the brutal summer.

Now, hearing the wind and the twanging bow-strings

I know what winter brings.

The hunt sweeps out upon the plain

And the garden darkens.

They will bring the trophies home

To bleed and perish

Beside the trellis and the lattices,

Beside the fountain, still flinging diamond water,

Beside the pool

(Which is eight-sided, like my heart).

II.
All has been translated into treasure:

Weightless as amber,

Translucent as the currant on the branch,

Dark as the rose's thorn.

Where is the shimmer of evil?

This is the shell's iridescence

And the wild bird's wing.

III.
Ignorant, I took up my burden in the wilderness.

Wise with great wisdom, I shall lay it down upon flowers.

IV
Goodbye, goodbye!

There was so much to love, I could not love it all;

I could not love it enough.

Some things I overlooked, and some I could not find.

Let the crystal clasp them

When you drink your wine, in autumn.