if there are any heavens my mother will (all by
herself) have
one. It will not be a pansy heaven nor
a fragile heaen of lilies-of-the-valley but
it will be a heaven of blackred roses
my father will be (deep like a rose
tall like a rose)
standing near my
(swaying over her
silent)
with eyes which are really petals and see
nothing with the face of a poet really which
is a flower and not a face with
hands
which whisper
This is my beloved my
(suddenly in sunlight
he will bow,
& the whole garden will bow)
–e.e. cummings (as if you couldn’t tell ;>))
That’s beautiful Kristine. Thanks.
Great imagery. thanks
That was a daymaker.
reminds me of the magnificat
This is T.S. Eliot’s “A Dedication to My Wife”: probably you won’t hear it in sacrament meeting.
To whom I owe the leaping delight
That quickens my senses in our waking time
And the rhythm that governs the repose of our sleeping time,
The breathing in unison
Of lovers whose bodies smell of each other
Who think the same thoughts without need of speech
And babble the same speech without need of meaning.
No peevish winter wind shall chill
No sullen tropic sun shall wither
The roses in the rose-garden which is ours and ours only.
But this dedication is for others to read:
These are private words addressed to you in public.
When by an edict of the sovereign powers
the Poet enters this indifferent world,
his mother, spurred to blasphemy by shame,
clenches her fists and condols God:
‘Why not have given me a brood of snakes
rather than make me rear this laughing-stock?
I curse the paltry pleasures of the night
on which my womb conceived my punishment!
Since I am chosen out of all my sex
to bring this scandal to my bed and board,
and since I cannot toss the stunted freak,
as if he was a love-letter, into fire,
at least I can transfer Your hate to him,
the instrument of all Your Godly wickedness,
and so torment this miserable tree
that not one of its blighted buds will grow!’
Choking on her enmity, and blind
to operations of her eternal plan,
she readies in a Gehenna of her own
the torture-chamber of a mother’s crimes.
Yet under an Angel’s unseen tutelage
the outcast child, enchanted by the sun,
will recognize in all he eats and drinks
golden ambrosia and nectar of gods.
With wind for playmate and with clouds for nurse,
he sings the very stations of his cross –
the Spirit who attends his pilgrimage
weeps to see him happy as a bird.
(from Baudelaire, “Flowers of Evil,” which you also will probably not hear read over the pulpit this Sunday.)
Chuck–great stuff, but even the title doesn’t sound as good in English as in French :)
And, yeah, I have heard the cummings once on Mother’s Day (*best* MD talk *ever*!), but I don’t every expect to hear Baudelaire in church!