Poetry!

[camwyn]

seen everywhere, taken from spiderine most recently.

When you see this, post a bit of poetry in your own journal.

How many dawns, chill from his rippling rest
The seagull's wings shall dip and pivot him,
Shedding white rings of tumult, building high
Over the chained bay waters Liberty--

Then, with inviolate curve, forsake our eyes
As apparitional as sails that cross
Some page of figures to be filed away;
--Till elevators drop us from our day . . .

I think of cinemas, panoramic sleights
With multitudes bent toward some flashing scene
Never disclosed, but hastened to again,
Foretold to other eyes on the same screen;

And Thee, across the harbor, silver-paced
As though the sun took step of thee, yet left
Some motion ever unspent in thy stride,--
Implicitly thy freedom staying thee!

Out of some subway scuttle, cell or loft
A bedlamite speeds to thy parapets,
Tilting there momently, shrill shirt ballooning,
A jest falls from the speechless caravan.

Down Wall, from girder into street noon leaks,
A rip-tooth of the sky's acetylene;
All afternoon the cloud-flown derricks turn . . .
Thy cables breathe the North Atlantic still.

And obscure as that heaven of the Jews,
Thy guerdon . . . Accolade thou dost bestow
Of anonymity time cannot raise:
Vibrant reprieve and pardon thou dost show.

O harp and altar, of the fury fused,
(How could mere toil align thy choiring strings!)
Terrific threshold of the prophet's pledge,
Prayer of pariah, and the lover's cry,--

Again the traffic lights that skim thy swift
Unfractioned idiom, immaculate sigh of stars,
Beading thy path--condense eternity:
And we have seen night lifted in thine arms.

Under thy shadow by the piers I waited;
Only in darkness is thy shadow clear.
The City's fiery parcels all undone,
Already snow submerges an iron year . . .

O Sleepless as the river under thee,
Vaulting the sea, the prairies' dreaming sod,
Unto us lowliest sometime sweep, descend
And of the curveship lend a myth to God.

-- Hart Crane, "To Brooklyn Bridge"

Comments

[lightmagician.livejournal.com]

Wonderful poem. Incidentally, I saw your "Silmarillion in 1000 words or less" posted on someone else's LJ (with credit given), and I'm trying to find the post on yours so I can link directly to it, with your permission. How far back in the entries is it?

[camwyn]

It's listed in my memories section, but it was posted on April 1, 2004, so it should be pretty easy to find regardless.

[lightmagician.livejournal.com]

Much appreciated. :-)

[lasa.livejournal.com]

I'm not posting to comment on the poetry either, really. I saw your knitting icon on another friend's (Zou's) page and followed it here. Anyone that's got knitting, DaVinci's Notebook and Richard Feynman listed as interests has got to be a remarkably cool person. Thought I'd say hi and see if I can add you?

[camwyn]

Sure, go right ahead! Always glad to have new people come by and say hi.