“The good are in their graves; thou canst not cheer / Their dark, cold mansions”

[larryhammer]

For Poetry Monday:


Fifteenth Farewell, Louise Bogan

I

You may have all things from me, save my breath,
The slight life in my throat will not give pause
For your love, nor your loss, nor any cause.
Shall I be made a panderer to death,
Dig the green ground for darkness underneath,
Let the dust serve me, covering all that was
With all that will be? Better, from time’s claws,
The hardened face under the subtle wreath.

Cooler than stones in wells, sweeter, more kind
Than hot, perfidious words, my breathing moves
Close to my plunging blood. Be strong, and hang
Unriven mist over my breast and mind,
My breath! We shall forget the heart that loves,
Though in my body beat its blade, and its fang.

II

I erred, when I thought loneliness the wide
Scent of mown grass over forsaken fields,
Or any shadow isolation yields.
Loneliness was the heart within your side.
Your thought, beyond my touch, was tilted air
Ringed with as many borders as the wind.
How could I judge you gentle or unkind
When all bright flying space was in your care?

Now that I leave you, I shall be made lonely
By simple empty days, never that chill
Resonant heart to strike between my arms
Again, as though distraught for distance,­–only
Levels of evening, now, behind a hill,
Or a late cock-crow from the darkening farms.


Bogan (1897-1970) was a second-generation Modernist who worked mainly in formal lyric forms -- and was very, very good at it.

---L.

Subject quote from The Buccaneer, Richard Dana, Sr.

Comments

[cmcmck]

The last verse reminds me of both Frost and Edward Thomas, although that may be because I've just finished reading a study of the latter's last few years- the ones when he became a poet.

[larryhammer]

Definitely working in the same vein, yeah.