“on a dark desert highway cool wind in my hair / warm smell of colitas rising up through the air”

[larryhammer]

For Poetry Monday:

A Sapphic Dream, George Moore

I love the luminous poison of the moon,
The silence of illimitable seas,
Vast night, and all her myriad mysteries,
Perfumes that make the burdened senses swoon

And weaken will, large snakes who oscillate
Like lovely girls, immense exotic flowers,
And cats who purr through silk-enfestooned bowers
Where white-limbed women sleep in sumptuous state.

My soul e’er dreams, in such a dream as this is,
Visions of perfume, moonlight and the blisses
Of sexless love, and strange unreached kisses.


Moore (1852-1933) is best known for adapting French naturalism into English fiction, but before he turned novelist he was a poet under the influence of French symbolists. (He was also a childhood friend of Oscar Wilde.) This is from his first collection, Flowers of Passion (1878). After all the preceding orientalist imagery, that “sexless love” gets some heavy sideeye. Commit to the bit!

---L.

Subject quote from Hotel California, Eagles, and yes colitas are cannabis buds.

Comments

[sovay]

I love the luminous poison of the moon

That is a banger of an opening line and I too expect more from a Decadent poem with "sapphic" in the title.

[larryhammer]

It’s like he ran out of either imagination or nerve.

[cmcmck]

'Vast night, and all her myriad mysteries'

Love it!

[larryhammer]

It starts out great but gets more pallid as it goes. I suppose an argument could be made that this is mimesis of the typical Decadent, but honestly more likely he ran out of steam.