|
Birth
|
My style was born as children are born, in a moment, except that this birth had come after a tortuous pregnancy of thirty-five years. |
| --Diego Rivera |
If a thirty-five year pregnancy explodes in birth,
If revolution bubbles slow in painters' hands,
Let young artists harbor hope of lasting worth.
In salons, in heartbeat cities, 'round the earth,
In Spain, in France, the eager painters' lands,
A thirty-five year pregnancy was quickening to birth.
Behold Impressionist forests among your works,
El Greco's stretched Toledo -- this wasn't planned
By a painter seeking his own voice and worth.
Chagall's willowy lover, Picasso's cubist mirth,
once digested re-emerged at your command.
Still the pregnancy strained and groaned toward birth.
Dali's trees that melted and grimly smirked,
Braque's block figures of woman, of man,
drove an artist home to peasants to find lasting worth.
How round and dark their bodies -- this was no quirk,
When you saw them in yourself and took a stand.
If a thirty-five year pregnancy explodes in birth,
let young artists harbor hope of lasting worth.
Plath in the Bath
My fiery hair singes
The surface.
Specks of soot
Dredged in from the floor.
I'm stripped. A scaled fish
In a cauldron,
Harpooned whale
Reddening sky's starry fluid.
How stupid
To gaze at my own toes(
Ten plucked petals
On the hot and cold dials.
My feet: sad elms doubled in
In the water,
Are doubly estranged;
Mirror's edge slices
Green canopies, trunks,
From roots
So bone-white and starved,
They must
Drill down to suck.
How strong my legs look!
As if they will grow on
Forever.
In the showerhead lurks a cold eye,
A canine mouth, hungering
For parboiled flesh.
O, Showerhead,
Beam at my belly! I glow
Under your enchanted gas.
Ode to an Old Pair of Sneakers
My blue-bordered sneakers,
you take on
a world
in white heat.
If my pen,
and my thin typing fingers,
could shimmy
and hop
like my feet
when nestled
in your
canvas stanzas,
I'd fly(
the way
that you whirl
past the women
who balance on
spikes,
platform heels,
preferring
to honor
a wanderer's
flexible soul.
If your treads
aren't red or risqué,
aren't sexy or sleek,
then maybe,
old shoes,
we must
dance forth
another design--
a tango
with loose modern steps--
I could never
keep time.
And if you must stay
closeted
for weddings, the opera,
then know:
while
I'm wobbling,
shifting,
sprouting hot blisters,
your comfort
is surely missed.
No, you don't know
where
you come from
or where
you are going,
but, oh,
we have
climbed up
such sentences,
word upon word.
At the heights
your blind
silver eyes
stare down
my constant vertigo--
and your tongue,
though
laced tight
and tied,
communes with
an exuberant
collie--bronco
on a leash,
and with a stately live oak
that raises
her arms
to preach freedom
from her rooted pulpit.
|
