The ochre was not nice at all,
a smear,
and when the boy with the trembling
umbrella did not call your name
the painters
upset all the vases at the Synod of the Oak,
some fifteen centuries ago. Still, despite your pique
you cannot overturn an age of clerics
simply by running your finger around your lips--
despite the implications.
So you hired a poet
to mount an Apology,
though that set loose associations
to the silk trade for undergarments
and slipped nevermore into his drink
that he should pine hunched over tables
scratching, his coiffure neglected
ordering the colors to your preference
while you waited for gold
from some fat politician
with a withered sword.
Wayward indeed the listless twists
upon your wrists
the bangles sent from the Chinese queen
to buy your useless boys,
How uneasy it must be
to dream always of umbrellas and rain.
In a list
Please tell me what you think
Comments
1 - 5 of 5
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I find this poem unbearably good. It hurts me to read it and yet I keep reading it. I don't really understand why and I think my delayed comment as something to do with I can't explain my reaction.
Do I see myself here? That is some ugly part of all Woman? And yet what makes us ugly is also what makes us women and therefore also the calling card for Beauty? It is sort of a companion piece (at least in my mind) to the Venus poem you recently wrote.
I am not 100% sure about the ending BUT
I am also not 100% sure about the ending.
Sorry I can't do better by this. But I think I could read you endlessly at times and then I wonder if I could bear it.
Lisa
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I did a google search on "Nobilissima Puella" to get better insight into the poem ... to see if her history would add to the poem .. but the title (most noble girl) is associated with many hers in history, and so I'll be content commenting on the poem itself, ignoring any possible historical connections that I am missing.
There is some really cool imagery in here .. twists on wrists from China and umbrellas .. somehow connected with the sixth or so century.
The poem reads as an outline of an impetuous woman, used to attention and gifts, and angry at the lack of it. I don't really see it as neglected beauty, but a spoiled girl who is now a bitter woman. Perhaps beauty was the reason, but it doesn't seem to be the issue.
I don't know how to fit the 15 centuries ago, nor the umbrellas and rain into that. But I like the contrast, anyway.
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We neglect the beauty until someone else shows it to us, the poet and the dreamer both lost on the realist, who seldom paints in colors. It would be uneasy to dream of umbrella's and rain because we would never know what it's like to feel rain on our face at all. C
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and so things go as they always do within the circles of things that are..
perhaps the one redeeming factor is that even in uneasy dreams there is always the dreaming, and ever the dreamer, without which, all hope would be lost..
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Some shall be honored by the way ...
in which they apologized in the face of slander and abuse ... And others, being the most noble of all, shall be honored for their silence ...
And forever poetry shall bring praise to the roles we play ... from century to century the casts change ... but the roles stay the same ...
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