memory & desire

Upcoming: The Perfume Inside the Poem

Pleasures
- by Denise Levertov -

I like to find
what's not found
at once, but lies

within something of another nature,
in repose, distinct.
Gull feathers of glass, hidden

in white pulp: the bones of squid
which I pull out and lay
blade by blade on the draining board—

       tapered as if for swiftness, to pierce
       the heart, but fragile, substance
       belying design.               Or a fruit, mamey,

cased in rough brown peel, the flesh
rose-amber, and the seed:
the seed a stone of wood, carved and

polished, walnut-colored, formed
like a brazilnut, but large,
large enough to fill
the hungry palm of a hand.

I like the juicy stem of grass that grows
within the coarser leaf folded round,
and the butteryellow glow
in the narrow flute from which the morning-glory
opens blue and cool on a hot morning.

From Collected Earlier Poems 1940-1960, New Directions Publishing, 1979.

Assia's Dior: A Mystery

Chlorophyl
- by Ted Hughes -

She sent him a blade of grass, but no word.
Inside it
The witchy doll, soaked in Dior.
Inside it
The gravestone. Inside it
A sample of her own ashes.  Inside it
Her only daughter's
Otherwise non-existent smile.
Inside it, the keys
Of a sycamore.
Inside those, falling
The keys
Of a sycamore. Inside those,
Falling and turning in the air the
Keys
Of a Sycamore.

From Capriccio (Gehenna Press, 1990) reprinted in Collected Poems, edited by Paul Keegan (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2003) p. 799.