The Collected Poems of Barbara Guest. Barbara Guest

lines its piazzas

      with lambswool or for sheer disturbance

      places mirrors for Pinturicchio

      to draw his face at daybreak

      when the air is clear of shadows

      and no one walks the piazza.

All Grey-haired My Sisters

      All grey-haired my sisters

      what is it in the more enduring

      clime of Spring that waits?

      The tiger his voice once prayerful

      around the lax ochre sheen

      finally in withering sleep

      its calendar,

      Relatives

      delicious plumages your scenery

      has a black musical depth

      the cardinal flies into

      he learns to repeat on an empty

      branch your distillations. Sombre

      mysteries the garden illumines

      a shape of honey hive

      the vigorous drones lighting

      up your face as fortunes pour

      from your cold pockets into the heat

      and glaze, fortresses

      for those memories brisk

      in the now doubling air,

      Adventuresses

      guided by the form and scent

      of tree and flower blossoming

      the willow once frail now image

      cut of stone so to endure,

       My darlings

       you walked into the wars

       with wreaths of pine cones, you lay

       by the sea and your sweet dresses

       were torn by waves as over each receded

       and pebbles were lifted at your feet

       in the foam,

       Ancestress

       with blond boating hair

       as daisies drop at your wrists

       which flight are you making?

       down the lime aisles

       I see your sashes disappear.

      Why should I count you more equinoctal, sun?

      Smoothly the oars into the bay

      the ultramarine fast as a castle, or rock

      its soul plunged to craters virginal

      the rapid twist of spume to all-forgetting

      wrecks, intensely now that story’s done.

      Mermaids your hair is green. I recognize

      the powerful daylight heat. My savages

      a cooling torpor rearranges,

      as at its southern margins, the oak.

       From your journals

       He said: “In nymphic barque”

       She replied: “A porcupine.”

       And later,

       “Reason selects our otherness.”

      In the broad strange light,

      a region of silences. The delphic

      clouded tree knows its decline,

      if you were to forget animosities, girls,

      and in the pagan grass slide heedlessly

      blossoms would return such songs

      as I’ve sung of you, the youthful ashes

      fling upward settling fragrant

      brightness on your dusky marquetry,

      All grey-haired my sisters

      this afternoon’s seraphicness

      is also fading. Linger while

      I pass you quickly lest the cherry’s

      bloom changed to white

      fall upon my head.

Windy Afternoon

      Through the wood

      on his motorcycle piercing

      the hawk, the jay

      the blue-coated policeman

      Woods, barren woods,

      as this typewriter without an object

      or the words that from you

      fall soundless

      The sun lowering

      and the bags of paper

      on the stoney ledge

      near the waterfall

      Voices down the roadway

      and leaves falling over there

      a great vacancy

      a huge leftover

      The quality of the day

      that has its size in the North

      and in the South

      a low sighing that of wings

      Describe that nude, audacious line

      most lofty, practiced street

      you are no longer thirsty

      turn or go straight.

Russians at the Beach

      The long long accent

      the short vowel

      that thing wrapped around a palm tree

      is it this water, or this jetty?

      The blue, in air dismal

      to the face further than sand

      then green rolling its own powder

      you will provide you stranger

      The cargo intimate cargo

      of lashes and backs bent like a crew

      the miles are vast and the isthmus

      shows five-toed feet

      erect thunders all afternoon

      You have traveled

      more than this shore where

      the long bodies

      wait

      their thin heads

      do not understand

      They are bent

      the breeze is light

      as the step of a native is heavy

      you are tired

      but you breathe

      and you eat

      and you sleep where the stream is narrow