The Collected Poems of Barbara Guest. Barbara Guest

prepare the morning mosquito

      it must be noisy yet not alarming

      Those who hear it across the valley

      in their ears closed with honey

      will feel the sting of bells

      in the palace only one vase need splinter

      from his arms only the virgin need struggle

      the boy knows now to kiss

      he will ride horses to the blue dome.

      Twenty-four veils in a pile

      and hatchoutchoui houri

      for hours and hours and hours

      the patient needy camel lifts his neck

      over the sun brick petals catch

      that is all … no vines … no miles

      … no hills … no caves in the hills …

      women walk to the fountain

      Pasha is with the Consul

      the French woman writes letters a violet eye

      toward the boy who has peed on the tile

      she forgets the name for raisin says plum

      Milk say the heavens regarding the white sand

      Bosphorus click of eel in your wave off Egypt

      tow-ridden plain of Kilid Bahr

      trees and risk where ancient bouncing flat

      is war land of the tomb otherwise lids

      Air in the arch is black

      as sighs from vessels cast

      on the shut-off tide.

The Brown Studio

      Walking into the room

      after having spent a night in the grove

      by the river

      its duskiness surprised me.

      The hours I had spent under foliage,

      the forms I had seen were all sombre,

      even the music was distinctly shady, the water

      had left me melancholy, my hands I had rinsed

      were muddy. I had seen only one bird with a bright

      wing, the rest were starlings,

      the brownness alarmed me.

      I saw the black stove, the black chair,

      the black coat. I saw the easel, remembering it as

      an ordinary wood tone, rather pale, I realized

      it was inky, as were the drawings.

      Of course you weren’t there, but a photograph was.

      Actually a negative. Your hair didn’t show up at all.

      Where that fairness had lit the open ground,

      now there was an emptiness, beginning to darken.

      I believed if I spoke,

      if a word came from my throat

      and entered this room whose walls had been turned,

      it would be the color of the cape

      we saw in Aix in the studio of Cézanne,

      it hung near the death’s head, the umbrella,

      the palette cooled to grey,

      if I spoke loudly enough,

      knowing the arc from real to phantom,

      the fall of my voice would be,

      a dying brown.

All Elegies Are Black and White

       To Robert Motherwell

      When Villon went to his college

      he wore a black gown

      he put his hood up when

      he went out on the black streets.

      He ate black bread

      and even drank a kind of black wine,

      (we don’t have any longer)

      it wasn’t that good Beaune

      his skill taught him how to steal,

      a disappearing drink also.

      The sky was white over Paris,

      until it fell in the streets,

      like a sky over mountains,

      disturbing and demanding.

      When you are in Spain

      you think of sky

      and mountain where the forest

      is without water.

      You think of your art

      which has become important

      like a plow

      on the flat land.

      There are even a few animals

      to consider.

      And olives.

      Do you regard them separately?

      The forms of nature,

      animals, trees

      That bear a black burden

      whose throat is always thirsty?

      I know of Seville of black carriages

      one factory

      one river

      the air is brown.

      Alas we have fair hair, are rojo.

      Throw a mantilla over your face

      rojo of the light,

      walk only in the white spaces.

      The trains that cross back and forth

      the borders of Elegy

      sleep all afternoon, at night

      lament the lost shapes.

      I think when you oppose

      black against white,

      archaeologist you have raised a dream

      which is bitter.

      The white elegy

      is the most secret elegy.

      One may arrive at it

      from the blue.

      The sky in Spain is high.

      It is as high as the sky

      in California.

      When one begins with white and blue

      it is necessary for one’s eyes to darken.

      One may have fair hair in Spain,

      yet the trouble of blue eyes!

      Unless one can always live

      sparsely as in Castille.

      (How wise you are to understand

      the use of orange with blue.

      “Never without the other.”)

      And what courage to allow oneself

      to become black and blue!

      It is necessary that eyes be black

      so