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"But all is changed, that high horse riderless, Though mounted in that saddle Homer rode Where the swan drifts upon a darkening flood." -- W.B.Yeats
In Memory of Dylan Thomas
And death shall have no dominion.The larks and horses and holidays brighter Than snow, and the miners wounded with black Go on with whatever noise or motion Over the unfading hills and under A sky never grown slack. He lived in a larger than our lives' world In a mad country most men have forgot And his ear was bent where they hear no tune But the dry stone and the dusty wind And smell the barnlot. The traffic rumbled on outside his window And a lost man coughed beside a door In a city whose sky is blinded by sharp lights From the hurtling streets below along an earsplitting shore. He learned little in life but childhood's wisdom, Knowledge of the womb, the fairy hills Full of flowers and mystery, and the amazing Love giving all and the general world Comprehension of their joys and ills. And so he came, a voice, and went Robbing our grief and love of speech, Leaving us hope of our involvement With fair, dark, forces of light, And death, and faith in each.© Carl Selph, 1954 First published in The Colorado QuarterlyLosses
The losses unforgettable we can't forgive-- known yet unknown, forever fugitive-- engendered by a mouse, by mold -- a war -- by shivering, weetless men feeding a fire, are splendors that the ancients lived among: so much of Livy lost, of Sophocles, the songs we'll never hear that Sappho sung, the luring, perished Orphic melodies.© Carl Selph, 1993 First published in The LyricThe Salesman who Reads Greek
The salesman who reads Greek, bewildered, vain, sailed off, when love refused, to show in Rome his cherished grief, his sample case of pain. Finding at Livia's no one at home, not promenading in the Veneto, with God a flickering beneath a dome and Keats not coughing near the Caffe Greco, having no one affair and no affairs, moving each day in a small, eccentric O, he left for Greece, since he could pay the fare. In Athens, standing in his shuttered room, trying to understand the lucid air, ideas like objects hauled up from a tomb he watched collapse in the light of common day. He'd sung the Grecian isles until they seemed the pale pastels of mid-Victorian ladies. At last, hope rising with a lover's moon, he sailed for home -- has but himself to blame his Ithaca could not prepare so soon. A penny buys Penelope's bright fame, and years ago the gossiping lovers won. By the cold hearth now he begs to tell just one more boring tale of lost love's blinding shame -- Old Argos scratching fleas, the cowardly, pimply son --© Carl Selph, 1964 First published in PreviewCalle Refugio
I am walking up a steep street in the hot sun. No: I am trudging, blinded, this too-familiar dirty hill. The street is rough. Better: The round cobbles and the broken rocks of this filthy path assault my brain through my twin soles. The sky is so blue I could hate it. The clouds are big, white, floating stones. They are white and gray shattered flint. Before this an aged woman spoke to me of her art. More exact: I've just been button-holed by a mad harridan who should have been locked up decades ago. It has crossed my mind there's no market for what I'm peddling.© Carl Selph, 1999All text on this page is copyrighted by Carl Selph and appears here by permission. All rights reserved. It may not be archived beyond one personal electronic copy for offline reading; such a copy must include the entire text of the present notice and the author's name. It may not be printed, posted on a web-site, distributed publicly or privately, used or quoted in whole or in part, or published in any manner or form whatsoever without the author's explicit permission. E-mail Wordreign to contact Carl Selph and your request will be promptly forwarded.
Carl Selph Poetry Index Original Writing Page Images from Myst © 1993 Cyan, Inc. and Riven © 1997 Cyan, Inc. All rights reserved. Myst® and Riven® are registered trademarks of Cyan, Inc. Used by permission.