Harry Crosby Night Poems
- 1. In Search Of The Young Wizard
I have invited our little seamstress to take her thread and needle and sew our two mouths together. I have asked the village blacksmith to forge golden chains to tie our ankles together. I have gathered all the gay ribbons in the world to wind around and around and around and around and around and around again around our two waists. I have arranged with the coiffeur for your hair to be made to grow into mine and my hair to be made to grow into yours. I have persuaded (not without bribery) the world's most famous Eskimo sealing-wax maker to perform the delicate operation of sealing us together so that I am warm in your depths, but though we hunt for him all night and though we hear various reports of his existence we can never find the young wizard who is able so they say to graft the soul of a girl to the soul of her lover so that not even the sharp scissors of the Fates can ever sever them apart.
... - 2. Baudelaire
I think I understand you, Baudelaire,
With all your strangeness and perverted ways,
You whose fierce hatred of dull working days
Led you to seek your macabre visions there
... - 3. Zorah
An Arab beats upon a kettle drum,
And tuneless is the wailing of the flutes
As on the sands a slavegirl executes
Her dance of wantonwild delirium;
... - 4. Water-lillies
Unwedded from the world, I stray through trees
To where a pool lies mirrored in the sun
A disk of polished gold that I have won
With labours not unknown to Hercules.
... - 5. Poem For The Feet Of Polia
they have walked through the gateways
of my eyes
they have climbed the mountains
of my body
... - 6. I Drink To The Sun
Mad day flags crackling in the dawn the sharp intensity of drink dentelleries thrown over the mill fire sun and candlelight and at midnight I squeeze the juice of the silver fruit of the moon into the red glass of my heart. I drink to the Sun who lies concealed in his bed under the sheets of night. In the morning he will rise like a Red Indian to run his marathon across the sky.
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