Fatal Interview XLVI

Even in the moment of our earliest kiss,
When sighed the straitened bud into the flower,
Sat the dry seed of most unwelcome this;
And that I knew, though not the day and hour.
Too season-wise am I, being country-bred,
 To tilt at autumn or defy the frost:
Snuffing the chill even as my fathers did,
I say with them, "What's out tonight is lost."
I only hoped, with the mild hope of all
Who watch the leaf take shape upon the tree,
A fairer summer and a later fall
Than in these parts a man is apt to see,
And sunny clusters ripened for the wine:
I tell you this across the blackened vine.

How often do we think back and recall our early hesitations, which we had forgotten in haste with the heat of new love? Vincent truly was country-bred, and even at her final home at Steepletop maintained beautiful and elaborate outdoor gardens. Here she likens the eternal hope of a growing spring to the hope of a new romance, but in retrospect. Fall has come, the vines are black, love has expired.

Late January

Pluviose, hating all that lives, and loathing me,
Distills his cold and gloomy rain and slops it down
Upon the pallid lodgers in the cemetery
Next door, and on the people shopping in the town.

My cat, for sheer discomfort, waves a sparsely-furred
And shabby tail incessantly on the tiled floor;
And, wandering sadly in the rain- spout can be heard
The voice of some dead poet who had these rooms before.

The log is wet, and smokes; its hissing high lament
Mounts to the bronchial clock on the cracked mental there;
While (heaven knows whose they were - some dropsical old maid's)

In a soiled pack of cards that reeks of dirty scent,
The handsome jack of hearts and the worn in queen of spades
Talk in suggestive tones of their old love affair.

From "Translations from 'Flowers of Evil' by Charles Baudelaire" 1936

Sonnet "Once more into my arid days"

Once more into my arid days like dew,
Like wind from an oasis,or the sound
Of cold sweet water bubbling underground,
A treacherous messenger, the thought of you
Comes to destoroy me; once more I renew
Firm faith in your abundance, whom I found
Long since to be but just one other mound
Of sand, whereon no green thing ever grew.
And once again, and wiser in no wise
I chase your coloured phantom on the air,
And sob and curse and fall and weep and rise
And stumble pitifully on to where,
Miserable and lost, with stinging eyes,
Once more I clasp,- and there is nothing there.

From "Second April" 1921

Pity me not because the light of day
At close of day no longer walks the sky;
Pity me not for beauties passed away
From field and thicket as the year goes by;
Pity me not the waning of the moon,
Nor that the ebbing tide goes out to sea,
Nor that a man's desire is hushed so soon,
And you no longer look with love on me.

This I have known always: Love is no more
Than the wide blossom the the wind assails,
Than the great tide that treads the shifting shore,
Strewing fresh wreckage gathered in the gales.

Pity me that the heart is slow to learn
What the swift mind beholds at every turn.

Published around 1929 - Still looking this up

Just a beautiful poem about love and loss and nature. No real reason, just thought I'd share it today.

Recuerdo

Recuerdo

We were very tired, we were very merry—
We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry.
It was bare and bright, and smelled like a stable—
But we looked into a fire, we leaned across a table,
We lay on a hill-top underneath the moon;
And the whistles kept blowing, and the dawn came soon.

We were very tired, we were very merry—
We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry;
And you ate an apple, and I ate a pear,
From a dozen of each we had bought somewhere;
And the sky went wan, and the wind came cold,
And the sun rose dripping, a bucketful of gold.

We were very tired, we were very merry,
We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry.
We hailed "Good morrow, mother!" to a shawl-covered head,
And bought a morning paper, which neither of us read;
And she wept, "God bless you!" for the apples and pears,
And we gave her all our money but our subway fares.

From "A Few Figs From Thistles" 1922

This poem is one of Millay's more fun and (I like to think) summery pieces. It is about comraderie and travel and generosity and love. I wonder which ferries she was riding on - perhaps some of the same routes that travel now between Rockland and the islands of North Haven and Vinalhaven in Penobscot Bay.

Islands you travel to by ferry; apples and pears and subway fares and a beautiful sunrise - so many ways in which Maine and Washington are twins, sitting a country apart at similar latitudes.

Departure


It's little I care what path I take,
And where it leads it's little I care;
But out of this house, lest my heart break,
I must go, and off somewhere.

It's little I know what's in my heart,
What's in my mind it's little I know,
But there's that in me must up and start,
And it's little I care where my feet go.

I wish I could walk for a day and a night,
And find me at dawn in a desolate place
With never the rut of a road in sight,
Nor the roof of a house, nor the eyes of a face.

I wish I could walk till my blood should spout,
And drop me, never to stir again,
On a shore that is wide, for the tide is out,
And the weedy rocks are bare to the rain.

But dump or dock, where the path I take
Brings up, it's little enough I care;
And it's little I'd mind the fuss they'll make,
Huddled dead in a ditch somewhere.

"Is something the matter, dear," she said,
"That you sit at your work so silently?"
"No, mother, no, 'twas a knot in my thread.
There goes the kettle, I'll make the tea."

(From "Harpweaver" 1923)

This poem is one of Millay's better known poems, in fact it has been set to music and you can hear it sung here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TFlgrDNUPzc

But it is a strange little poem that conveys a youthful restlessness that is all-consuming and yet powerless. It is a very teenage poem in theme, but it is not from her earliest work. The nature imagery and the underlying drive of desperation are the remarkable points here. The rhyming is good, the verse structure is very Vincent, but I love this poem because it conveys beauty and agitation together and perfectly.

Never May The Fruit Be Plucked

Never, never may the fruit be plucked from the bough
And gathered into barrels.
He that would eat of love must eat it where it hangs.
Though the branches bend like reeds,
Though the ripe fruit splash in the grass or wrinkle on the tree,
He that would eat of love may bear away with him
Only what his belly can hold,
Nothing in the apron,
Nothing in the pockets.
Never, never may the fruit be gathered from the bough
And harvested in barrels.
The winter of love is a cellar of empty bins,
In an orchard soft with rot.

(From "Harpweaver" 1923)

I love the metaphor Millay employs throughout this poem. It is a reminder, warning and encouragement. The beauty and joy of love is an experience limited to the time frame it takes place in. There is no going back in time, and we often wish we had loved better and more fully when we look back. Vincent loved many people in her life and lost many of them. Her wisdom here was gained at a price, but the grace with which she conveys her knowledge in this simple poem shows her true talent as a poet.

Heart, Have No Pity... (Sonnet 29 from Fatal Interview)

HEART, have no pity on this house of bone:
Shake it with dancing, break it down with joy.
No man holds mortgage on it; it is your own;
To give, to sell at auction, to destroy.
When you are blind to moonlight on the bed,
When you are deaf to gravel on the pane,
Shall quavering caution from this house instead
Cluck forth at summer mischief in the lane?
All that delightful youth forbears to spend
Molestful age inherits, and the ground
Will have us; therefore, while we're young, my friend--
The Latin's vulgar, but the advice is sound.
Youth, have no pity; leave no farthing here
For age to invest in compromise and fear.

(From "Fatal Interview")

This poem from Fatal Interview is a bittersweet one. In it Vincent proclaims that she wants to live every moment without reserve while she is young and not try to maintain her body for when she is older. I love that she addresses the heart here, and my favorite line is "Shake it with dancing, break it down with joy."

The bitter part is that Vincent did die fairly young, and very shortly after the love of her life, Eugen, died. She loved and lived brightly and with all of her heart and her life was short. She did indeed burn her "candle at both ends" and it did not last the night. But the light was brilliant indeed.

My heart, being hungry, feeds on food
The fat of heart despise.
Beauty where beauty never stood,
And sweet where no sweet lies
I gather to my querulous need,
Having a growing heart to feed.

It may be, when my heart is dull,
Having attained its girth,
I shall not find so beautiful
The meagre shapes of earth,
Nor linger in the rain to mark
The smell of tansy through the dark.

(From "Harpweaver" 1922)

This poem was published in "Harpweaver and Other Poems" and she won a Pulitzer in 1923 for this volume. My favorite part of the particular poem is the last two lines. When I read them it makes me feel that I am standing in the rain, on a dark night, with the sweet scent of tansy rising up across the valley with the mist.

Thou Art Not Lovelier Than Lilacs

Thou art not lovelier than lilacs,--no,
Nor honeysuckle; thou art not more fair
Than small white single poppies,--I can bear
Thy beauty; though I bend before thee, though
From left to right, not knowing where to go,
I turn my troubled eyes, nor here nor there
Find any refuge from thee, yet I swear
So has it been with mist,--with moonlight so.
Like him who day by day unto his draught
Of delicate poison adds him one drop more
Till he may drink unharmed the death of ten,
Even so, inured to beauty, who have quaffed
Each hour more deeply than the hour before,
I drink—and live--what has destroyed some men.

(From "Renanscence" 1917)

This is a very early poem, from Millay's first book of poetry, "Renascence." She compares the beauty of nature to that of this person she loves, and claims that their brilliant light would destroy someone who, unlike her, had not spent time being awestruck by the beauty of the earth. I love the comparison, and the imagery. What a beautiful poem and when we remember how young she was when she wrote it - she was 25 when this volume was published - it is even more remarkable.

Love Is Not All (Fatal Interview Sonnet XXX)

Love is not all: it is not meat nor drink
Nor slumber nor a roof against the rain;
Nor yet a floating spar to men that sink
And rise and sink and rise and sink again;
Love cannot fill the thickened lung with breath,
Nor clean the blood, nor set the fractured bone;
Yet many a man is making friends with death
Even as I speak, for lack of love alone.
It may well be that in a difficult hour,
Pinned down by pain and moaning for release,
Or nagged by want past resolution's power,
I might be driven to sell your love for peace,
Or trade the memory of this night for food.
It may well be. I do not think I would.

(From "Fatal Interview" 1931)

This sonnet is fairly well known, probably because it is so accessible and easy to remember. The verse structure makes it a classic sonnet but the content makes it classic Millay. The first part of the poem is often said to be the objective part while the second half is the introspective portion, but knowing what we know about this set of poetry and how it was written largely about her affair with Dillon, it is easy to see that the entire poem is very personal.

The first line is an excellent hook, it pulls the reader in with a general statement of truth. She draws pictures of how love cannot save the lives of people who are ill but reminds us that without love we can suffer greatly as well. Then she uses herself as an example of this fact and asks if there is anything that could force her to give away the feeling of the love they share, or the memory of this night together. She concludes, in her humanizing way, that it is possible. But not likely.

Millay knew how precious love was, and in this little sonnet, with its quaint rhymes and imagery, she reminds us to cherish our loves as well.

New England Spring, 1942

The rush of rain against the glass
Is louder than my noisy mind
Crying, "Alas!"

The rain shouts: "Hear me, how I melt the ice that clamps
the bent and frozen grass!
Winter cannot come twice
Even this year!
I break it up; I make it water the roots of spring!
I am the harsh beginning, poured in torrents down the hills,
And dripping from the trees and soaking, later,
and when the wind is still,
Into the roots of flowers, which your eyes, incredulous,
soon will suddenly find!
Comfort is almost here."

The sap goes up the maple; it drips fast
From the tapped maple into the tin pail
Through tubes of hollow elder; the pails brim;
Birds with scarlet throats and yellow bellies
sip from the pail's rim.
Snow falls thick; it is sifted
Through cracks about windows and under doors;
It is drifted through hedges into country roads. It cannot last.
Winter is past.
It is hurling back at us boasts of no avail.

But Spring is wise. Pale and with gentle eyes,
one day somewhat she advances;
The next, with a flurry of snow into flake-filled skies retreats
before the heat in our eyes, and the thing designed
By the sick and longing mind in its lonely fancies—
The sally which would force her and take her.
And Spring is kind.
Should she come running headlong in a wind-whipped acre
Of daffodil skirts down the mountain into this dark valley
we would go blind.


(From "Mine The Harvest" 1954)

This is one to just enjoy.

How innocent we lie among

How innocent we lie among
The righteous!--Lord, how sweet we smell,
Doing this wicked thing, this love,
Bought up by bishops!--doing well,
With all our leisure, all our pride,
What's illy done and done in haste
By licensed folk on every side,
Spitting out fruit before they taste.

(That stalk must thrust a clubby bud,
Push an abortive flower to birth.)

Under the moon and the lit scud
Of the clouds, the cool conniving earth
Pillows my head, where your head lies;

Weep, if you must, into my hair
Tomorrow's trouble: the cold eyes
That know you gone and wonder where.

But tell the bishops with their sons,
Shout to the City Hall how we
Under a thick barrage of guns
Filched their divine commodity.

(From "Mine The Harvest" 1954)

Where to start? The first important thing to note is that this poem is found in "Mine The Harvest," one of Millay's later books. The maturity of the verse structure makes sense for this timing but the subject matter does not. The beauty of this poem, for me, is in its ability to blend social commentary with joyous passion. I love the alliteration she uses with "cool, conniving earth." But my favorite part of this poem is the last part. It has a victorious feel to it, a rebellious, young and free declaration.

Song For Young Lovers In A City

Though less for love than for the deep
Though transient death that follows it
These childish mouths grown soft in sleep
Here in a rented bed have met,

They have not met in love's despite.
Such tiny loves will leap and flare
Lurid as coke-fires in the night,
Against a background of despair.

To treeless grove, to grey retreat
Descend in flocks from corniced eaves
The pigeons now on sooty feet,
To cover them with linden leaves.

(Published in Poetry Magazine, 1938)

This poem is interesting in that it is about someone else (at least in theory). Millay wrote very often about her own feelings and experiences, and less often about what she imagined others felt and did. In this poem she draws for us a picture of two people younger than herself, genders unspecified. The first lines pose a riddle, what is the "transient death" she is talking about here that draws these two together? I love the line "lurid as coke-fires in the night" and the image of a sad, grey city that she paints to contrast the relationship she describes. There is a beautiful, song-like quality to the last stanza that sticks with you as the poem ends. Enjoy!

Doubt No More That Oberon

Doubt no more that Oberon—
Never doubt that Pan
Lived, and played a reed, and ran
After nymphs in a dark forest,
In the merry, credulous days,—
Lived, and led a fairy band
Over the indulgent land!
Ah, for in this dourest, sorest
Age man's eye has looked upon,
Death to fauns and death to fays,
Still the dog-wood dares to raise—
Healthy tree, with trunk and root—
Ivory bowls that bear no fruit,
And the starlings and the jays—
Birds that cannot even sing—
Dare to come again in spring!

(From "Second April")

This poem was running through my head today, perhaps because spring is starting to show itself, even through the rain.

The Little Hill (an Easter poem)

The Little Hill

Oh, here the air is sweet and still,
And soft's the grass to lie on;
And far away's the little hill
They took for Christ to die on.

And there's a hill across the brook,
And down the brook's another;
But, oh, the little hill they took,--
I think I am its mother!

The moon that saw Gethsemane,
I watch it rise and set:
It has so many things to see,
They help it to forget.

But little hills that sit at home
So many hundred years,
Remember Greece, remember Rome,
Remember Mary's tears.

And far away in Palestine,
Sadder than any other,
Grieves still the hill that I call mine,--
I think I am its mother!

(From "Second April")

Millay is not known as a religious poet, and perhaps this poem is not as religious as it is sentimental. This is a beautiful little poem that communicates an enormous grief in five little rhyming sets of four lines. The emotion she shows us here is a full-felt, whole-soul empathy with the tragic pain that comprises the first half of the Easter story. Perhaps it is not a healthy empathy or a good emphasis but it is a beautiful poem and this seems like the best time of year to appreciate it.

Theme and Variations VIII "The Time of Year Ennobles You"

Theme and Variations VIII

The time of year ennobles you.
The death of autumn draws you in.

The death of those delights I drew
From such a cramped and troubled source
Ennobles all, including you,
Involves you as a matter of course.

You are not, you have never been
(Nor did I ever hold you such)
Between you banks, that all but touch -
Fit subject for heroic song...
The busy stream not over-strong.
The flood that any leaf could dam...

Yet more than half of all I am
Lies drowned in shallow water here:
And you assume the time of year.

I do not say my love will last;
Yet Time's perverse, eccentric power
Has bound the hound and stag so fast
That strange companions mount the tower
Where Lockhart's fate with Keats is cast
And Booth with Lincoln shares the hour.

That which quelled me, lives with me,
Accomplice in catastrophe.

From "Huntsman, What Quarry?"

This is one of eight exquisite poems in a series called "Theme and Variation." The set of poems is about the end of a relationship and it has both comforted and inspired me. Even when I am not in a place where I can directly relate to the theme of the poems, the imagery and haunting verse structure always draw me in. Enjoy.

Dirge Without Music

Dirge Without Music

I am not resigned to the shutting away of loving hearts in the hard ground.
So it is, and so it will be, for so it has been, time out of mind:
Into the darkness they go, the wise and the lovely. Crowned
With lilies and with laurel they go; but I am not resigned.
Lovers and thinkers, into the earth with you.
Be one with the dull, the indiscriminate dust.
A fragment of what you felt, of what you knew,
A formula, a phrase remains, --- but the best is lost.
The answers quick & keen, the honest look, the laughter, the love,
They are gone. They have gone to feed the roses. Elegant and curled
Is the blossom. Fragrant is the blossom. I know. But I do not approve.
More precious was the light in your eyes than all the roses in the world.
Down, down, down into the darkness of the grave
Gently they go, the beautiful, the tender, the kind;
Quietly they go, the intelligent, the witty, the brave.
I know. But I do not approve. And I am not resigned.

(From "Buck In The Snow" 1928)

I read this poem as part of a poetry presention I did for Speech competitions in high school. I made it to state and through the quarter finals. I didn't enough points to progress past semi-finals and I remember clearly reading in the critiques of my presentation that my reading of this poem - Millay's "Dirge Without Music" was too emotional and dramatic, and thus I didn't get the full amount of points from the judges.

They were right, to a point. Speech competitions are about professional, reserved presentation. But perhaps I made the wrong choice of poem, because how can anyone read something so powerful, defiant and soulful without feeling it resonante throughout their being?

Working at the hospital I meet many inspirational people. But they are not well, and some of them pass away, and it is difficult to accept that these beautiful, strong people are gone.

I know that I've mentioned before that Millay suffered many losses early in her life, and death took many of the people she loved from her. This poem is so uniquely Vincent. It is about death but not about mourning. Perhaps the most tear-jerking line in the poem "More precious was the light in your eyes than all the roses in the world", happens near the end, and I feel that the poem does move from reserve to emotionality, with the feeling of the poem peaking at the second to last line. And then she ends the way she began with "I am not resigned."

Sonnet "Oh You Will Be Sorry"

Oh, oh, you will be sorry for that word!
Give back my book and take my kiss instead.
Was it my enemy or my friend I heard?-
"What a big book for such a little head!"
Come, I will show you now my newest hat,
And you may watch me purse my mouth and prink.
Oh, I shall love you still and all of that.
I never again shall tell you what I think.
I shall be sweet and crafy, soft and sly;
You will not catch me reading any more
I shall be called a wife to pattern by;
And someday when you knock and push the door,
Some sane day, not too bright and not to stormy
I shall be gone, and you may whistle for me.

(From "A Few Figs From Thistles")

Millay was so ahead of her times when it came to the recognition of women as the intellectual equals of men. For her first poetry competition she submitted her epic work "Renascence" and got second place, even though most people agreed her poem was better than the first place poem, which was written by a man. In fact, the man who wrote the winning poem wrote her a letter telling her that he believed her poem was better than his, and that she should have won first place.

I like the flippancy of this poem too. The casual endearment of the line "I shall love you still and all of that" but her determination that she will be gone one day because he does not appreciate her for what she really is.

Indeed, the man she married was in love, not just with Vincent, but with her poetry as well.

The Penitent

I had a little Sorrow,
Born of a little Sin,
I found a room all damp with gloom
And shut us all within;
And, "Little Sorrow, weep," said I,
"And, Little Sin, pray God to die,
And I upon the floor will lie
And think how bad I've been!"

Alas for pious planning—
It mattered not a whit!
As far as gloom went in that room,
The lamp might have been lit!
My little Sorrow would not weep,
My little Sin would go to sleep—
To save my soul I could not keep
My graceless mind on it!

So I got up in anger,
And took a book I had,
And put a ribbon on my hair
To please a passing lad,
And, "One thing there's no getting by—
I've been a wicked girl," said I:
"But if I can't be sorry, why,
I might as well be glad!"

From "A Few Figs From Thistles"

What a funny little poem! It sure sticks in my head at times though. Very flippant and trite and full of whimsy, but still it resonates. And there's a message there too - because we all "might as well be glad"