Take a stand / Trace your hand

From Natalie Merchant's forthcoming album of poetry set to music (you can imagine how nerdy-happy this makes me):



If No-One Ever Marries Me
-- Laurence Alma-Tadema (1897)

If no-one ever marries me--
And I don't see why they should,
For nurse says I am not pretty
And I'm seldom very good--

If no one ever marries me
I shan't mind very much;
I shall buy a squirrel in a cage,
And a little rabbit-hutch;

I shall have a cottage near a wood,
And a pony all my own,
And a little lamb, quite clean and tame,
That I can take to town;

And when I'm getting really old,
At twenty-eight or nine--
I shall buy a little orphan girl
And bring her up as mine.


Lovely and funny in a contemporary context. I particularly enjoy the idea of replacing a potential husband with a squirrel.

Self Portrait with Her Hair on Fire
- Lucie Brock-Broido

Now, it is as dark as the pathos of pushing a wheel-
Chair through the museum of a great metropolis.

I cannot tell you this, not now, not ever, even
In the letter I have written that is so epic

That if you were to open it, the pages would sail out
In the wind like confection moths being born

In the thousands out of their sacks, blowing
Away, page by page, in a wind the color of her hair

Across a medieval pillow endlessly scorched,
The singe of something living tinged with fire.

I will go on loving as I love the backs
                            Of things and the invisible,

As I love the hideous or an attention
                           So attentive it is next to worshipping.

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Saw this on Lisa Jarnot's blog and thought it was worth re-posting:



(I particularly enjoy the woman with the rainbow scarf and tiny dog. Haha.)

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Author's Prayer
- Ilya Kaminsky

If I speak for the dead, I must leave
this animal of my body,

I must write the same poem over and over,
for an empty page is the white flag of their surrender.

If I speak for them, I must walk on the edge
of myself, I must live as a blind man

who runs through rooms without
touching the furniture.

Yes, I live. I can cross the streets asking "What year is it?"
I can dance in my sleep and laugh

in front of the mirror.
Even sleep is a prayer, Lord,

I will praise your madness, and
in a language not mine, speak

of music that wakes us, music
in which we move. For whatever I say

is a kind of petition, and the darkest
days must I praise.



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