Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, GIRL-ATHLETES, by HANIEL (CLARK) LONG


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

GIRL-ATHLETES, by                 Poet Analysis     Poet's Biography
First Line: Around their legs girl-athletes twist
Last Line: Their giant forms emerge.
Subject(s): Women - Athletics


Around their legs girl-athletes twist
Their silver-chased puttees;
Or they wear half-boots, blue-embossed,
And bound with fleur-de-lys,
The sun has bronzed their knees
And bosoms, so that eagle-plumes
Are suited to their guise,
And agates from Ohio tombs,
And textures from Algonquin looms,
With borders of sunrise.

In waxy curls they lift their hair
When the night's trail has turned;
The everlasting leaves of hair
Lie close and forest-ferned
Above their brows sunburned.
The prairie-eyes, miraged and deep,
Are filled with flowers and corn,
With smoke-fires on the edge of sleep,
And secrets drifting blue-birds keep
About the day unborn.

Who trusts the hedge of flowering quince
To lead him far away,
The hawthorns and the hyacinths
To take them where they play,
Will come to them some day.
The roads are trampled by their hoofs
Spurring to misty hills;
The roads are trampled by their hoofs
Spurring away from city roofs
To a land adventure fills.

They are the daughters of the Sun
In polychrome and white;
And the Great Father gave each one
To add to the delight
Of her unswerving flight
A cinnamon or jet-black horse.
It is a dream to bless;
And each maid, mounted, to the source
Of the horizons on her course
Gallops, a centauress.

In mountain pastures they play games
Old as the first red spring;
And no one can recall the names
Of the long ropes they fling,
Or why they do this thing,
Or that, or the other. There they reach
Toward goals which no one knows,
Dancing, and crying each to each
Snatches of pre-historic speech,
While the long mid-day glows.

They meet their lovers when day cools
Under the upland trees,
Or by the river swimming-pools,
Inviting at their ease
The body-piercing breeze.
Then it is sweet as heaven to kiss,
Enchanted and unseen;
But they think no more of love than this,
That it is something not amiss
When leaves are long and green.

In winter, when the clouds above
Have exiled leaf and heat,
They keep no memory of love;
But strapping to their feet
White sandals, gleaming, fleet,
They fly along the frozen streams
Half-human and half-gull.
The groves once dim with summer dreams
They now flash through in steel sunbeams
And tunics of rose wool.

Love bores them with their ankles fleet.
But on Antarctic shores,
Gymnasia stand for their retreat
From the rigor of outdoors.
There on the ancient floors,
Along transparent walls, the dead
Girl-athletes gleam in gold;
And tropic ferns are upwards led
To high glass arches overhead
Which keep away the cold.

And dead girl-athletes gleam in flame
Beyond the desert trails:
Mountains are sculptured with the name
And the recorded tales
Of each, when her day fails.
Under an arch opaque and high,
Beside the barren verge,
With strength no centuries deny,
Rooted in rock beyond the eye,
Their giant forms emerge.





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