Classic and Contemporary Poetry
MAROUF, by DUDLEY POORE First Line: Was it marouf who found at the roots of the mountain Last Line: Of children's voices. Subject(s): Feasts; Forests; Woods | ||||||||
Was it Marouf who found at the roots of the mountain a palace of glass where he lay with a Peri tasting ripe figs, spicy quinces, luscious melons, while sleek-breasted nightingales hatched in the gardens of the moon warbled officious approbation? That was a feast no doubt to gladden the bowels of Nebuchadnezzar, yet now I remember I was never extravagantly fond of melons. Not for me those imperishable gardens, those uncrumbling palaces. Something better there is here, something in the green moss gently covering the cupids in the weed-choked pool, little by little defacing their pudgy nakedness, something in the eating lichens rose and grey whose spreading arabesques gnaw little by little through the ochre walls, something in the delicate marigolds whose creeping roots slyly wrench from the gate stones the brown hands of workmen toiled to raise a thousand years ago, something fugitive that troubles me with such beauty that even the odour of agony dropping from the clouds, the stench of anguish darkening the air, the memory of iron fingers inexorably tearing the milky pulp of the brain, cannot tarnish the bronzed glimmer of shadows on the apricot-flushed paths, or the shimmer of wind silvering the olive branches, or through the heavy sunlight of untroubled afternoon, the distant shrilling, faint as crickets, of children's voices. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...THE PRINCESS WAKES IN THE WOOD by RANDALL JARRELL CHAMBER MUSIC: 20 by JAMES JOYCE ADVICE TO A FOREST by MAXWELL BODENHEIM A SOUTH CAROLINA FOREST by AMY LOWELL JOY IN THE WOODS by CLAUDE MCKAY IN BLACKWATER WOODS by MARY OLIVER THE PLACE I WANT TO GET BACK TO by MARY OLIVER MARIGOLD PENDULUM by DUDLEY POORE |
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