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Classic and Contemporary Poetry
TRANSLUCENT FINGERS, by MALCOLM COWLEY Poet Analysis Poet's Biography First Line: Translucent fingers on the yellow keys Last Line: To live among the other waxen flowers. Subject(s): Beauty; Flowers; Old Age | |||
TRANSLUCENT fingers on the yellow keys Angelique plays a movement from a Mendelssohn sonata we watch a smile ghostly upon her lips — All day she practices. — What rhapsodies! we say and drink our tea in noiseless sips. — What tone she has, what soul! — And how she works, and how her hands are clever! (Although you still embroider for your hope-chest, O Angelique, and though your hair is fragrant and soft as lilacs beside you in a bowl they will never marry you, never). In the gilt mirror, the corners of your eyes observe them, how they are already drawn in patterns like your laces. The young men died in the war. Lamenting them forever your hands will forever brush across the keys like wind among the reeds, faint melodies heard dimly like a tinkle of distant cowbells. It ceases never the last chord will never be resolved but always it will hang in dusty corners behind closed doors that nevermore swing back and in this house will be no other mourners only yourself among the bric-a-brac, only yourself to live among the echoes to watch the lace of delicate lines that spread daily above your eyes to watch the lilac nimbus leave your head and fingers that grow old like ivories and they will set you on the mantelpiece to keep a faithful watch over your dead. Beside a bowl of artificial fruit beside a clock that never strikes the hours or maybe strikes in other centuries you will be set upon the mantelpiece to live among the other waxen flowers. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...AT EIGHTY I CHANGE MY VIEW by DAVID IGNATOW FAWN'S FOSTER-MOTHER by ROBINSON JEFFERS THE DEER LAY DOWN THEIR BONES by ROBINSON JEFFERS OLD BLACK MEN by GEORGIA DOUGLAS JOHNSON A WINTER ODE TO THE OLD MEN OF LUMMUS PARK, / MIAMI, FLORIDA by DONALD JUSTICE AFTER A LINE BY JOHN PEALE BISHOP by DONALD JUSTICE TO HER BODY, AGAINST TIME by ROBERT KELLY |
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