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Classic and Contemporary Poetry
MARINE, by EDITH SITWELL Poet Analysis Poet's Biography First Line: Pink faces (worlds or flowers or seas or stars) Last Line: Disturb the general somnolence. Subject(s): Fireworks; Music & Musicians | |||
1.FIREWORKS PINK faces(worlds or flowers or seas or stars), You all alike are patterned with hot bars Of coloured light; and falling where I stand, The sharp and rainbow splinters from the band Seem fireworks, splinters of the Infinite (Glitter of leaves the echoes). And the night Will weld this dust of bright Infinity To forms that we may touch and call and see: Pink pyramids of faces: tulip-trees Spilling night-perfumes on the terraces. The music, blond airs waving like a sea Draws in its vortex of immensity The new-awakened flower-strange hair and eyes Of crowds beneath the floating summer skies. And, 'gainst the silk pavilions of the sea I watch the people move incessantly Vibrating, petals blown from flower-hued stars Beneath the music-fireworks' waving bars; So all seems indivisible, at one: The flow of hair, the flowers, the seas that run, A coloured floating music of the night Through the pavilions of the Infinite. 2.MINSTRELS BESIDE the sea, metallic bright And sequined with the noisy light, Duennas slowly promenade Each like a patch of sudden shade, While colours like a parokeet Shrill loudly to the chattering heat; And gowns as white as innocence With sudden sweetness take the sense. Those crested paladins the waves Are sighing to their tawny slaves The sands, where, orange-turban'd stand Opaque black gemsthe negro band! While in the purring greenery The crowd moves like a tropic sea The people, sparkles from the heat That dies from ennui at our feet. The instruments that snore like flies Seem mourners at Time's obsequies. The sun, a pulse's beat, inflates And with the band coagulates: "A thousand years seem but a day Time waits for no man, yet he'll stay Bewildered when we cross this bar Into the Unknownthere we are! Eternity and Time commence To merge amid the somnolence Of winding circles, bend on bend, With no beginning and no end, Down which they chase queer tunes that gape Till they come close,then just escape! But though Time's barriers are defied They never seem quite satisfied. The crowds, bright sparks struck out by Time, Pass, touch each other, never chime: Each soul a separate entity Some past, some present, some to be: But now, an empty blot of white, Beneath the senseless shocks of light Flashed by the tunes that cannot thrill The nerves. Oh! Time is hard to kill! 3.PEDAGOGUES THE air is like a jarring bell That jangles words it cannot spell, And black as Fate, the iron trees Stretch thirstily to catch the breeze. The fat leaves pat the shrinking air; The hot sun's patronizing stare Rouses the stout flies from content To some small show of sentiment. Beneath the terrace shines the green Metallic strip of sea, and sheen Of sands, where folk flaunt parrot-bright With rags and tags of noisy light. The brass band's snorting stabs the sky And tears the yielding vacancy The imbecile and smiling blue Until fresh meaning trickles through; And slowly we perambulate With spectacles that concentrate, In one short hour, Eternity, In one small lens, Infinity. With children, our primeval curse, We overrun the universe Beneath the giddy lights of noon, White as a tired August moon. The air is like a jarring bell That jangles words it cannot spell, And black as Fate, the iron trees Stretch thirstily to catch the breeze. 4.SWITCHBACK BY the blue wooden sea, Curling laboriously, Coral and amber grots (Cherries and apricots), Ribbons of noisy heat, Binding them head and feet, Horses as fat as plums Snort as each bumpkin comes: Giggles like towers of glass (Pink and blue spirals) pass; Oh, how the Vacancy Laughed at them rushing by! "Turn again, flesh and brain, Only yourselves again! How far above the Ape, Differing in each shape, You with your regular, Meaningless circles are!" 5.MYSELF ON THE MERRY-GO-ROUND THE giddy sun's kaleidoscope, The pivot of a switchback world, Is tied to it by many a rope: The people (flaunting streamers), furled Metallic banners of the seas, The giddy sun's kaleidoscope Casts colours on the face of these: Cosmetics of Eternity, And powders faces blue as death; Beneath the parasols we see Gilt faces tarnished by sea-breath, And crawling like the foam, each horse Beside the silken tents of sea In whirlpool circles takes his course. Huge houses, humped like camels, chase The wooden horses' ceaseless bound; The throbbing whirring sun that drags The streets upon its noisy round With tramways chasing them in vain, Projects in coloured cubes each face Then shatters them upon our brain. The house-fronts hurl them back, they jar Upon cross-currents of the noise: Like atoms of my soul they are, They shake my body's equipoise, A clothes line for the Muse to fly (So thin and jarred and angular) Her rags of tattered finery. Beneath the heat the trees' sharp hue A ceaseless whirr, metallic-green Sounds like a gimlet shrilling through The mind, to reach the dazzling sheen Of meanings life can not decide: Then words set all awry, and you Are left upon the other side. Our senses, each a wooden horse, We paint till they appear to us Like life, and then queer-strangers course In our place on each Pegasus. The very heat seems but to be The product of some man-made force Steam from the band's machinery. The heat is in a thousand rags Reverberant with sound, whose dry Frayed ends we never catch, seem tags Of our unfinished entity; And like a stretched accordion The houses throb with heat, and flags Of smoke are tunes light plays upon. The band's kaleidoscopic whirr Tears up those jarring threads of heat, The crowds: plush mantles seem to purr; Crustacean silk gowns take the beat From houses; each reverberates With this vitality and stir The giddy heat acerberates. And in the swirling restaurant Where liqueurs at perpetual feud Dispute for sequined lights and taunt Hot leaves, our dusty souls exude Their sentiments, while scraps of sense Float inward from the band and flaunt Disturb the general somnolence. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...LINER NOTES TO AN IMAGINARY PLAYLIST by TERRANCE HAYES VARIATIONS: 13 by CONRAD AIKEN BELIEVE, BELIEVE by BOB KAUFMAN ROUND ABOUT MIDNIGHT by BOB KAUFMAN MUSIC by CHARLOTTE FISKE BATES THE POWER OF MUSIC by CHARLOTTE FISKE BATES AN OLD WOMAN: 2. HARVEST by EDITH SITWELL |
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