Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, BORGIA, by GWENDOLEN HASTE


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

BORGIA, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: From one end of the valley to the other
Last Line: No sign?
Alternate Author Name(s): Hennessey, Martin Douglas, Mrs
Subject(s): Borghese, Villa; Borgia, Lucrezia [lucretia] (1480-1519)


From one end of the valley to the other
You still hear word of them.
Although some secret startling death
Has snatched them all, brother and brother,
Long years away from that grey ranch house by the river,
Yet they exist in tales.
Not tales that have a right to cling
To this young land,
Of wolves and shooting-irons and gambling,
Of men ruthless as savages and young as gods,
But troubling tales;
Strange as those told of venomous princes
In plotting capitals of desperate states,
Tales threaded through with jeweled poisonous fates,
Tales that are honey-colored by mad sins.

What was their heritage?
What horrid stains
Came with them in their journey through the plains
To soil their turbulent blood?
Nobody knows.
The stories only tell of this hot rage
Of life begun in cruelty and woes
Ending in scarlet violence and the grave.

Yet the house stands beside the noisy stream,
A little hidden by grey cottonwoods,
Peacefully vacant -- smiling in its dream;
The house where one was born whose life snapped out
Among perfumes and sandalwood and spring;
The home in childhood of that twisted soul
Whose deeds are whispered by the shattered coal,
Scarce understood by those whose slow lives rust
In sheep and marketing
And careful lust.

There was a garden here,
So long ago.
Somebody planted lilac trees and phlox.
These hollyhocks
Trembled when one was driven out to die,
Raving among the heedless empty hills,
So that blanched sheepherders still hear his cry.

The wind quivers among the cottonwoods
And draws a pleasant murmur from that pine.
Is there no taint where the mild sunlight spills?
No drifting murk along these hovering hills?
No sign?





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