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Classic and Contemporary Poetry
MARIE, by LOLA RIDGE Poet's Biography
First Line: Marie's face is a weathered sign
Last Line: That flares about its place.
Alternate Author Name(s): Lawson, David, Mrs.
First Line: Marie's face is a weathered sign
Last Line: That flares about its place.
Alternate Author Name(s): Lawson, David, Mrs.
Marie's face is a weathered sign
To the palace of gliding cars
Over the bend where the trolley dips:
A dime for a wired rose,
Nickel-a-ride to the zig-zag stars,
And then men in elephant clothes,
That feed you on cardboard ships,
And the sea-floats so fine! -
Like a green and gorgeous bubble
God blew out of his lips.
When Marie carries down the stair
The ritual of her face,
Your greeting takes her unaware,
And her glance is timid-bold
As a dog's unsure of its place.
With that hair, of the rubbed-off gold
Of a wedding-rine worn to a thread,
In a halo about the head,
And those luminous eyes in their rims of paint,
She looks like a bedizened saint.
But when the worn moon, like a face still beautiful,
Wavers above the Battery,
And light comes in, mauve-gray,
Squeezing through shutters of furnished rooms
Till only corners hold spots of darkness -
As a tablecloth its purple stains
When a festival is ended -
Then Marie creeps into the house.
The paint is lonesome on her cheek.
The paint is gone from off her mouth
That curls back loosely away from her teeth
She pushes slackly at the dawn
That crawls upon the yellow blind,
And enters like an aimless moth
Whose dim wings hover and alight
Upon the blurred face of the clock,
Or on the pallor of her feet -
Or anything that's white.
Until dispersed upon the sheet,
All limp, her waxen body lies
In its delinquent grace,
Like a warm bent candle
That flares about its place.