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Classic and Contemporary Poetry
MO-TI, by LOLA RIDGE Poet's Biography
First Line: You talked in mellow day-ends
Last Line: Words carrying light like sunsets upon wings.
Alternate Author Name(s): Lawson, David, Mrs.
First Line: You talked in mellow day-ends
Last Line: Words carrying light like sunsets upon wings.
Alternate Author Name(s): Lawson, David, Mrs.
You talked in mellow day-ends
as the rallying sun
spread quivering spokes of gold
like an iridescent fan behind the pagodas,
and smells of bamboo shoots cooked in spices
drifted out of the blown fires.
You pitted your words against the words of princes . . .
but softly . . . in even tones . . . and few listened . . .
so that you were not nailed on four boards
or smeared with honey and left naked where sands crawl living under the sun.
Perhaps only a few boys listened
while the rice was cooling in the bowls
and auburn sunsets
changing into lavender and jade
shuffled into the lilac dusks.
A few boys listen always when one gives out of his silence.
I do not think there were girls who listened . . .
girls . . . whose lustrous pale skins
threw back in dusky echoes
the faint gold light of evenings
that loitered with silken slippers upon the pinnacles.
Not your speech could have touched their deep quietness . . .
Incomprehensible . . . moving darkly
under the froth of little words and the soft purling of their blood
that perhaps sang to meet your blood . . . you passing them all unknowing
while the light on the horizon was like a topaz wine.
Did women . . . scattering dry words
as trees dead leaves
that are no more communicants of the green sap . . .
women with shinning secrets in their eyes . . .
alertly curious eyes,
not baffled because not wondering . . .
catch a garbled word or so
and mutely
quiver along the margins of their silences?
Not again, Mo-Ti,
when heated days turn yellow at the edges,
and the sun comes down like a peacock to drink out of the rivers,
will lemon-pale boys,
pressed against the narrow darkness of their eyes,
bring to you their spindling hungers . . .
(what becomes of all the boys who have touched silence for a white shaken moment
. . .
does the shy wild light that comes into their eyes
there beat itself out like a too long shut-in thing?)
I do not know if they talked with you in those gone saffron twilights.
Only your
words have floated out of the night, enfolding them and you in its seamless
shadow . . .
words still seeking in vain noise
for some green hush to rest upon . . .
words carrying light like sunsets upon wings.