Kenneth Rexroth Online Poems Essay Research Paper

Runaway

There are sparkles of rain on the bright

Hair over your forehead;

Your eyes are wet and your lips

Wet and cold, your cheek rigid with cold.

Why have you stayed

Away so long, why have you only

Come to me late at night

After walking for hours in wind and rain?

Take off your dress and stockings;

Sit in the deep chair before the fire.

I will warm your feet in my hands;

I will warm your breasts and thighs with kisses.

I wish I could build a fire

In you that would never go out.

I wish I could be sure that deep in you

Was a magnet to draw you always home.

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Yin and Yang

It is spring once more in the Coast Range

Warm, perfumed, under the Easter moon.

The flowers are back in their places.

The birds are back in their usual trees.

The winter stars set in the ocean.

The summer stars rise from the mountains.

The air is filled with atoms of quicksilver.

Resurrection envelops the earth.

Goemetrical, blazing, deathless,

Animals and men march through heaven,

Pacing their secret ceremony.

The Lion gives the moon to the Virgin.

She stands at the crossroads of heaven,

Holding the full moon in her right hand,

A glittering wheat ear in her left.

The climax of the rite of rebirth

Has ascended from the underworld

Is proclaimed in light from the zenith.

In the underworld the sun swims

Between the fish called Yes and No.

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Floating

Our canoe idles in the idling current

Of the tree and vine and rush enclosed

Backwater of a torpid midwestern stream;

Revolves slowly, and lodges in the glutted

Waterlilies. We are tired of paddling.

All afternoon we have climbed the weak current,

Up dim meanders, through woods and pastures,

Past muddy fords where the strong smell of cattle

Lay thick across the water; singing the songs

Of perfect, habitual motion; ski songs,

Nightherding songs, songs of the capstan walk,

The levee, and the roll of the voyageurs.

Tired of motion, of the rhythms of motion,

Tired of the sweet play of our interwoven strength,

We lie in each other’s arms and let the palps

Of waterlily leaf and petal hold back

All motion in the heat thickened, drowsing air.

Sing to me softly, Westron Wynde, Ah the Syghes,

Mon coeur se recommend ? vous, Phoebi Claro;

Sing the wandering erotic melodies

Of men and women gone seven hundred years,

Softly, your mouth close to my cheek.

Let our thighs lie entangled on the cushions,

Let your breasts in their thin cover

Hang pendant against my naked arms and throat;

Let your odorous hair fall across our eyes;

Kiss me with those subtle, melodic lips.

As I undress you, your pupils are black, wet,

Immense, and your skin ivory and humid.

Move softly, move hardly at all, part your thighs,

Take me slowly while our gnawing lips

Fumble against the humming blood in our throats.

Move softly, do not move at all, but hold me,

Deep, still, deep within you, while time slides away,

As the river slides beyond this lily bed,

And the thieving moments fuse and disappear

In our mortal, timeless flesh.

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Confusion

I pass your home in a slow vermilion dawn,

The blinds are drawn, and the windows are open.

The soft breeze from the lake

Is like your breath upon my cheek.

All day long I walk in the intermittent rainfall.

I pick a vermilion tulip in the deserted park,

Bright raindrops cling to its petals.

At five o’clock it is a lonely color in the city.

I pass your home in a rainy evening,

I can see you faintly, moving between lighted walls.

Late at night I sit before a white sheet of paper,

Until a fallen vermilion petal quivers before me.

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