Missed Connections

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Nuku_Island_Vava%27u.jpg
Image: Wikimedia Commons

“On Planning a Visit to Late, a Volcanic Island Southwest of Tonga, With the Author of The Blue Star (Tom Early) and Lotte Lenya”

Lotte came early,
But Early came to Late too early,
& I came to Late too late.

Lotte
Left Late & Early early.
So I called my late trip to Late off

Quite early.

— Louis Phillips

Future History

“A Tryst,” a sadly prophetic poem by Celia Thaxter, from the Atlantic Monthly, August 1872:

From out the desolation of the North
An iceberg took its way,
From its detaining comrades breaking forth,
And travelling night and day.

At whose command? Who bade it sail the deep
With that resistless force?
Who made the dread appointment it must keep?
Who traced its awful course?

To the warm airs that stir in the sweet South
A good ship spread her sails;
Stately she passed beyond the harbor’s mouth,
Chased by the favoring gales.

And on her ample decks a happy crowd
Bade the fair land good by;
Clear shone the day, with not a single cloud
In all the peaceful sky.

Brave men, sweet women, little children bright,
For all these she made room,
And with her freight of beauty and delight
She went to meet her doom.

Storms buffeted the iceberg, spray was swept
Across its loftiest height;
Guided alike by storm and calm it kept
Its fatal path aright.

Then warmer waves gnawed at its crumbling base
As if in piteous plea,
The ardent sun sent slow tears down its face,
Soft flowing to the sea.

Dawn kissed it with her tender rose-tints, eve
Bathed it in violet;
The wistful color o’er it seemed to grieve
With a divine regret.

Whether day clad its clefts in rainbows dim
And shadowy as a dream,
Or night through lonely spaces saw it swim
White in the moonlight’s gleam,

Ever Death rode upon its solemn heights,
Ever his watch he kept;
Cold at its heart through changing days and nights
Its changeless purpose slept.

And where afar a smiling coast it passed
Straightway the air grew chill,
Dwellers thereon perceived a bitter blast,
A vague report of ill.

Like some imperial creature, moving slow
Meanwhile, with matchless grace,
The stately ship, unconscious of her foe,
Drew near the trysting-place.

For still the prosperous breezes followed her,
And half the voyage was o’er;
In many a breast glad thoughts began to stir
Of lands that lay before:

And human hearts with longing love were dumb
That soon should cease to beat,
Thrilled with the hope of meetings soon to come,
And lost in memories sweet.

Was not the weltering waste of water wide
Enough for both to sail?
What drew the two together o’er the tide,
Fair ship and iceberg pale?

There came a night with neither moon nor star,
Clouds draped the sky in black;
With straining canvas reefed at every spar,
And weird fire in her track,

The ship swept on, a wild wind gathering fast
Drove her at utmost speed;
Bravely she bent before the fitful blast
That shook her like a reed.

O helmsman, turn thy wheel! Will no surmise
Cleave through the midnight drear?
No warning of the horrible surprise
Reach thine unconscious ear?

She rushed upon her ruin; not a flash
Broke up the waiting dark:
Dully through wind and sea one awful crash
Sounded, with none to mark.

Scarcely her crew had time to clutch despair,
So swift the work was done;
Ere their pale lips could frame a speechless prayer
They perished, every one!

“Ain’t Nature Commonplace!”

Now orange-blossoms filigree
The orange tree; but it would be
Remarkable if you should see
Them on some other kind of tree.

A hydroplane pervades the lake
And leaves a wake; but it would make
Observers cry, “For goodness’ sake!”
If it should fail to leave a wake.

The sky is azure overhead;
But spare to call me from my bed
To note its hue, until instead
Of azure, it is brown or red.

Oh, why must poets hail the name
Of Nature with such glad acclaim,
When Nature, whether wild or tame,
Is always pretty much the same!

— Arthur Guiterman

Green

There was an old grocer of Goring
Had a butter assistant named Green,
Who sank through a hole in the flooring
And never was afterwards seen.
Did he look in his cellar?
Did he miss the poor fellow?
Not at all. Quite phlegmatic,
He retired to an attic,
And there watched the moon in her glory o’er Goring —
A sight not infrequently seen.

— Walter de la Mare

Weird Verse

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H.P. Lovecraft’s cosmic horror tales describe a world that’s literally beyond human understanding — his characters glimpse a universe ruled by monstrous gods whose very aspect imperils our sanity.

For his 2011 experimental poem Cthulhu on Lesbos, David Jalajel reflected this by taking phrases from Lovecraft’s 1928 story “The Call of Cthulhu” and arranging them into Sapphic stanzas without regard to conventional syntax:

Dark to visit faithful But Great had ever
Old The carven idol was great Cthulhu,
None might say or others were like the old but
Things were by word of

Mouth. The chanted secret — was never spoken
Only whispered. chant “In his house at R’lyeh
Dead Cthulhu waits of the found be hanged, and
Rest were committed

It ends, fittingly, on a fearsome but enigmatic note:

Prance and slay around in by sinking black else
World by now be screaming with fright and frenzy.
Knows the end? has risen may sink, and sunk may
Rise. and in deep, and

“The Wayfarer”

The wayfarer,
Perceiving the pathway to truth,
Was struck with astonishment.
It was thickly overgrown with weeds.
“Ha,” he said,
“I see that none has passed here
In a long time.”
Later he saw that each weed
Was a singular knife.
“Well,” he mumbled at last,
“Doubtless there are other roads.”

— Stephen Crane