Christina of Denmark (On Holbein's Painting) - Josie Turner

 

The Queen must be beautiful, I understand.
    Even a candidate must have qualities
    not insulting to the throne. The King's hand
    discriminates. I've watched it hovering
    over this canvas or that, assessing
    fearful calculated veracity.

    

I made her beautiful, to be worth the trip.
    It worked - the likeness endures,
    clear of cast and sensuous of lip;
    my warnings heeded. The court is wise.
    

The girl's writhing hands and very shadow advise
    of my three hours bent to her allure.

    The sable collar of her mourning coat
    lolls like a noose, its falling swags
    disguise her form, my lady floats
    across the vermilion floor (I stood her
    on two books). Her smile recurs.
    

One husband down, gloves twisted to wet rags,

    eyes that never leave me, sardonic
    brow that never falls, a face
    propped like a mask on a stiffened tunic -
    my silence as I knelt, Henry's silence,
    the caw of birds, the signalled violence -
    the blackened edges of her exquisite lace.

“What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why” Edna St Vincent Millay

 

What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why,

I have forgotten, and what arms have lain

Under my head till morning; but the rain

Is full of ghosts tonight, that tap and sigh

Upon the glass and listen for reply,

And in my heart there stirs a quiet pain

For unremembered lads that not again

Will turn to me at midnight with a cry.

Thus in the winter stands the lonely tree,

Nor knows what birds have vanished one by one,

Yet knows its boughs more silent than before:

I cannot say what loves have come and gone,

I only know that summer sang in me

A little while, that in me sings no more.

Hamnavoe Market - George Mackay Brown

They drove to the Market with ringing pockets.

Folster found a girl

Who put wounds on his face and throat,
Small and diagonal, like red doves.

Johnston stood beside the barrel.
All day he stood there.
He woke in a ditch, his mouth full of ashes.

Grieve bought a balloon and a goldfish.
He swung through the air.
He fired shotguns, rolled pennies, ate sweet fog from a stick.

Heddle was at the Market also.
I know nothing of his activities.
He is and always was a quiet man.

Garson fought three rounds with a negro boxer,
And received thirty shillings,
Much applause, and an eye loaded with thunder.

Where did they find Flett?
They found him in a brazen circle,
All flame and blood, a new Salvationist.

A gypsy saw in the hand of Halcro
Great strolling herds, harvests, a proud woman.
He wintered in the poorhouse.

They drove home from the Market under the stars
Except for Johnston
Who lay in a ditch, his mouth full of dying fires.

The Dacca Gauzes - Agha Shahid Ali

Those transparent Dacca gauzes
known as woven air, running
water, evening dew:

a dead art now, dead over
a hundred years. "No one
now knows," my grandmother says,

"what it was to wear
or touch that cloth." She wore
it once, an heirloom sari from

her mother's dowry, proved
genuine when it was pulled, all
six yards, through a ring.

Years later when it tore,
many handkerchiefs embroidered
with gold-thread paisleys

were distributed among
the nieces and daughters-in-law.
Those too now lost.

In history we learned: the hands
of weavers were amputated,
the looms of Bengal silenced,

and the cotton shipped raw
by the British to England.
History of little use to her,

my grandmother just says
how the muslins of today
seem so coarse and that only

in autumn, should one wake up
at dawn to pray, can one
feel that same texture again.

One morning, she says, the air
was dew-starched: she pulled
it absently through her ring.

Letter to a Friend - Frida Kahlo

"Leaving is not enough; 

you must

stay gone,

Train your heart

like a dog,

Change the locks,

even on the house he’s never

visited,

You lucky, lucky girl,

You have an apartment

just your size, 

a bathtub full of tea,

a heart the size of Arizona, 

but not nearly

so arid,

Don't wish away your cracked past, 

your crooked toes, 

your problems are papier mache puppets,

you made or bought,

because the vendor at the market was so compelling,

you just had to have them,

you had to have him,

and you did,

And now you pull down

the bridge between your houses,

you make him call before

he visits,

make the first bottle you consume

in this place a relic,

Place it on whatever altar you fashion

with a knife and five cranberries,

don’t lose too much weight,

stupid girls are always trying

to disappear as revenge,

and you are not stupid,

You loved a man with more hands than a parade

of beggars, 

and here you stand,

Heart like a four-post bed,

heart like a canvas,

heart leaking something so strong

they can smell it in the street.”

This Be The Verse - Philip Larkin

They fuck you up, your mum and dad.   
    They may not mean to, but they do.   

They fill you with the faults they had
    And add some extra, just for you.

But they were fucked up in their turn
    By fools in old-style hats and coats,   

Who half the time were soppy-stern
    And half at one another’s throats.

Man hands on misery to man.
    It deepens like a coastal shelf.

Get out as early as you can,
    And don’t have any kids yourself.

Daisies - Louise Glück

 

Go ahead: say what you're thinking. The garden is not the real world. Machines are the real world. Say frankly what any fool could read in your face: it makes sense to avoid us, to resist nostalgia. It is not modern enough, the sound the wind makes stirring a meadow of daisies: the mind cannot shine following it. And the mind wants to shine, plainly, as machines shine, and not grow deep, as, for example, roots. It is very touching, all the same, to see you cautiously approaching the meadow's border in early morning, when no one could possibly be watching you. They longer you stand at the edge, the more nervous you seem. No one wants to hear impressions of the natural world: you will be laughed at again; scorn will be piled on you. As for what you're actually hearing this morning: think twice before you tell anyone what was said in this field and by whom.