The Poem Cat
Sometimes the poem
doesn't want to come;
it hides from the poet
like a playful cat
who has run
under the house
& lurks among slugs,
roots, spiders' eyes,
ledge so long out of the sun
that it is dank
with the breath of the Troll King.
Sometimes the poem
darts away
like a coy lover
who is afraid of being possessed,
of feeling too much,
of losing his essential
loneliness-which he calls
freedom.
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poem by Erica Jong
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Poem for Molly's Fortieth Birthday
'Why do you
have stripes
in your forehead,
Mama?
Are you
old?'
Not old.
But not so
young
that I cannot
see
the world contracting
upon itself
& the circle
closing
at the end.
As the furrows
in my brow
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poem by Erica Jong
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Dear Colette
Dear Colette,
I want to write to you
about being a woman
for that is what you write to me.
I want to tell you how your face
enduring after thirty, forty, fifty. . .
hangs above my desk
like my own muse.
I want to tell you how your hands
reach out from your books
& seize my heart.
I want to tell you how your hair
electrifies my thoughts
like my own halo.
I want to tell you how your eyes
penetrate my fear
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poem by Erica Jong
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Nursing You
On the first night
of the full moon,
the primeval sack of ocean
broke,
& I gave birth to you
little woman,
little carrot top,
little turned-up nose,
pushing you out of myself
as my mother
pushed
me out of herself,
as her mother did,
& her mother's mother before her,
all of us born
of woman.
I am the second daughter
of a second daughter
of a second daughter,
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poem by Erica Jong
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On the First Night
On the first night
of the full moon,
the primeval sack of ocean
broke,
& I gave birth to you
little woman,
little carrot top,
little turned-up nose,
pushing you out of myself
as my mother
pushed
me out of herself,
as her mother did,
& her mother's mother before her,
all of us born
of woman.
I am the second daughter
of a second daughter
of a second daughter,
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poem by Erica Jong
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Nursing You
On the first night
of the full moon,
the primeval sack of ocean
broke,
& I gave birth to you
little woman,
little carrot top,
little turned-up nose,
pushing you out of myself
as my mother
pushed
me out of herself,
as her mother did,
& her mother's mother before her,
all of us born
of woman.
I am the second daughter
of a second daughter
of a second daughter,
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poem by Erica Jong
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Eveningsong at Bellosguardo
Chi vuol esser lieto, sia:
di doman non c'e certezza.
-Lorenzo di Medici
In the poplars' lengthening shadows on this hill,
amid the rows of marigolds and earth,
and through the boxhedge labyrinth we walk,
together, to the choiring twilight bells.
Their fugue of echoes echoes through the hills
and sings against this time-streaked, flowering wall
where breezes coax the potted lemon trees,
the pendant, yellow fruit and shiny leaves.
Beneath the flaming watercolor sky,
the cultivated, terraced dropp of hill,
a gleaming city with its towers and domes,
the Arno shimmering as its drowns the sun.
Chameleon-like, I am tranformed by light,
and wine has blurred the edges of the night.
What gifts I give on this or any night
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poem by Erica Jong
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The Keys
Broken ivories
playing
the blue piano
of the sea.
We have come
from the bitter city
to heal ourselves.
We have come
looking for a patch of beach
not yet built into a fortress
of real-estate greed,
a coral reef
not yet picked clean
of buried treasure,
not yet bare of birds.
The first night in the Keys,
I dreamed I was a bird
soaring over a hilly city,
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poem by Erica Jong
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Alcestis on the Poetry Circuit
(In Memoriam Marina Tsvetayeva, Anna Wickham, Sylvia Plath, Shakespeare¹s sister, etc., etc.)
The best slave
does not need to be beaten.
She beats herself.
Not with a leather whip,
or with stick or twigs,
not with a blackjack
or a billyclub,
but with the fine whip
of her own tongue
& the subtle beating
of her mind
against her mind.
For who can hate her half so well
as she hates herself?
& who can match the finesse
of her self-abuse?
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poem by Erica Jong
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Venice, November, 1966
With his head full of Shakespearean tempests
and old notions of poetic justice,
he was ready with his elegies
the day the ocean sailed into the square.
'The sea,' he wrote, 'is a forgiving element,
and history only the old odor of blood.
She will come to rest on the soft floor
of the world, barnacled like a great pirate ship,
and blind fish-mouthing like girls before a glass-
will bump, perhaps, San Marco's brittle bones.'
Pleased with these images, he paused
and conjured visions of a wet apocalypse:
the blown church bobbing like a monstrous water toy,
Doge Dandolo's bronze horses from Byzantium
pawing the black waves, incredulous pigeons
hovering like gulls over the drowning square,
mosaic saints floating gently to pieces.
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poem by Erica Jong
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