Tattoo

I am the criminal whose chest is tattooed with a poinard above which are graven the words 'mort aux bourgeois'. Let us each tattoo this on our hearts.
I am the soldier with a red mark on my nakedness-when in a frenzy of love the mark expands to spell Mad Queen. Let us each tattoo our Mad Queen on our heart.
I am the prophet from the land of the Sun whose back is tattooed in the design of a rising sun. Let us each tattoo a rising sun on our heart.

poem by Harry Crosby
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Dryade

Raymonde
If it were not for you
I would not be glad today
And I would continue to dream
Of lovely ladies in lands long ago
Or of maidens
that have not yet been born
If it were not for you
I would not enjoy quiet
Neither the moonlight, nor the stars,
Nor could I appreciate the fountains
Whose cool fingers
Wander among violets.

And it is because of you
Because you are beautiful
That I weave colors in the sun
Through whose great garden we have strayed unveiled
Chaste, interlaced,
With broken thoughts, half-spun.

poem by Harry Crosby
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Invocation to the Mad Queen

I would you were the hollow ship
fashioned to bear the cargo of my love
the unrelenting glove
hurled in defiance at our blackest world
or that great banner mad unfurled
the poet plants upon the hill of time
or else amphora for the gold of life
liquid and naked as a virgin wife.
Yourself the prize
I gird with Fire
The Great White Ruin
Of my Desire.
I burn to gold
fierce and unerring as a conquering sword
I burn to gold
fierce and undaunted as a lion lord
seeking your Bed
and leave to them the
burning of the dead.

poem by Harry Crosby
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Sun-Rhapsody

The Sun! the Sun!
a fish in the aquarium of sky
or golden net to snare the butterfly
of soul
or else the hole
through which the stars have disappeared

it is a forest without trees
it is a lion in a cage of breeze
it is the roundness of her knees
great Hercules
and all the seas
and our soliloquies

winter-cold anchorite
summer-hot sybarite
to-day a lady wraped in clouds
tomorrow hunted by the hungry clouds
it is a monster that our thoughts have speared
the queen we chanticleered

[...] Read more

poem by Harry Crosby
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Zorah

An Arab beats upon a kettle drum,
And tuneless is the wailing of the flutes
As on the sands a slavegirl executes
Her dance of wantonwild delirium;
Her body swaying like a pendulum
Backwards and forwards, while in evolutes
She weaves and weaves before fierce pagan brutes
Who gaze at her in wonder that is dumb.
I look upon her limbs bronzed by the sun,
And see within her eyes strange caravans,
Marching all day across blank desert lands,
Until they come at night to where in rings
The Nomad fires glimmer, one by one,
around the tombs of longforgotten kings.

poem by Harry Crosby
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Gold and Grey

War was romantic in the days of old.
The knight rode forth to battle unafraid,
Wearing the favour of some royal maid
Who loved him for his courage lionbold.
And thus he sought adventures manifold
In joust and tourney midst fanfaronade
Of trumpets, or else fought in a crusade
Gainst infidels, his honour to uphold.
But modern war is not at all the same.
There are no plumes to catch my lady's eye.
In dugouts deep or trenches lashed by rain,
Where poison gas creeps in to suffocate,
Where bullets slap against the parapet,
And barbéd wire crucifies the slain.

poem by Harry Crosby
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Threnody

O ye who claim to be our loyal friends
Come now and build for us a funeral pyre,
And lay our emptied bodies on the fire,
Pray for our souls, murmur your sad amens;
And while the gold and scarlet flame ascends
Let he who best can play upon the lyre,
Pluck slow regretful notes of deep desire,
Sing subtle songs of love that never ends.
and when at last the embers growing cold
Gather ye up our ashes in an urn
Of porphyry, and seek a forest old
There underneath some vast and mighty oak
choose ye our grave, spread over us a cloak
Of woven violets and filmy fern.

poem by Harry Crosby
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Folies de Femmes

In scarlet tunic rare a concubine
With subtle limbs, and breasts laid bare
For me to kiss. Soft eyes that sadly shine
A nubile maiden slave, intensely fair,
Strange frightened rose. A pagan priestess pale
Wearing a clinging robe of silvergreen.
In silken slashéd gold a houri frail
With veiléd face, mere child of seventeen.
But though my senses often are akin
To wretched trafficking, my soul is gold
And sails upon the winds, a harlequin
Unstained by sin and fearless as of old.
You are the lovely laughing columbine
Who fills my heart with dazzling amber wine.

poem by Harry Crosby
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The Golden Gourd

What chance have snakes upon an asphalt road
When giant limousines go gliding by,
Of courtesans resolved to gratify
The lust of lovers seeking new abode?
I do not envy the unfriended toad
Nor airships falling from a marble sky
Nor mothers listening to their children cry
What chance have blades of grass on being mowed?

And yet the unmolested Sun rolls on
A ship of gold among the silver clouds
Or else a lady wrapped in silver shrouds
to mock the crescent moon's pale skeleton.

Which strengthens me to live with heart assured
For I have drunken from the golden gourd.

poem by Harry Crosby
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Unanswered

Why should I be subsevient to fate
Si peu de chose before a giant world
Poor little ship with little sail unfurled
To catch the sun-breze at the harbor gate?
Why should I be a coal within the grate
Of never-ending love? Why intercurled
With some strange mermaid whom the tempests hurled
Far up the shore that mortals desecrate?
Why all these whys and wherefores of the mind
That strike like arrows on a marble floor
Beyond whose frigidness red lions roar
To guard the Sun I gave my youth to find?
And why should drowning in the blackest sea
Be better than to worship at her knee?

poem by Harry Crosby
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