Art And Life

When Art goes bounding, lean,
Up hill-tops fired green
To pluck a rose for life.

Life like a broody hen
Cluck-clucks him back again.

But when Art, imbecile,
Sits old and chill
On sidings shaven clean,
And counts his clustering
Dead daisies on a string
With witless laughter….

Then like a new Jill
Toiling up a hill
Life scrambles after.

poem by Lola Ridge
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Wind Rising in The Alleys

Wind rising in the alleys
My spirit lifts in you like a banner streaming free of hot walls.
You are full of unspent dreams….
You are laden with beginnings….
There is hope in you… not sweet… acrid as blood in the mouth.
Come into my tossing dust
Scattering the peace of old deaths,
Wind rising in the alleys,
Carrying stuff of flame.

poem by Lola Ridge
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Submerged

I have known only my own shallows -
Safe, plumbed places,
Where I was wont to preen myself.

But for the abyss
I wanted a plank beneath
And horizons…

I was afraid of the silence
And the slipping toe-hold…

Oh, could I now dive
Into the unexplored deeps of me -
Delve and bring up and give
All that is submerged, encased, unfolded,
That is yet the best.

poem by Lola Ridge
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The Fiddler

In a little Hungarian cafe
Men and women are drinking
Yellow wine in tall goblets.

Through the milky haze of the smoke,
The fiddler, under-sized, blond,
Leans to his violin
As to the breast of a woman.
Red hair kindles to fire
On the black of his coat-sleeve,
Where his white thin hand
Trembles and dives,
Like a sliver of moonlight,
When wind has broken the water.

poem by Lola Ridge
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The Tidings

(Easter 1916)

Censored lies that mimic truth…
Censored truth as pale as fear…
My heart is like a rousing bell -
And but the dead to hear…

My heart is like a mother bird,
Circling ever higher,
And the nest-tree rimmed about
By a forest fire…

My heart is like a lover foiled
By a broken stair -
They are fighting to-night in Sackville Street,
And I am not there!

poem by Lola Ridge
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Histrionics

-Albert Parsons
went to his death
singing Annie Laurie;
didn't another have
a rose in his coat-
or was it a pink-
dramatizing himself-

Blooded rose
stalk
hanging out of an empty
coat lapel,
or was it a pink carnation
rose color soft as sunrise
glimmering upon a gallows,
and streak of silver song
ravelled with the rain
on a filthy Chicago morning in the Eighties-
you shall outlast horizons.

poem by Lola Ridge
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Scandal

Aren't there bigger things to talk about
Than a window in Greenwich Village
And hyacinths sprouting
Like little puce poems out of a sick soul?
Some cosmic hearsay—
As to whom—it can't be Mars! put the moon—that way….
Or what winds do to canyons
Under the tall stars…
Or even
How that old roué, Neptune,
Cranes over his bald-head moons
At the twinkling heel of a sky-scraper.

poem by Lola Ridge
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The Dream

I have a dream
to fill the golden sheath
of a remembered day....
(Air
heavy and massed and blue
as the vapor of opium...
domes
fired in sulphurous mist...
sea
quiescent as a gray seal...
and the emerging sun
spurting up gold
over Sydney, smoke-pale, rising out of the bay....)
But the day is an up-turned cup
and its sun a junk of red iron
guttering in sluggish-green water--
where shall I pour my dream?

poem by Lola Ridge
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The Destroyer

I am of the wind…
A wisp of the battering wind…

I trail my fingers along the Alps
And an avalanche falls in my wake…
I feel in my quivering length
When it buries the hamlet beneath…

I hurriedly sweep aside
The cities that clutter our path…
As we whirl about the circle of the globe…
As we tear at the pillars of the world…
Open to the wind,
The Destroyer!
The wind that is battering at your gates.

poem by Lola Ridge
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Thaw

Blow through me wind
As you blow through apple blossoms….
Scatter me in shining petals over the passers-by….
Joyously I reunite… sway and gather to myself….
Sedately I walk by the dancing feet of children—
Not knowing I too dance over the cobbled spring.
O, but they laugh back at me,
(Eyes like daisies smiling wide open),
And we both look askance at the snowed-in people
Thinking me one of them.

poem by Lola Ridge
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