The Marriage of Psyche
Kathleen Raine


1. The House

In my love's house
There are hills and pastures carpeted with flowers,
His roof is the blue sky, his lamp the evening star,
The doors of his house are the winds, and the rain his curtains.
In his house are many mountains, each alone,
And islands where the sea-birds home.

In my love's house
There is a waterfall that flows all night
Down from the mountain summit where the snow lies 
White in the shimmering blue of everlasting summer,
Down from the high crag where the eagle flies.
At his threshold the tides of ocean rise,
And the porpoise follows the shoals into still bays
Where starfish gleam on brown weed under still water.

In sleep I was born here
And waking found rivers and waves my servants,
Sun and cloud and winds, bird-messengers,
And all the flocks of his hills and shoals of his seas.
I rest, in the heat of day, in the light shadow of leaves
And voices of air and water speak to me.
All this he has given me, whose face I have never seen,
But into whose all-enfolding arms I sink in sleep.


2. The Ring

He has married me with a ring, a ring of bright water
Whose ripples travel from the heart of the sea,
He has married me with a ring of light, the glitter
Broadcast on the swift river.
He has married me with the sun's circle
Too dazzling to see, traced in summer sky.

He has crowned me with the wreath of white cloud
That gathers on the snowy summit of the mountain,
Ringed me round with the world-circling wind,
Bound me to the whirlwind's centre.
He has married me with the orbit of the moon
And with the boundless circle of the stars,
With the orbits that measure years, months, days and nights,
Set the tides flowing,
Command the winds to travel or be at rest.

At the ring's centre,
Spirit or angel troubling the still pool,
Causality not in nature,
Finger's touch that summons at a point, a moment
Stars and planets, life and light
Or gathers cloud about an apex of cold,
Transcendent touch of love summons world to being.

The Snow Light
May Sarton


In the snow light,
In the swan light,
In the white-on-white light
Of a winter storm,
My delight and your delight
Kept each other warm.

The next afternoon—
And love gone so soon!—
I met myself alone
In a windless calm,
Silenced at the bone
After the white storm.

What more was to come?
Out from the cocoon,
In the silent room,
Pouring out white light,
Amaryllis bloom
Opened in the night.

The cool petals shone
Like some winter moon
Or shadow of a swan,
Echoing the light
After you were gone
Of our white-on-white.

crazy jay blue
e e cummings


crazy jay blue)
demon laughshriek
ing at me
your scorn of easily

hatred of timid
& loathing for( dull all
regular righteous
comfortable )unworlds

thief crook cynic
( swimfloatdrifting
fragment of heaven )
trickstervillain

raucous rogue &
vivid coltaire
you beautiful anarchist
( i salute thee

Laughter
Philip Schultz

One night my father yanked a tablecloth

from under my face & plates spun like meteors

as he wrapped it over his shoulders & his bald head lit up

like a pumpkin as he waltzed my mother round our crooked house

& tears soaked my collar & my stomach jumped into my mputh

as they flew chair over sofa & the world was a moment so full of us

I think of the Samurai playing with a daisy as he waits for his enemy

& only the daisy & the bright summer sun in his smile & I ask you

if at a time like this you would wonder if there was a beginning or end

with angels gathering on the roof to fear such loud tearing

at the fiery curtain of human delight.

To Autumn
John Keats


Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
    Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
    With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;
To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees,
    And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
        To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
    With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will bever cease,
        For Summer has o'er-brimm'd their clammy cells.

Who hath not seen thee oft amid they store?
    Sometimes whoever seeks abroad my find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
    Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
Or on a half-reap'd furrow sound asleep,
    Drowsed with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
        Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers:
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
    Steady thy laden head across a brook;
    Or by a cyder-press, with patient look,
        Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.

Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
    Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,
        While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;
    Then in a wailful choir, the small gnats mourn
    Among the river sallows, borne aloft
        Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
    Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
    The redbreast whistles from the garden-croft,
        And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.


    

Parenthesis
Nick Laird

I lie here like the closing bracket on the ledger of the

    mattress.

Asleep between us the children are hyphens — one hyphen, one

    underscore —

and it takes a few moments at five a.m. to get it quite straight

    that

what I thought was my name being called is the dog at my feet

    snoring.

Asleep between us, the children, our hyphens (one hyphen, one

    underscore),

know love is a paragraph lacking an ending and typeset by

    hand in italics.

What I thought was my name being called is the dog at my feet

    snoring

and it's alright to collapse like that, like a marquee gone into

    its final sigh.

No love is a paragraph lacking an ending and typeset by hand

    in italics.

It is an ellipsis of three drops of Night Nurse that leaves the 

    pillow sticky

and it's alright to collapse like that, like a marquee gone into

    its final sigh,

like my mother in the hard return of a long death and the 

    stanza break.

It is an ellipsis of three drops of Night Nurse that leaves the 

    pillow sticky.

I lie here like the closing bracket on the ledger of the

    mattress,

like my mother in the hard return of a long death and the

    stanza break,

and it takes a few moments at five a.m. to get it quite straight,

    that.

Desert
Josephine Miles


When with the skin you do acknowledge drought,
The dry in the voice, the lightness of feet, the fine
Flake of the heat at every level line;

When with the hand you learn to touch without
Surprise the spine for the leaf, the prickled petal,
The stone scorched in the shine, and the wood brittle;

Then where the pipe drips and the fronts sprout
And the foot-square forest of clover blooms in sand,
You will lean and watch, but never touch with your hand.