{"id":72,"date":"2010-11-19T18:24:06","date_gmt":"2010-11-19T23:24:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kuny.ca\/blogs\/?p=72"},"modified":"2010-11-19T22:00:37","modified_gmt":"2010-11-20T03:00:37","slug":"when-we-with-sappho","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/kuny.ca\/blogs\/2010\/72\/poems\/when-we-with-sappho\/","title":{"rendered":"Kenneth Rexroth – When We With Sappho"},"content":{"rendered":"


\n<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201c. . . about the cool water
\nthe wind sounds through sprays
\nof apple, and from the quivering leaves
\nslumber pours down . . .\u201d<\/p>\n

We lie here in the bee filled, ruinous
\nOrchard of a decayed New England farm,
\nSummer in our hair, and the smell
\nOf summer in our twined bodies,
\nSummer in our mouths, and summer
\nIn the luminous, fragmentary words
\nOf this dead Greek woman.
\nStop reading. Lean back. Give me your mouth.
\nYour grace is as beautiful as sleep.
\nYou move against me like a wave
\nThat moves in sleep.
\nYour body spreads across my brain
\nLike a bird filled summer;
\nNot like a body, not like a separate thing,
\nBut like a nimbus that hovers
\nOver every other thing in all the world.
\nLean back. You are beautiful,
\nAs beautiful as the folding
\nOf your hands in sleep.<\/p>\n

We have grown old in the afternoon.
\nHere in our orchard we are as old
\nAs she is now, wherever dissipate
\nIn that distant sea her gleaming dust
\nFlashes in the wave crest
\nOr stains the murex shell.
\nAll about us the old farm subsides
\nInto the honey bearing chaos of high summer.
\nIn those far islands the temples
\nHave fallen away, and the marble
\nIs the color of wild honey.
\nThere is nothing left of the gardens
\nThat were once about them, of the fat
\nTurf marked with cloven hooves.
\nOnly the sea grass struggles
\nOver the crumbled stone,
\nOver the splintered steps,
\nOnly the blue and yellow
\nOf the sea, and the cliffs
\nRed in the distance across the bay.
\nLean back.
\nHer memory has passed to our lips now.
\nOur kisses fall through summer\u2019s chaos
\nIn our own breasts and thighs.<\/p>\n

Gold colossal domes of cumulus cloud
\nLift over the undulant, sibilant forest.
\nThe air presses against the earth.
\nThunder breaks over the mountains.
\nFar off, over the Adirondacks,
\nLightning quivers, almost invisible
\nIn the bright sky, violet against
\nThe grey, deep shadows of the bellied clouds.
\nThe sweet virile hair of thunder storms
\nBrushes over the swelling horizon.
\nTake off your shoes and stockings.
\nI will kiss your sweet legs and feet
\nAs they lie half buried in the tangle
\nOf rank scented midsummer flowers.
\nTake off your clothes. I will press
\nYour summer honeyed flesh into the hot
\nSoil, into the crushed, acrid herbage
\nOf midsummer. Let your body sink
\nLike honey through the hot
\nGranular fingers of summer.<\/p>\n

Rest. Wait. We have enough for a while.
\nKiss me with your mouth
\nWet and ragged, your mouth that tastes
\nOf my own flesh. Read to me again
\nThe twisting music of that language
\nThat is of all others, itself a work of art.
\nRead again those isolate, poignant words
\nSaved by ancient grammarians
\nTo illustrate the conjugations
\nAnd declensions of the more ancient dead.
\nLean back in the curve of my body,
\nPress your bruised shoulders against
\nThe damp hair of my body.
\nKiss me again. Think, sweet linguist,
\nIn this world the ablative is impossible.
\nNo other one will help us here.
\nWe must help ourselves to each other.
\nThe wind walks slowly away from the storm;
\nVeers on the wooded crests; sounds
\nIn the valleys. Here we are isolate,
\nOne with the other; and beyond
\nThis orchard lies isolation,
\nThe isolation of all the world.
\nNever let anything intrude
\nOn the isolation of this day,
\nThese words, isolate on dead tongues,
\nThis orchard, hidden from fact and history,
\nThese shadows, blended in the summer light,
\nTogether isolate beyond the world\u2019s reciprocity.<\/p>\n

Do not talk any more. Do not speak.
\nDo not break silence until
\nWe are weary of each other.
\nLet our fingers run like steel
\nCarving the contours of our bodies\u2019 gold.
\nDo not speak. My face sinks
\nIn the clotted summer of your hair.
\nThe sound of the bees stops.
\nStillness falls like a cloud.
\nBe still. Let your body fall away
\nInto the awe filled silence
\nOf the fulfilled summer —
\nBack, back, infinitely away —
\nOur lips weak, faint with stillness.<\/p>\n

See. The sun has fallen away.
\nNow there are amber
\nLong lights on the shattered
\nBoles of the ancient apple trees.
\nOur bodies move to each other
\nAs bodies move in sleep;
\nAt once filled and exhausted,
\nAs the summer moves to autumn,
\nAs we, with Sappho, move towards death.
\nMy eyelids sink toward sleep in the hot
\nAutumn of your uncoiled hair.
\nYour body moves in my arms
\nOn the verge of sleep;
\nAnd it is as though I held
\nIn my arms the bird filled
\nEvening sky of summer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201c. . . about the cool water the wind sounds through sprays of apple, and from the quivering leaves slumber pours down . . .\u201d We lie here in the bee filled, ruinous Orchard of a decayed New England farm, Summer in our hair, and the smell Of summer in our twined bodies, Summer in […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-72","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-poems","category-4-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/kuny.ca\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/kuny.ca\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/kuny.ca\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/kuny.ca\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/kuny.ca\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=72"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/kuny.ca\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":237,"href":"http:\/\/kuny.ca\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72\/revisions\/237"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/kuny.ca\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=72"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/kuny.ca\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=72"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/kuny.ca\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=72"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}