Garden Bloggers' Muse Day--September 2009

The aubergine libertine in his green limousine

A libertine's green limousine was lately seen in Saint Vereen. The libertine wore aubergine. In Saint Vereen they're not so keen on aubergine. The party scene in Saint Vereen is all crepe-de-chine and gabardine, beauty queens and Charlie Sheen. The libertine in aubergine moves between these beauty queens: his feet careen from scene to scene, taking in the magazines, the tall Marines, the jumping beans, the snarling face of Charlie Sheen. The libertine leaves Saint-Vereen. Saint Vereen is not his scene. He likes a scene that's more serene.

Vals-en-Deen is just that scene. He sights the sheen of Vals-en-Deen. Its woods are green: are tourmaline. With carabine, he'll hunt that green, the libertine in aubergine. The birds that preen in Vals-en-Deen are not quite serene when there's been seen in their woodsy green the libertine in aubergine. His carabine for them spells "fin". But when libertines in limousines leave Vals-en-Deen for Saint Vereen, those birds that preen are quite serene.

Although the birds may vent their spleen, the libertine in aubergine suffers only improved mien when Vals-en-Deen is dimly seen from the dark windscreen of his limousine. Then, our heroic libertine, free at last of Charlie Sheen, of magazines, of beauty queens, of crepe-de-chine and gabardine, bounces like a jumping bean, a jumping bean on too much caffeine, decked out in cloth of aubergine.

--Maureen Thorson, Aubergine (Ed. Josh Corey 2004)

This poem was part of a meme that went around the Internet back in 2004. The challenge, thrown down by Corey, was to end a poem with the word "aubergine".

For more GBMD posts, visit Carolyn Gail at Sweet Home and Garden Chicago.

Garden Bloggers' Muse Day -- April 2009

Mother Nature is hitting us with a one-two weather punch today. They say we'll see the sun come Friday, maybe. I've mostly lost hope that we will EVER see the sun again, or that the temps will EVER get out of the 40s, or that it will EVER dry out enough for me to sow the 'Drunken Woman Frizzy Headed' lettuce seeds.

IL PLEURE DANS MON CŒUR. . .

II pleut doucement sur la ville.
--Arthur Rimbaud

Il pleure dans mon cœur
Comme il pleut sur la ville;
Quelle est cette langueur
Qui pénètre mon cœur?

Ô bruit doux de la pluie
Par terre et sur les toits!
Pour un cœur qui s'ennuie
Ô le chant de la pluie!

Il pleure sans raison
Dans ce cœur qui s'écœure.
Quoi! nulle trahison? . . .
Ce deuil est sans raison.

C'est bien la pire peine
De ne savoir pourquoi
Sans amour et sans haine
Mon cœur a tant de peine!

--Paul Verlaine, Romances sans paroles (1874)

LIKE CITY'S RAIN, MY HEART. . .

The rain falls gently on the town.
--Arthur Rimbaud

Like city's rain, my heart
Rains teardrops too. What now,
This languorous ache, this smart
That pierces, wounds my heart?

Gentle, the sound of rain
Pattering roof and ground!
Ah, for the heart in pain,
Sweet is the sound of rain!

Tears rain-but who knows why?-
And fill my heartsick heart.
No faithless lover's lie? . . .
It mourns, and who knows why?

And nothing pains me so--
With neither love nor hate--
A simply not to know
Why my heart suffers so.

--Translated by Norman R. Shapiro, One Hundred and One Poems by Paul Verlaine: A Bilingual Edition, 1999

For more GBMD posts, visit Carolyn Gail at Sweet Home and Garden Chicago.

Garden Bloggers' Muse Day--November 2008

Starting From Paumanok

Take my leaves America, take them South and take

     them North,

Make welcome for them everywhere, for they are

     your own offspring,

Surround them East and West, for they would

     surround you,

And you precedents, connect lovingly with them, for

     they connect lovingly with you.

--Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass

For more GBMD posts visit Carolyn Gail at Sweet Home and Garden Chicago.

Garden Bloggers' Muse Day -- September 2008

 

LATE SEPTEMBER

Tang of fruitage in the air;
Red boughs bursting everywhere;
Shimmering of seeded grass;
Hooded gentians all a'mass.

Warmth of earth, and cloudless wind
Tearing off the husky rind,
Blowing feathered seeds to fall
By the sun-baked, sheltering wall.

Beech trees in a golden haze;
Hardy sumachs all ablaze,
Glowing through the silver birches.
How that pine tree shouts and lurches!

From the sunny door-jamb high,
Swings the shell of a butterfly.
Scrape of insect violins
Through the stubble shrilly dins.

Every blade's a minaret
Where a small muezzin's set,
Loudly calling us to pray
At the miracle of day.

Then the purple-lidded night
Westering comes, her footsteps light
Guided by the radiant boon
Of a sickle-shaped new moon.

--Amy Lowell, Sword Blades and Poppy Seeds, 1915

For more Garden Bloggers' Muse Day posts visit Carolyn Gail at Sweet Home and Garden Chicago. 

Garden Bloggers' Muse Day--June 2008

I spy a blackberry vine. Can you find it? How many dandelions can you count? For more GBMD posts check out Sweet Home and Garden Chicago.

BACKYARD OPERA

I march through the yard with a hard eye,

yanking weeds, asserting a path,

incensed by the relentless advance

of honeysuckle and morning glory vines

weaving under everything like an insidious subtext,

determined to have their loopy, insensible say

even as I slash them back, seeking their polyphonous source,

my finite gestures meaning nothing to them,

as they know I will tire, drift back into the house

and forget our duet for days, even weeks,

letting them spin their tales, full of plot twists,

almost orchestrating my little bench into their melody,

so that when I finally cut back a spot and sit,

and the chimes pick up a phrase of wind,

it becomes clear I am just a half note of silence,

a pause in the longer song.

--Aleida Rodríguez, Garden of Exile, 1999

Garden Bloggers' Muse Day -- May 2008

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Alba

As cool as the pale wet leaves
of lily-of-the-valley
She lay beside me in the dawn

-- Ezra Pound

Garden Bloggers' Muse Day--April 2008

Flower-de-Luce

Beautiful lily, dwelling by still rivers,
Or solitary mere,
Or where the sluggish meadow-brook delivers
Its waters to the weir!

Thou laughest at the mill, the whir and worry
Of spindle and of loom,
And the great wheel that toils amid the hurry
And rushing of the flame.

Born in the purple, born to joy and pleasance,
Thou dost not toil nor spin,
But makest glad and radiant with thy presence
The meadow and the lin.

The wind blows, and uplifts thy drooping banner,
And round thee throng and run
The rushes, the green yeomen of thy manor,
The outlaws of the sun.

The burnished dragon-fly is thine attendant,
And tilts against the field,
And down the listed sunbeam rides resplendent
With steel-blue mail and shield.

Thou art the Iris, fair among the fairest,
Who, armed with golden rod
And winged with the celestial azure, bearest
The message of some God.

Thou art the Muse, who far from crowded cities
Hauntest the sylvan streams,
Playing on pipes of reed the artless ditties
That come to us as dreams.

O flower-de-luce, bloom on, and let the river
Linger to kiss thy feet!
O flower of song, bloom on, and make forever
The world more fair and sweet.

Flower-de-Luce, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

For more GBMD posts visit Sweet Home and Garden Chicago.

Garden Bloggers' Muse Day--March '08

GBMD was started by Carolyn over at Sweet Home and Garden Chicago. This is a close-up of the potager after we planted the peas. I love the texxture of this picture. Can't you just feel the warmth and softness as you wiggle your bare toes deeper and deeper into the just turned soil?

;LOAM

In the loam we sleep,
In the cool moist loam,
To the lull of years that pass
And the break of stars,

From the loam, then,
The soft warm loam,
We rise:
To shape of rose leaf,
Of face and shoulder.

We stand, then,
To a whiff of life,
Lifted to the silver of the sun
Over and out of the loam
A day.

--Carl Sandburg, Cornhuskers (1918)