back to dry, scarcely-seen threads,
Lady Macduff goes down to the meadow
where primrose flowers are thickening.
Her maid told her this morning, It’s time
to pick them now, there will never be more
without some dying.
Even the kitchen girls, spared for an hour,
come to pick flowers for wine.
The children’s nurse has never seemed to grasp
that she only need lay down the flowers loosely,
the flat-bottomed baskets soon fill
with yellow, chill primroses covered by sturdy leaves,
but the nurse will weave posies
even though the children are impatient
and only care who is first, has most
of their mother’s quick smile.
Pasties have been brought from the castle.
Savoury juices spill from their ornate crusts,
white cloths are smeared with venison gravy
and all eat hungrily
out in the spring wind.
Lady Macduff looks round at the sparkling
sharpness of grass, whipped kerchiefs and castle battlements
edged with green light
and the primroses like a fall
colder than rain, warmer than snow,
petals quite still, hairy stems helplessly curling.
She thinks how they will be drunk
as yellow wine, swallow by swallow
filling the pauses of mid-winter,
sweet to raw throats.
Mary Shelley
No living poet ever arrived at the fulness of his fame; the jury which sits in judgement upon a poet, belonging as he does to all time, must be composed of his peers .
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
In the weightlessness of time and our passage within it
voices and rooms swim.
Cleft after soft cleft
parts, word-covered lips
thin as they speak.
I should recall how pink and tender
your lids looked when you read too long
while I produced seamed
patchwork, my own phantom.
Am I the jury, the evidence,
the recollection?
Last night I dreamed of a prospect
and so I dreamed backwards:
first I woke in the dark
scraping my knuckles on board and mould.
I remember half listening
or reading in the shadow of a fire;
each evening I would lie quietly
breathing the scent of my flesh till I slept.
I loved myself in my new dress.
I loved the coral stems rising from the rosebush
under my window in March.
I was intact, neat,
dressing myself each morning.
I dreamed my little baby was alive,
mewing for me from somewhere in the room.
I chafed her feet and tucked her nightdress close.
Claire, Shelley and I left England.
We crossed the Channel and boasted afterwards
of soaked clothes, vomit and cloudbursts.
We went by grey houses, shutters still closed,
people warmly asleep. My eyes were dazed
wide open in abatement and vacancy.
*
A bad wife is like winter in the house .
(diary of Claire Clairmont, Florence 1820)
In Florence in winter grit scoured between houses;
the plaster needed replacing, the children had coughs.
I lived in a nursery which smelled of boredom and liniment.
In bed I used to dream of water crossings
by night. I looked fixedly forward.
It was the first winter I became ugly:
I was unloving all winter,
frozen by my own omens.
In Lerici I watched small boats on the bay
trace their insect trails on the flat water.
Orange lamps and orange blossom
lit and suffused the night garden.
Canvas slashed in a squall.
Stifling tangles of sail and fragile
masts snapping brought the boat over.
The blackened sea
kept its waves still, then tilting
knocked you into its cold crevices.
I was pressed to a pinpoint,
my breath flat.
Scarcely pulsating
I gave out nothing.
I gave out nothing before your death.
We would pass in the house with blind-lipped
anger in me.
You put me aside for the winter.
I would soften like a season
I would moisten and turn to you.
I would not conform my arms to the shapes of dead children.
I patched my babies and fed them
but death got at them.
Your eyes fed everywhere.
I wonder at bodies once clustered,
at delicate tissue
emerging unable to ripen.
Each time I returned to life
calmer than the blood which left me
weightless as the ticking of a
Lady Macduff goes down to the meadow
where primrose flowers are thickening.
Her maid told her this morning, It’s time
to pick them now, there will never be more
without some dying.
Even the kitchen girls, spared for an hour,
come to pick flowers for wine.
The children’s nurse has never seemed to grasp
that she only need lay down the flowers loosely,
the flat-bottomed baskets soon fill
with yellow, chill primroses covered by sturdy leaves,
but the nurse will weave posies
even though the children are impatient
and only care who is first, has most
of their mother’s quick smile.
Pasties have been brought from the castle.
Savoury juices spill from their ornate crusts,
white cloths are smeared with venison gravy
and all eat hungrily
out in the spring wind.
Lady Macduff looks round at the sparkling
sharpness of grass, whipped kerchiefs and castle battlements
edged with green light
and the primroses like a fall
colder than rain, warmer than snow,
petals quite still, hairy stems helplessly curling.
She thinks how they will be drunk
as yellow wine, swallow by swallow
filling the pauses of mid-winter,
sweet to raw throats.
Mary Shelley
No living poet ever arrived at the fulness of his fame; the jury which sits in judgement upon a poet, belonging as he does to all time, must be composed of his peers .
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
In the weightlessness of time and our passage within it
voices and rooms swim.
Cleft after soft cleft
parts, word-covered lips
thin as they speak.
I should recall how pink and tender
your lids looked when you read too long
while I produced seamed
patchwork, my own phantom.
Am I the jury, the evidence,
the recollection?
Last night I dreamed of a prospect
and so I dreamed backwards:
first I woke in the dark
scraping my knuckles on board and mould.
I remember half listening
or reading in the shadow of a fire;
each evening I would lie quietly
breathing the scent of my flesh till I slept.
I loved myself in my new dress.
I loved the coral stems rising from the rosebush
under my window in March.
I was intact, neat,
dressing myself each morning.
I dreamed my little baby was alive,
mewing for me from somewhere in the room.
I chafed her feet and tucked her nightdress close.
Claire, Shelley and I left England.
We crossed the Channel and boasted afterwards
of soaked clothes, vomit and cloudbursts.
We went by grey houses, shutters still closed,
people warmly asleep. My eyes were dazed
wide open in abatement and vacancy.
*
A bad wife is like winter in the house .
(diary of Claire Clairmont, Florence 1820)
In Florence in winter grit scoured between houses;
the plaster needed replacing, the children had coughs.
I lived in a nursery which smelled of boredom and liniment.
In bed I used to dream of water crossings
by night. I looked fixedly forward.
It was the first winter I became ugly:
I was unloving all winter,
frozen by my own omens.
In Lerici I watched small boats on the bay
trace their insect trails on the flat water.
Orange lamps and orange blossom
lit and suffused the night garden.
Canvas slashed in a squall.
Stifling tangles of sail and fragile
masts snapping brought the boat over.
The blackened sea
kept its waves still, then tilting
knocked you into its cold crevices.
I was pressed to a pinpoint,
my breath flat.
Scarcely pulsating
I gave out nothing.
I gave out nothing before your death.
We would pass in the house with blind-lipped
anger in me.
You put me aside for the winter.
I would soften like a season
I would moisten and turn to you.
I would not conform my arms to the shapes of dead children.
I patched my babies and fed them
but death got at them.
Your eyes fed everywhere.
I wonder at bodies once clustered,
at delicate tissue
emerging unable to ripen.
Each time I returned to life
calmer than the blood which left me
weightless as the ticking of a
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