It’s been a long day

Posted on by Live & Learn

In the 1991 collection Trimmings, Harryette Mullen writes,

“When a dress is red, is there a happy ending. Is there murmur and satisfaction. Silence or a warning. It talks the talk, but who can walk the walk. Distress is red. It sells, shouts, an urge turned inside out. Sight for sore eyes. The better to see you. Out for a stroll, writing wolf-tickets.”

A great poem, like an astonishing red dress, should be a warning. Something terrific lies outside your periphery, and now you know that it’s there.

~ Mia You, Sublime Deformations of Nature (Poetry Foundation, April, 2017)

Notes:

20 thoughts on “It’s been a long day”

  3. Because I wore red today and it’s national poetry month. My friend shared this poem with me today, her favorite.

    The Saddest Poem by Pablo Neruda
    I can write the saddest poem of all tonight.
    Write, for instance: “The night is full of stars,
    and the stars, blue, shiver in the distance.”
    The night wind whirls in the sky and sings.
    I can write the saddest poem of all tonight.
    I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.
    On nights like this, I held her in my arms.
    I kissed her so many times under the infinite sky.
    She loved me, sometimes I loved her.
    How could I not have loved her large, still eyes?
    I can write the saddest poem of all tonight.
    To think I don’t have her. To feel that I’ve lost her.
    To hear the immense night, more immense without her.
    And the poem falls to the soul as dew to grass.
    What does it matter that my love couldn’t keep her.
    The night is full of stars and she is not with me.
    That’s all. Far away, someone sings. Far away.
    My soul is lost without her.
    As if to bring her near, my eyes search for her.
    My heart searches for her and she is not with me.
    The same night that whitens the same trees.
    We, we who were, we are the same no longer.
    I no longer love her, true, but how much I loved her.
    My voice searched the wind to touch her ear.
    Someone else’s. She will be someone else’s. As she once
    belonged to my kisses.
    Her voice, her light body. Her infinite eyes.
    I no longer love her, true, but perhaps I love her.
    Love is so short and oblivion so long.
    Because on nights like this I held her in my arms,
    my soul is lost without her.
    Although this may be the last pain she causes me,
    and this may be the last poem I write for her.

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