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Tuesday, 29 September 2020

We Wear the Mask


Jean Cocteau



We Wear the Mask



We wear the mask that grins and lies, 

It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes,— 

This debt we pay to human guile; 

With torn and bleeding hearts we smile, 

And mouth with myriad subtleties. 


Why should the world be over-wise, 

In counting all our tears and sighs? 

Nay, let them only see us, while 

       We wear the mask. 


We smile, but, O great Christ, our cries 

To thee from tortured souls arise. 

We sing, but oh the clay is vile 

Beneath our feet, and long the mile; 

But let the world dream otherwise, 

       We wear the mask!

 


Paul Lawrence Dunbar  



A little irony considering the circumstances.




Tuesday, 15 September 2020

Moth Song

Virgil Elliott



  

Moth Song


I tasted it, the gold
In the gold, I saw the sweetness
At the end of my uncoiling
Tongue, by the beautiful ends
Of what curved from my forehead,
And I swam, gliding, I dove
Through the air toward gold
And sweetness meant to be
Chosen, begging to hold me
And be drawn inside me.

But I stop now, I hang
Still, suddenly suspended
Without having chosen to be
Still in a breeze still full
Of calling and beckoning
Red and blue around gold,
And what comes to meet me
Holds me and turns
My body, spinning a lightness
Around me to fold my wings
Close into a darkness,
And it turns me slowly
Into a flower and drinks me,
And I open, I become
Completely known, I blossom.


David Wagoner

Smoke and moths - we're seeing a lot of both of those these days. Forests burning, moths swarming - it's as if a surfeit, a splurge, a super-abundance has, yes, "blossomed" around us, swirled us within its rhythms, moved us with its influence. Every 10 or so years, when the conditions are just right, the moths come out in great numbers, any window with a light behind it is covered with fluttery moth-bodies, any outside light obliterated with feathered furies. Add to that this misty-musty thickness of smoking forests - it's a strange atmosphere. 
But the poem intrigues me for other reasons as well. This bewildering lure of destruction - what is this? What draws us toward our demise? Why do we dance with death? What is the fascination of fire? I have no answers to this, only questions.