Firebrand
What is your feeling about the revolutionary spirit ofyour age, as expressed, for instance, in such movements as communism, surrealism, anarchism?
The revolutionary spirit of our age (as expressed by communism, surrealism, anarchism, madness) is a hot firebrand thrust into the dark lantern of the world.
In Nine Decades
a Mad Queen shall be born.
poem by Harry Crosby
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Proportionate
I never go to church to pray
Among the crowded pews
Nor kneel before a crucifix
To hail the king of Jews
I never say a prayer
To Saint or Holy Ghost
Nor listen to the preacher's word
That talks of sin the most
But in a pair of eyes
Or drinking silver gin
Or in the colors of a dress
My soul begins to sing
And sunbeams on the wall
Reveal sometimes for me
The beauty that I weave for God
And for Eternity.
poem by Harry Crosby
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Magic Formula
What heavens opened and blazed,
What sisters virtuous,
What arrows sprang to mark,
The trees so terrible and dark,
What years, what hopes,
What lions all amazed,
What fears disguised,
(These antelopes with frightened eyes)
What things are these?
These are the things that all day long
On things made new
After the sunset has merged with the dawn
I bring to you
These are the things that grow less and less
As sleep devours our nakedness.
poem by Harry Crosby
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Tattoo
I am the criminal whose chest is tattooed with a poinard above which are graven the words 'mort aux bourgeois'. Let us each tattoo this on our hearts.
I am the soldier with a red mark on my nakedness-when in a frenzy of love the mark expands to spell Mad Queen. Let us each tattoo our Mad Queen on our heart.
I am the prophet from the land of the Sun whose back is tattooed in the design of a rising sun. Let us each tattoo a rising sun on our heart.
poem by Harry Crosby
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Dryade
Raymonde
If it were not for you
I would not be glad today
And I would continue to dream
Of lovely ladies in lands long ago
Or of maidens
that have not yet been born
If it were not for you
I would not enjoy quiet
Neither the moonlight, nor the stars,
Nor could I appreciate the fountains
Whose cool fingers
Wander among violets.
And it is because of you
Because you are beautiful
That I weave colors in the sun
Through whose great garden we have strayed unveiled
Chaste, interlaced,
With broken thoughts, half-spun.
poem by Harry Crosby
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Invocation to the Mad Queen
I would you were the hollow ship
fashioned to bear the cargo of my love
the unrelenting glove
hurled in defiance at our blackest world
or that great banner mad unfurled
the poet plants upon the hill of time
or else amphora for the gold of life
liquid and naked as a virgin wife.
Yourself the prize
I gird with Fire
The Great White Ruin
Of my Desire.
I burn to gold
fierce and unerring as a conquering sword
I burn to gold
fierce and undaunted as a lion lord
seeking your Bed
and leave to them the
burning of the dead.
poem by Harry Crosby
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Sun-Rhapsody
The Sun! the Sun!
a fish in the aquarium of sky
or golden net to snare the butterfly
of soul
or else the hole
through which the stars have disappeared
it is a forest without trees
it is a lion in a cage of breeze
it is the roundness of her knees
great Hercules
and all the seas
and our soliloquies
winter-cold anchorite
summer-hot sybarite
to-day a lady wraped in clouds
tomorrow hunted by the hungry clouds
it is a monster that our thoughts have speared
the queen we chanticleered
[...] Read more
poem by Harry Crosby
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Zorah
An Arab beats upon a kettle drum,
And tuneless is the wailing of the flutes
As on the sands a slavegirl executes
Her dance of wantonwild delirium;
Her body swaying like a pendulum
Backwards and forwards, while in evolutes
She weaves and weaves before fierce pagan brutes
Who gaze at her in wonder that is dumb.
I look upon her limbs bronzed by the sun,
And see within her eyes strange caravans,
Marching all day across blank desert lands,
Until they come at night to where in rings
The Nomad fires glimmer, one by one,
around the tombs of longforgotten kings.
poem by Harry Crosby
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Gold and Grey
War was romantic in the days of old.
The knight rode forth to battle unafraid,
Wearing the favour of some royal maid
Who loved him for his courage lionbold.
And thus he sought adventures manifold
In joust and tourney midst fanfaronade
Of trumpets, or else fought in a crusade
Gainst infidels, his honour to uphold.
But modern war is not at all the same.
There are no plumes to catch my lady's eye.
In dugouts deep or trenches lashed by rain,
Where poison gas creeps in to suffocate,
Where bullets slap against the parapet,
And barbéd wire crucifies the slain.
poem by Harry Crosby
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Threnody
O ye who claim to be our loyal friends
Come now and build for us a funeral pyre,
And lay our emptied bodies on the fire,
Pray for our souls, murmur your sad amens;
And while the gold and scarlet flame ascends
Let he who best can play upon the lyre,
Pluck slow regretful notes of deep desire,
Sing subtle songs of love that never ends.
and when at last the embers growing cold
Gather ye up our ashes in an urn
Of porphyry, and seek a forest old
There underneath some vast and mighty oak
choose ye our grave, spread over us a cloak
Of woven violets and filmy fern.
poem by Harry Crosby
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