Folies de Femmes
In scarlet tunic rare a concubine
With subtle limbs, and breasts laid bare
For me to kiss. Soft eyes that sadly shine
A nubile maiden slave, intensely fair,
Strange frightened rose. A pagan priestess pale
Wearing a clinging robe of silvergreen.
In silken slashéd gold a houri frail
With veiléd face, mere child of seventeen.
But though my senses often are akin
To wretched trafficking, my soul is gold
And sails upon the winds, a harlequin
Unstained by sin and fearless as of old.
You are the lovely laughing columbine
Who fills my heart with dazzling amber wine.
poem by Harry Crosby
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The Golden Gourd
What chance have snakes upon an asphalt road
When giant limousines go gliding by,
Of courtesans resolved to gratify
The lust of lovers seeking new abode?
I do not envy the unfriended toad
Nor airships falling from a marble sky
Nor mothers listening to their children cry
What chance have blades of grass on being mowed?
And yet the unmolested Sun rolls on
A ship of gold among the silver clouds
Or else a lady wrapped in silver shrouds
to mock the crescent moon's pale skeleton.
Which strengthens me to live with heart assured
For I have drunken from the golden gourd.
poem by Harry Crosby
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Unanswered
Why should I be subsevient to fate
Si peu de chose before a giant world
Poor little ship with little sail unfurled
To catch the sun-breze at the harbor gate?
Why should I be a coal within the grate
Of never-ending love? Why intercurled
With some strange mermaid whom the tempests hurled
Far up the shore that mortals desecrate?
Why all these whys and wherefores of the mind
That strike like arrows on a marble floor
Beyond whose frigidness red lions roar
To guard the Sun I gave my youth to find?
And why should drowning in the blackest sea
Be better than to worship at her knee?
poem by Harry Crosby
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Salome
Proud panoply of fans and frankincense,
Gold blare of trumpets, flowered robes of state,
Unnumbered symbols of magnificence,
To lead Salome through the palace gate,
Where loud the prophet of the Lord blasphemes
The red abominations of her race
And chides her for her flesh-entangled dreams
and turns his back upon her painted face.
Thus do we turn from some red-shadowed lust
That through the broken forests of the brain
Weaves silently with tentacles out-thrust,
Groping in darkness, but for one in vain,
For like a sliding sun the soul has fled
Leaving a princess and a vultured head.
poem by Harry Crosby
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Dissonance
You've slipped from out your evening gown, you muse
Before the polished lookingglass, a hand
Unclasping frail corsage, while you peruse
Your blushing charms. Your wayward eyes demand
Intrigue, as slowly you remove the clothes
Which cling around your girlish loveliness.
In silken stockings of the palest rose
Your slender legs encased, twin gracefulness
Beyond compare, while all your perfumed hair
Comes tumbling down and glorybath of gold ;
And thus you stand before me ivorybare
Craving to yield in passion as of old.
I take you in my arms yet am I sad,
So many other loves have made you glad
poem by Harry Crosby
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Baudelaire
I think I understand you, Baudelaire,
With all your strangeness and perverted ways,
You whose fierce hatred of dull working days
Led you to seek your macabre visions there
Where shrouded night came creeping to ensnare
Your phantomfevered brain, with subtle maze
Of decomposéd loves, remorse, dismays,
And all the gnawing of a world's despair.
Within my soul you've set your blackest flag
And made my disillusioned heart your tomb ;
My mind which once was young and virginal
Is now a swamp, a spleenfilled pregnant womb
Of things abominable, things androgynal,
Flowers of Dissolution, Fleurs du Mal.
poem by Harry Crosby
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Water-Lillies
Unwedded from the world, I stray through trees
To where a pool lies mirrored in the sun
A disk of polished gold that I have won
With labours not unknown to Hercules.
Slender they bathe, all naked as a breeze,
Their nipples hollow and their hair undone,
While from their widespread thighs cool ripples run
To rock the water-lilies round their knees.
Nymphs of the fountains, naiads innocent,
Frail sunbeams who have passed between my arms
So beautiful in your imprisonment,
Fill now my soul with symbols of delight:
Soft voices and soft fingers and soft charms
And the perfume of the lotus in the night.
poem by Harry Crosby
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Temple de la Douleur
My soul has suffered breaking on the wheel,
Flogging with lead, and felt the twinging ache
Of barbéd hooks and jagged points of steel,
Peine forte et dure, slow burning at the stake,
Blinding and branding, stripping on the rack,
The canque and kourbash and the torquéd screw,
The boot and branks, red scourging on the back,
The gallows and the gibbet. All for you.
These tortures are as nothing to the pain
That I have suffered when you gaze at me
With cold disdainful eyes. You do not deign
To smile or talk or even set me free-
Yet once you let me hold your perfumed hand
And danced with me a stately saraband.
poem by Harry Crosby
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Poem For The Feet Of Polia
they have walked through the gateways
of my eyes
they have climbed the mountains
of my body
they have marched across the desert
of my heart
they have forded the rivers
of my mind
they have penetrated into the dark forest
of my soul
if I were a cannibal I might devour them
if I were Pilate I might crucify them
if I were a sorcerer I might make them vanish away
if I were Neptune I might drown them
if I were a robber I might steal them
but I am a bridge to the sun
bridge leading away from a world of pain
bridge leading away from a night of sin
bridge over the abyss of doubt
[...] Read more
poem by Harry Crosby
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Scorn
You business men with your large desks with your stenographers and your bell-boys and your private telephones I say to you these are the four walls of your cage.
You are tame as canaries with your small bird-brains where lurks the evil worm you are fat from being over-fed you know not the lean wild sunbirds that arrow down paths of fire.
I despise you. I am too hard to pity you. I would hang you on the gallows of the Stock Exchange. I would flay you with taxes. I would burn you alive with Wall Street Journals. I wouild condemn you to an endless round of bank banquets. I deride you. I mock at you. I laugh you to scorn.
poem by Harry Crosby
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