Song Tournament: New Style

Rain, said the first, as it falls in Venice
Is like the dropping of golden pennies
Into a sea as smooth and bright
As a bowl of curdled malachite. 

Storm, sang the next, in the streets of Peking
Is like the ghost of a yellow sea-king,
Scooping the dust to find if he may
Discover what earth has hidden away. 

The mist, sighed the third, that lies on London
Is the wraith of Beauty, betrayed and undone
By a world of dark machines that plan
To splinter the shaken soul of man. 

The rush of Spring, smiled the fourth, in Florence
Is wave upon wave of laughing torrents,
A flood of birds, a water-voiced calling,
A green rain rising instead of falling. 

The wind, cried the fifth, in the Bay of Naples
Is a quarrel of leaves among the maples,
A war of sunbeams idly fanned,
A whisper softer than sand on sand. 

Then spoke the last: God's endless tears,
Too great for Heaven, anoint the spheres,
While every drop becomes a well
In the fathomless, thirsting heart of Hell. 

And thus six bards, who could boast of travel
Fifty miles from their native gravel,
Rose in the sunlight and offered their stanzas
At the shrine of the Poetry Contest in Kansas.



AUCTION: ANDERSON GALLERIES

"Lot 65: John Keats to Fanny Brawne
      A beauty, gentlemen, and in the best
      Condition. Four leaves, scarcely pressed.
What am I bid? Five hundred ... Five ... Come on.
Who'll make it Six? Six hundred.... "(Pale and drawn,
      I dreamed forever in a sweet unrest
      Of your warm, lucent, million-pleasured breast)
"Six hundred ... Now Six fifty ... Are you done?"

"Seven ... A half ... Did I hear eight? ... Eight ... Eight ...
      Who'll make it Nine?" (Would that I could survive
The horrors of a brutal world. I hate
      All men and women, saving one, alive.)
"Nine fifty ... Going ... Sorry, sir; too late.
      Sold to this party for Nine sixty five."

(The New Republic)


Dorothy Dances

      This is no child that dances. This is flame. 
      Here fire at last has found its natural frame. 

      What else is that which burns and flies 
      From those enkindled eyes . . . 
      What is that inner blaze 
      Which plays 
      About that lighted face . . . 
      This thing is fire set free -- 
      Fire possesses her, or rather she 
      Controls its mastery. 
      With every gesture, every rhythmic stride, 
      Beat after beat, 
      It follows, purring at her side, 
      Or licks the shadows of her flashing feet. 
      Around her everywhere 
      It coils its thread of yellow hair; 
      Through every vein its bright blood creeps, 
      And its red hands 
      Caress her as she stands 
      Or lift her boldly when she leaps. 
      Then, as the surge of radiance grows stronger 
      These two are two no longer 
      And they merge 
      Into a disembodied ecstasy; 
      Free 
      To express some half-forgotten hunger, 
      Some half-forbidden urge. 

      What mystery 
      Has been at work until it blent 
      One child and that fierce element? 
      Give it no name. 
      It is enough that flesh has danced with fame.