'Carved Out of Agony'

 

“Your work is carved out of agony as a statue is carved out of marble.” –  Louise Bogan

Bogan, a native of Maine, was born on this date in 1897, and made history when she was appointed Poet Laureate to the Library of Congress in 1945 – the first woman in the role.  As poetry editor of The New Yorker magazine for nearly 40 years, she played a major role in shaping mainstream poetic sensibilities of the mid-20th Century.

For Saturday’s Poem, here is Bogan’s

           Song for the Last Act

 

Now that I have your face by heart, I look

Less at its features than its darkening frame
Where quince and melon, yellow as young flame,
Lie with quilled dahlias and the shepherd's crook.
Beyond, a garden, There, in insolent ease
The lead and marble figures watch the show
Of yet another summer loath to go
Although the scythes hang in the apple trees.

Now that I have your face by heart, I look.

Now that I have your voice by heart, I read
In the black chords upon a dulling page
Music that is not meant for music's cage,
Whose emblems mix with words that shake and bleed.
The staves are shuttled over with a stark
Unprinted silence. In a double dream
I must spell out the storm, the running stream.
The beat's too swift. The notes shift in the dark.

Now that I have your voice by heart, I read.

Now that I have your heart by heart, I see
The wharves with their great ships and architraves;
The rigging and the cargo and the slaves
On a strange beach under a broken sky.
O not departure, but a voyage done!
The bales stand on the stone; the anchor weeps
Its red rust downward, and the long vine creeps
Beside the salt herb, in the lengthening sun.

Now that I have your heart by heart, I see. 

 

 

 

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