Midnight

The stars are as soft as flowers, and as near;
The hills are webs of shadow, slowly spun;
No seperate leaf or single blade is here -
All blend into one.

No moonbeam cuts the air; a sapphire light
Rolls lazily and slips again to rest.
There is no edged thing in all this night,
Save in my breast.

Dorothy Parker
--------

First time I heard this: Watching Autumn in New York and watching Winona Ryder's hands sweep her glass bead curtains, swish swish this way and that. I couldn't find the poem anywhere, but the opening line stuck stuck stuck. I thought it was by Emily Dickson - because she was obsessed with Emily Dickonson in the movie. But I just found out that it's Dorothy Parker, and here's the complete version. So lovely. And at the last line, you feel whatever is stabbing her in one short sharp shock, all tinged with the blurry midnight blue she has painted. Lovely, lovely, lovely.

Anarkali

Image here.

If Rumi could bleed flowers, he'd bleed these.

Happy discovering, go fly.
Try it with your lover in the same room.
Try it alone.
Don't try it if you are apt to feel intensely moved by anything and have something important to attend soon after. You won't make it there.

Poyum

Beneath My Hands
Leonard Cohen

Beneath my hands
your small breasts
are the upturned bellies
of breathing fallen sparrows.

Wherever you move
I hear the sounds of closing wings
of falling wings.

I am speechless
because you have fallen beside me
because your eyelashes
are the spines of tiny fragile animals.

I dread the time
when your mouth
begins to call me hunter.

When you call me close
to tell me
your body is not beautiful
I want to summon
the eyes and hidden mouths
of stone and light and water
to testify against you.

I want them
to surrender before you
the trembling rhyme of your face
from their deep caskets.

When you call me close
to tell me
your body is not beautiful
I want my body and my hands
to be pools
for your looking and laughing.