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ELEKTRA

dedicated to Kate Bush

‘Adam is stasis, or conservatism; Eve is kinesis, or progress. Adam societies are ones in which the man and the father, male gods, exact strict obedience to established institutions and norms of behaviour, as during a majority of the periods of history in our era. The Victorian is a typical such period. Eve societies are those in which woman and mother, female gods, encourage innovation and experiment, and fresh definitions, modes of feeling. The Renaissance and our own are typical such ages.’ John Fowles, The Aristos

(For full text see the Kindle ebook The Nature of Things (Collected Poems)
    by Alan Marshfield
)
 

 

1 HER AGONY

   

Time’s Steady State

   

I’ve seen the leaf constrained to come

in summer, its foot glued to the bark,

hedged, sentenced to anonymous work,

buzz in hundreds, other times stay dumb.

...

Grand’mère

  

Usage is what she lives by, not a cage.

Who wants to be a prisoner all her life?

Who wants to live in a psychotic calm

upon the arm of a correct, stiff groom

...

The god of the woods

  

His laugh no refuge, the safe

doctor so many lies,

his bones squeaking, an aged

resentment in his eyes,

...

Her fashion now

  

He is the victim, speaks for a perished species:

it cannot be that he will have long life.

She ties him down. The work done in her field

is the difference between their two potentials:

...

2 HER NATURE

  

Elektra

  

Fey, unoriginal, refracting

quotations from belittled canzoni,

she is drawn to those unlike her.

Among the derivatives of fin-de-siècle

she chooses the stroller with the black Malacca.

...

Who goes

  

Who goes in the electric wind, vibrating,

who seeks a share in it, lost dreams,

who has her elements on the money,

who finds less limitation in the cold,

...

She flies

  

The stars are as they are by accident.

His time is little to their outward speed.

A tree is nearer to him, and it feels

less than he does, maybe, but more than she.

...

3 HER LOVE

  

Isis

  

And now the rain is beginning, and she is

all about us. She is in love still.

Gutters run pure. Although she can rip trees,

drown valleys, she is gentle this evening.

...

The moonstone

  

I will have no more fiction. She is

the moonstone on the bed of the pool,

the transmuting eye in the psyche,

the one drop of dew drowned under air,

...

4 ENVOI

  

Where are the girls of yesteryear

  

Where are the girls of yesteryear

Who have illuminated me?

Where Sue Strap with the college eyes,

where Madame Krabb, the doyenne of spies,

...

(For full text see the Kindle ebook The Nature of Things (Collected Poems) by Alan Marshfield)

  

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