Cactus Seed

Radiant notes
piercing my narrow-chested room,
beating down through my ceiling -
smeared with unshapen
belly-prints of dreams
drifted out of old smokes -
trillions of icily
peltering notes
out of just one canary,
all grown to song
as a plant to its stalk,
from too long craning at a sky-light
and a square of second-hand blue.

Silvery-strident throat -
so assiduously serenading my brain,
flinching under
the glittering hail of your notes -
were you not safe behind... rats know what thickness of... plastered wall...
I might fathom
your golden delirium
with throttle of finger and thumb
shutting valve of bright song.

II

But if... away off... on a fork of grassed earth
socketing an inlet reach of blue water...
if canaries (do they sing out of cages?)
flung such luminous notes,
they would sink in the spirit...
lie germinal...
housed in the soul as a seed in the earth...
to break forth at spring with the crocuses into young smiles
        on the mouth.
Or glancing off buoyantly,
radiate notes in one key
with the sparkle of rain-drops
on the petal of a cactus flower
focusing the just-out sun.

Cactus... why cactus?
God... God...
somewhere... away off...
cactus flowers, star-yellow
ray out of spiked green,
and empties of sky
roll you over and over
like a mother her baby in long grass.
And only the wind scandal-mongers with gum trees,
pricking multiple leaves
at his amazing story.

Lola Ridge

Lola Ridge, born Rose Emily Ridge, was an Irish-American anarchist poet and influential editor of avant-garde, feminist, and Marxist publications. Best known for her long poems and involvement in various social movements, Ridge's work addressed issues such as oppression and social justice. She published her first book of poems, "The Ghetto and Other Poems," in 1918, which gained her considerable acclaim. Ridge's poetry often focused on the lives of immigrants and the working class.

Lola Ridge

Mother

Lola Ridge, Simple Poetry

Promenade

Lola Ridge, Simple Poetry

The Fiddler

Lola Ridge, Simple Poetry

Faces

Lola Ridge, Simple Poetry

English

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Jaguar

Nasal intonations of light
and clicking tongues...
publicity of windows
stoning me with pent-up cries...
smells of abattoirs...
smells of long-dead meat.

Some day-end -
while the sand is yet cozy as a blanket
off the warm body of a squaw,
and the jaguars are out to kill...
with a blue-black night coming on
and a painted cloud
stalking the first star -
I shall go alone into the Silence...
the coiled Silence...
where a cry can run only a little way
and waver and dwindle
and be lost.

And there...
where tiny antlers clinch and strain
as life grapples in a million avid points,
and threshing things
strike and die,
letting their hate live on
in the spreading purple of a wound...
I too
will make covert of a...

Lola Ridge

Flotsam

Crass rays streaming from the vestibules;
Cafes glittering like jeweled teeth;
High-flung signs
Blinking yellow phosphorescent eyes;
Girls in black
Circling monotonously
About the orange lights...

Nothing to guess at...
Save the darkness above
Crouching like a great cat.

In the dim-lit square,
Where dishevelled trees
Tustle with the wind - the wind like a scythe
Mowing their last leaves -
Arcs shimmering through a greenish haze -
Pale oval arcs
Like ailing virgins,
Each out of a halo circumscribed,
Pallidly staring...

Figures drift upon the benches
With no more rustle than a dropped leaf settling -
Slovenly figures like untied parcels,
And papers wrapped about their knees
Huddled one to the other,
Cring...

Lola Ridge

Mother

I

Your love was like moonlight
turning harsh things to beauty,
so that little wry souls
reflecting each other obliquely
as in cracked mirrors...
beheld in your luminous spirit
their own reflection,
transfigured as in a shining stream,
and loved you for what they are not.

You are less an image in my mind
than a luster
I see you in gleams
pale as star-light on a gray wall...
evanescent as the reflection of a white swan
shimmering in broken water.

II

(To E. S.)

You inevitable,
Unwieldy with enormous births,
Lying on your back, eyes open, sucking down stars,
Or you kissing and picking over fresh deaths...
Filth... worms... flowers...
Green and succulent pods...
Tremulous gestation
Of dark w...

Lola Ridge

Substratum.

Hear you r o music in the creaks
    Made by the sallow grasshopper,
Who in the hot weeds sharply breaks
    The mellow dryness with his cheer?
    Or did you by the hearthstones hear
The cricket's kind, shrill strain when frost
    Worked mysteries of silver near
Upon the casement's panes, and lost
Without the gate-post seemed a sheeted ghost?

Or through the dank, dim Springtide's night
    Green minstrels of the marshlands tune
Their hoarse lyres in the pale twilight,
    Hailing the sickle of the moon
    From flag-thronged pools that glassed her lune?
Or in the Summer, dry and loud,
    The hard cicada whirr aboon
His long lay in a poplar's cloud,
When the thin heat rose wraith-like in a shroud?

The cloud that lids the naked moon,

Madison Julius Cawein

The Garden

Bountiful Givers,
I look along the years
And see the flowers you threw...
Anemones
And sprigs of gray
Sparse heather of the rocks,
Or a wild violet
Or daisy of a daisied field...
But each your best.

I might have worn them on my breast
To wilt in the long day...
I might have stemmed them in a narrow vase
And watched each petal sallowing...
I might have held them so - mechanically -
Till the wind winnowed all the leaves
And left upon my hands
A little smear of dust.

Instead
I hid them in the soft warm loam
Of a dim shadowed place...
Deep
In a still cool grotto,
Lit only by the memories of stars
And the wide and luminous eyes
Of dead poets
That love me and that I love...
Deep... deep...
Where none...

Lola Ridge

Under-Song

There is music in the strong
        Deep-throated bush,
Whisperings of song
        Heard in the leaves' hush -
Ballads of the trees
        In tongues unknown -
A reminiscent tone
        On minor keys...

Boughs swaying to and fro
        Though no winds pass...
Faint odors in the grass
        Where no flowers grow,
And flutterings of wings
        And faint first notes,
Once babbled on the boughs
        Of faded springs.

Is it music from the graves
        Of all things fair
Trembling on the staves
        Of spacious air -
Fluted by the winds
        Songs with no words -
Sonatas from the throats
        Of master birds?

One peering through the husk
        Of darkness thrown
May hear it...

Lola Ridge