The Star

Last night
I watched a star fall like a great pearl into the sea,
Till my ego expanding encompassed sea and star,
Containing both as in a trembling cup.

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

To The American People

Lola Ridge, Simple Poetry

Wall Street At Night

Lola Ridge, Simple Poetry

The Destroyer

Lola Ridge, Simple Poetry

Manhattan

Lola Ridge, Simple Poetry

English

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A Memory

I remember
The crackle of the palm trees
Over the mooned white roofs of the town...
The shining town...
And the tender fumbling of the surf
On the sulphur-yellow beaches
As we sat... a little apart... in the close-pressing night.

The moon hung above us like a golden mango,
And the moist air clung to our faces,
Warm and fragrant as the open mouth of a child
And we watched the out-flung sea
Rolling to the purple edge of the world,
Yet ever back upon itself...
As we...

Inadequate night...
And mooned white memory
Of a tropic sea...
How softly it comes up
Like an ungathered lily.

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

The Dream

I have a dream
to fill the golden sheath
of a remembered day....
(Air
heavy and massed and blue
as the vapor of opium...
domes
fired in sulphurous mist...
sea
quiescent as a gray seal...
and the emerging sun
spurting up gold
over Sydney, smoke-pale, rising out of the bay....)
But the day is an up-turned cup
and its sun a junk of red iron
guttering in sluggish-green water -
where shall I pour my dream?

Lola Ridge

Nocturne

Indigo bulb of darkness
Punctured by needle lights
Through a fissure of brick canyon shutting out stars,
And a sliver of moon
Spigoting two high windows over the West river....

Boy, I met to-night,
Your eyes are two red-glowing arcs shifting with my vision....
They reflect as in a fading proof
The deadened eyes of a woman,
And your shed virginity,
Light as the withered pod of a sweet pea,
Moist and fragrant
Blows against my soul.
What are you to me, boy,
That I, who have passed so many lights,
Should carry your eyes
Like swinging lanterns?

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

The Edge

I thought to die that night in the solitude where they would never find me...
But there was time...
And I lay quietly on the drawn knees of the mountain, staring into the abyss...
I do not know how long...
I could not count the hours, they ran so fast
Like little bare-foot urchins - shaking my hands away...
But I remember
Somewhere water trickled like a thin severed vein...
And a wind came out of the grass,
Touching me gently, tentatively, like a paw.

As the night grew
The gray cloud that had covered the sky like sackcloth
Fell in ashen folds about the hills,
Like hooded virgins, pulling their cloaks about them...
There must have been a spent moon,
For the Tall One's veil held a shimmer of silver...

That too I remember...
And the tenderly rock...

Lola Ridge