Sunday, January 23, 2011

The Last Romantic




Give me Barrett and Browning, Shelley,
Burns and the Lord
Byron, the words of muses, long before
Wastelands were heard,
crying for recognition,
crying for a day called their own;
just give me Blake’s, Tyger with eyes blazing,
in fearful symmetry, and give me
Keats, before I have fears that I may cease be..
no more, and pass into nothingness

No joy can I find, in naked howling minds
destroyed by madness; children screaming in the
stairway, let me leave this world, frozen to
melt another day, not this day;
this day, I shall Meet in aspect and her eyes;
Thus mellowed to the tender light, and sip wine
with the Lord by candlelight

 
In serene drunkenness these words
will be my days, my nights, at will –
Escape me? Never –lost I would be
without my Beloved! While I am I,
and Elizabeth you are you -
redefined past principles form on
My letters! All dead paper, mute and white!
Is that you Elizabeth?


It will come death, my calendar
marked by fate, And, friends,
dear friends, -when it shall be
that this low breath is gone from me,
my last plea and will is only this - before
that last door locked tight,  that my
left hand bear a volume of Browning;
Barrett’s Sonnets to my heart
crossed right...


bkmackenzie
copyrighted  2008


Note: All words highlighted Bold are words from, Barrett, Browning, Blake, Keats, Byron, and Ginsberg - title Wastelands by T.S. Elliot


this is a piece I wrote a couple of years ago...and posted for Poets United Poetry Pantry.

25 comments:

  1. This is an amazing read, bkm.......romantic, as is all of your work. Love the form, a mixture of your words and the great poets of history, what a wonderful idea! Yiur words fit right in there with theirs, as if you are of their era......fantastic writing!

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  2. What a romantic-at-heart poet you are! So powerful!

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  3. Bkm, this ia a beautiful poem. Words of fantastic poets delicately entwined with your words. Thank you for sharing.

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  4. thank you ...I love the Romantics...and your comments mean so much thank you again....bkm

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  5. You are so clearly a lover of the classics, perhaps dropped here from another place and time.

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  6. Barbara,

    First loves in poetry were indeed of the Byron/Keats type. For sure, mine.

    In college, my faves bent. After all, I was schooled in late modernist times. So: the 'metaphysicals' revived by Eliot and Eliot himself, his 20th Century wasteland.

    Not too much into the Beats -- style too wildly tied to behaviors I wouldn't go to.

    But when I think about the 19th Century, I see a naively revolutionary or frumpy reactionary 'set of mindsets'.

    I'm a 'late 20th Century Romantic', sort of, spelled with a capital 'I' for 'Irony'.

    With a healthy diet.

    Trulyfool

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  7. An EBB tide for sure..

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  8. One of the few benefits of living now is that this remarkable feast of poetry is all spread upon the table for us. You've sewn together some beautiful embroidery here, bkm.

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  9. A romantic write Barb, beautiful and moving.
    Pamela

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  10. many thanks...I am a believer that though the romantics seem to go in and out of style the subject of romance never does....bkm

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  11. I love the old words made new again.

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  12. Very nice writing. I'm a sucker for the old poets too.

    'Had we but world enough, and time,
    This coyness, lady, were no crime...'

    Andrew Marvell

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  13. thank you for that Paul,what a beautiful quote by Marvell - can romance ever be a crime?...just lovely...bkm

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  14. Intensely powerful write....you know I love the classics and your poetry!

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  15. ah you picked some greats to include...i have just recently started reding shelley...and romance is always a fav to read...

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  16. wonderful...makes me want to go back and read them again and again...this is a bit of "found poetry" isn't it? ironic? :)

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  17. Yes Sheila, I thought it ironic too, being I decided to post this one then soon went to reading yours...must be in the air....bkm

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  18. Trulyfool, I never got into the Beats either...I was way too isolated...being on a 200 acre farm in the middle of the midwest...I was lucky to get a copy of Browning's Sonnets...we are never to late to become a romantic....bkm

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  19. I always admire your words you choose in writing poetry..I enjoyed this read

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  20. I am a Beat lover, but there is such beauty in Browning.

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  21. How well you have included the words of my favourite poets in your poem...I couldn't agree with you more. Give me those guys any time :)

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  22. Really well crafted, a poem among poems

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  23. really rich and fabulous, lovely to read!

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