Books, by Benjamin Hummel

Railing at M'lady

I'm incensed with you, Vincent

            But adore your poetry, your gift

The gemmy words studding

            The pages where I've found them

Irish waters by a Cornish prow

            Sonnets by the dozen.

You are to me, an historical anomaly

            1916 girls should be pure and demure

Not given to lovers chasing them

            To Paris, or back and forth across the Channel!

Ah, curse wealth and privilege, fame and fortune,

            Skill with the mouth, tongue and pen,

Why must they so inevitably lead to abandon? 

            Wherefore Anais Nin?

Damn it, poet!  I'm sure I would've been among

            The manly crowd admiring, longing, lusting

After your red, red lips, your flaming tresses.  Perhaps even, scaling that tower,

            I'd have shared in your collective social malaises, Millay.

I refuse to read your biographies because

            I'm jealous, out of season, out of time,

I want Paris, too, the cafes, the words

            Glittering like dark red wine in crystal stems,

And tall, strong Nordic companions

            Wearing crowns of red and gold or onyx

Like the shepherdess of Shulam.

            You died before I was conceived! 

                        But I've snitched snippets of your life

In the Borders stacks, furtively reading in the middle

            Looking at the pictures, an undisciplined hack. 

Your rhyme and rhythm enrapture me, wile’d flapper!

            And I wish I had been on the field then

I'd've won your heart, composed you verse

            To show you how, impossibly, I understood!

I know!  My blood is as red, my words as good.

            That I can love and long with the

Best of them -  with you!      

                                    For you. 

But I have nothing to commend me

            No one knows these words, my languages

Are all foreign, oriental, scented with cloves and

Black pepper, cinnamon and tea, I have no proper degree

No peerage, no land, or horses, houses, industries.

            I've not been to Paris, I haven't known women. 

Only jungle and granite, and deep blue saltwater. 

Your price is ever beyond my means, as are all the beautiful

            Ones, the brilliant ones, the red lipped ones, catching the eye

With hooks and tearing the heart, provoking love.

            And all I am able to do is pound out my longing

In words that tumble, and do not flow like the streams from your mouth. 

            You did some pounding, too, perchance.  But you had fulfillment right

There!  Why were you not happy with your English god and all

            His sycophants?  The lesser gods before and after? 

And here I am all out of time

            My white charger pawing sand, proud silver

Armor dulled by corroding air, chipped sword in hand

            Seeking a flat horizon for the damsel in distress.

Chivalry did not die with Alfred Lord, that Quixotic Victorian,

            But my sword, my pen are impotent.

Failing even now to rescue the living

            Sending for the dead 

For places in the realms of vision

            Where dreams succeed, dragons are slain. 

Pity, they are so soft

            Rather they were as real as pain.