Tagged : Millay

in Books, Poetry

Miss-Chief

Outrageous shenanigans shall be afoot:

She’s a hunter. Hehe. :)

“The Penitent”
by Edna St. Vincent Millay

I had a little Sorrow,
Born of a little Sin,
I found a room all damp with gloom
And shut us all within;
And, “Little Sorrow, weep,” said I,
“And, Little Sin, pray God to die,
And I upon the floor will lie
And think how bad I’ve been!”

Alas for pious planning –
It mattered not a whit!
As far as gloom went in that room,
The lamp might have been lit!
My little Sorrow would not weep,
My little Sin would go to sleep –
To save my soul I could not keep
My graceless mind on it!

So I got up in anger,
And took a book I had,
And put a ribbon on my my hair
To please a passing lad,
And, “One thing there’s no getting by –
I’ve been a wicked girl,” said I:
“But if I can’t be sorry, why,
I might as well be glad!”

in Books, Poetry

Night Verse

Stymied, I am. So, poetry.

“First Fig”
by Edna St. Vincent Millay

My candle burns at both ends;
It will not last the night;
But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends –
It gives a lovely light!

That’s is alright. Only a faint whiff of death – Edna really likes to talk about death. Death of life, death of love. Let’s see what I can scare up…

“Dirge Without Music”
by Edna (Again)

I am not resigned to the shutting away of loving hearts in the hard ground.
So it is, and so it will be, for so it has been, time out of mind:
Into the darkness they go, the wise and the lovely. Crowned
With lilies and with laurel they go; but I am not resigned.

Lovers and thinkers, into the earth with you.
Be one with the dull, the indiscriminate dust.
A fragment of what you felt, of what you knew,
A formula, a phrase remains, – but the best is lost.

The answers quick and keen, the honest look, the laughter, the love, –
They are gone. They are gone to feed the roses. Elegant and curled
Is the blossom. Fragrant is the blossom. I know. But I do not approve.
More precious was the light in your eyes than all the roses in the world.

Down, down, down into the darkness of the grave
Gently they go, the beautiful, the tender, the kind;
Quietly they go, the intelligent, the witty, the brave.
I know. But I do not approve. And I am not resigned.

But then, there is this, gentler:

“iii”
by The ED-NA

Mindful of you the sodden earth in spring,
And all the flowers that in the springtime grow;
And dusty roads, and thistles, and the slow
Rising of the round moon; all throats that sing
The summer through, and each departing wing,
And all the nests that the bared branches show;
And all winds that in any weather blow,
And all the storms that the four seasons bring.
You go no more on your exultant feet
Up paths that only mist and morning knew;
Or watch the wind, or listen to the beat
Of a bird’s wings too high in air to view, –
But you were something more than young and sweet
And fair, – and the long year remembers you.

And then something completely different…

“My Dream”
by Ogden Nash

This is my dream,
It is my own dream,
I dreamt it.
I dreamt that my hair was kempt.
Then I dreamt that my true love unkempt it.

And now, I’m going to bed.

in Books, Poetry, Games, Life of Giang

Not Giving A Fuck

Oooh, I cussed.

It was an okay day. Everything went haywire at work, my bosses were both on edge, and it took me 1 hour and 15 minutes to make my 20 mile drive home. But then I got home and I thought – you know, taken in perspective, it does not really matter. I did not do anyone any harm today, and even helped, in my small way, to make the days of the people around me run a little bit smoother. It’s not Albert Schweitzer, but it was – you know – okay.

It was also the weekly designated ‘out’ night – ‘out’ away from gaming, away from work, away from anything I am even close to thinking about worrying about (as I am of the worrying variety of odd-duck). Felt good. Wanna see? ;)

Sis Quyen and her boyfriend Jason – this pretty much sums up their relationship. ;)

Some silly monkey wearing glasses that don’t belong to her. And yes, that’s just the glow of good health and excellent (80 proof) spirits in her cheeks.

Our obliging waiter. Rock on, dude.

Sometimes there are just moments of lucidity. We are all very silly creatures living in a big sea monkey globe, after all. There may be no absolute goods or absolute evils, but you know – I can tell when people are being assholes. That’s enough. I’m on it. On it!

Soooo. What was I saying?

Yesterday, we ran Zul’Gurub. We concluded at Mar’li, and there was some spankage. Opinion rages in the Insufficient Light mailing list on whether we were down healers, or we needed better poison control. It is both, really. We were down two healers from our usual group, and down to 16 or 17 players overall, and with our one shaman on poison and our druid running poison backup, and only two priests…it was a little rough. But I have faith that our thinkers will out-brain the wench, and on that day, I will bring you another triumphant silly picture. Till then, only images of death and destructification. Okay, and Murky, too. ;)

It’s true what they say: a leper’s best friend is her murloc.

Play dead, Moo! Oh. Waiiiiit…

And, I am for bed now. One last thing, but I am saying goodnight now, my much-loved sillies. ;)

excerpt from “Journal”
by Edna St. Vincent Millay

This book, when I am dead, will be
A little faint perfume of me.
People who knew me well will say,
“She really used to think that way.”
I do not write it to survive
My mortal self, but, being alive
And full of curious thoughts today,
It pleases me, somehow, to say,
“This book when I am dead will be
A little faint perfume of me.”

in Books, Poetry

A Better Post

I don’t want that last post to be the front runner anymore. It’s a beautiful day. I’ve had juice, and string cheese, and am fairly certain I will not have to brave the outside world again today for anything. Happiness settles in, when these things align. :)

“Afternoon on a Hill”
by Edna St. Vincent Millay

I will be the gladdest thing
Under the sun!
I will touch a hundred flowers
And not pick one.

I will look at cliffs and clouds
With quiet eyes,
Watch the wind bow down the grass,
And the grass rise.

And when lights begin to show
Up from the town,
I will mark which must be mine,
And then start down!

Cheers, duckies. :)

in Books, Poetry

A Good Thing

A thirty minute commute home is a gift. :) Being thusly blessed tonight, I hereby forego my usual fripperous rant. Be fruitful and multiply, and remember all the good things – I love you all like honey on bees! ;)

“Recuerdo”
by Edna St. Vincent Millay

We were very tired, we were very merry—
We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry.
It was bare and bright, and smelled like a stable—
But we looked into a fire, we leaned across a table,
We lay on a hill-top underneath the moon;
And the whistles kept blowing, and the dawn came soon.

We were very tired, we were very merry—
We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry;
And you ate an apple, and I ate a pear,
From a dozen of each we had bought somewhere;
And the sky went wan, and the wind came cold,
And the sun rose dripping, a bucketful of gold.

We were very tired, we were very merry,
We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry.
We hailed “Good morrow, mother!” to a shawl-covered head,
And bought a morning paper, which neither of us read;
And she wept, “God bless you!” for the apples and pears,
And we gave her all our money but our subway fares.

in Books, Poetry

Some Wandering Barks More Than Others

Sleepy. Will sleep. After some poetry. ;) Take care, my darlings.

“Bluebeard”
by Edna St. Vincent Millay

This door you might not open, and you did;
So enter now, and see for what slight thing
You are betrayed….Here is no treasure hid,
No cauldron, no clear crystal mirroring
The sought-for Truth, no heads of women slain
For greed like yours, no writhings of distress;
But only what you see….Look yet again:
An empty room, cobwebbed and comfortless.
Yet this alone out of my life I kept
Unto myself, lest any know me quite;
And you did so profane me when you crept
Unto the threshold of this room tonight
That I must never more behold your face.
This now is yours. I seek another place.

“I Knew A Woman”
by Theodore Roethke

I knew a woman, lovely in her bones,
When small birds sighed, she would sigh back at them;
Ah, when she moved, she moved more ways than one:
The shapes a bright container can contain!
Of her choice virtues only gods should speak,
Or English poets who grew up on Greek
(I’d have them sing in chorus, cheek to cheek.)

How well her wishes went! She stroked my chin,
She taught me Turn, and Counter-turn, and stand;
She taught me Touch, that undulant white skin:
I nibbled meekly from her proffered hand;
She was the sickle; I, poor I, the rake,
Coming behind her for her pretty sake
(But what prodigious mowing did we make.)

Love likes a gander, and adores a goose:
Her full lips pursed, the errant note to seize;
She played it quick, she played it light and loose;
My eyes, they dazzled at her flowing knees;
Her several parts could keep a pure repose,
Or one hip quiver with a mobile nose
(She moved in circles, and those circles moved.)

Let seed be grass, and grass turn into hay:
I’m martyr to a motion not my own;
What’s freedom for? To know eternity.
I swear she cast a shadow white as stone.
But who would count eternity in days?
These old bones live to learn her wanton ways:
(I measure time by how a body sways.)

in Books, Poetry

“L”

by Edna St. Vincent Millay

The heart once broken is a heart no more,
And is absolved from all a heart must be;
All that is signed or chartered heretofore
Is cancelled now, the bankrupt heart is free;
So much of duty as you may require
Of shards and dust, this and no more of pain,
This and no more of hope, remorse, desire,
The heart once broken need support again.
How simple ’tis, and what a little sound
It makes in breaking, let the world attest:
It struggles, and it fails; the world goes round,
And the moon follows it. Heart in my breast,
‘Tis half a year now since you broke in two;
The world’s forgotten well, if the world knew.

in Books, Poetry

“To the Wife of a Sick Friend”

by Edna St. Vincent Millay

Shelter this candle from the wind.
Hold it steady. In its light
The cave wherein we wander lost
Glitters with frosty stalactite,
Blossoms with mineral rose and lotus,
Sparkles with crystal moon and star,
Till a man would rather be lost than found:
We have forgotten where we are.

Shelter this candle. Shrewdly blowing
Down the cave from a secret door
Enters our only foe, the wind.
Hold it steady. Lest we stand,
Each in a sudden, separate dark,
The hot wax spattered upon your hand,
The smoking wick in my nostrils strong,
The inner eyelid red and green
For a moment yet with moons and roses, –
Then the unmitigated dark.

Alone, alone, in a terrible place,
In utter dark without a face,
With only the dripping of the water on the stone,
And the sound of your tears, and the taste of my own.

in Life of Giang

The Inner Geek, Part I
And Other Things, Too

Why is it when I have worked so hard to get stress out of my life, I always end up screwing the pooch right back in through the dog door?

Alexis and I are “collaborating”. We are “collaborators” on a joint writing “project”. Which isn’t so bad, in fact – I’m excited about it. We are brilliant and so wonderfully pithy, everyone will flock to us and demand more! Or at least, we will amuse ourselves for a few moments before the crushing weight of reality caves in on us (not completely…there is always the lottery). But lo and behold, what do I see on my non-responsibility calendar, but a sketched in due date? What is this?

I’m convinced Alexis is enjoying herself. She’s the one in grad school, and yet somehow, I have been bamboozled into a writing “project” with her, complete with due dates and all. So you know how this is going to end – she will get the MFA to show for her brilliance (thoroughly deserved, though if you say so to her, she will just put you on her “list”), and I will get the distinguished honor of being the unlettered kook at the party who talks about “projects” and “collaborations”, and uses the word “fascinating”.

And then, I wonder – if I had made one different decision on the road somewhere, could I have been a non-geek? Is there a pivotal moment, a point at which the see-saw is completely even, and you can choose to tip it either way? If I hop in a Delorian, and give myself Zuzu’s petals, can I, too, be a “normal” girl? Is there some “normal” me out there? And if so, does she ever have the longing to be a geek?

Things I will discuss later. I’m not sure that was germane at all. To anything. But it’s 3:29, I have a license to be as disjointed in thought as I darn well please. And on to the next.

Who else thinks Emily Dickinson was a lesbian, raise your hand! My sister is determined to prove she was, and spent a good 15 minutes wading through the internet, finding this site:

http://www.sappho.com/letters/e_dickinsn.html

I am not too bright, but I think the site itself might be teetering towards one school of thought on the matter. What do I think? I think the homosexual community is being too greedy! They’ve gotten Uncle Walt, they have half of Edna St. Vincent Millay, and a big chunk (or I am much mistook by his lovely, lovely portrait) of Lord Byron, and now they want Emily? I’ve had enough – dibs on Carl Sandburg being Asian! Squint, Carl, Squint!

If people came to this site, I would be fired. So fired. But for now, I say goodnight. I will be back. Soon. Ahaha.

in Books, Poetry

“XXIX”

by Edna St. Vincent Millay

Heart, have no pity on this house of bone:
Shake it with dancing, break it down with joy.
No man holds mortgage on it; it is your own;
To give, to sell at auction, to destroy.
When you are blind to moonlight on the bed,
When you are deaf to gravel on the pane,
Shall quavering caution from this house instead
Cluck forth at summer mischief in the lane?
‘All that delightful youth forbears to spend
Molestful age inherits, and the ground
Will have us; therefore, while we’re young, my friend —’
The Latin’s vulgar, but the advice is sound.
Youth, have no pity; leave no farthing here
For age to invest in compromise and fear.