Two Poems by Eugenio Montale
Bring me the sunflower so I can plant / it in my salt-scorched patch of earth, so it can throw / back to the day’s reflecting blue / the anguish of its upturned, yellow face.
Author: Donald McGrath
Skating (after Verlaine)
We were seduced, Madame, by /
mutual machinations, duped, /
you and I, by summer’s mayhem /
pounding on our overheated craniums.
Graveyard by the Sea by Paul Valéry
This quiet roof where doves stray and dip
Pulsates between the pines, the tombs.
Out of fire even-handed noon composes
The sea, the sea, ever recommencing.
O what recompense after thought’s travail
This long gazing on the gods’ repose!
The Drunken Boat by Arthur Rimbaud
As I came drifting down unruffled rivers,
I could no longer feel the haulers’ guiding pulls.
Redskins had taken the boatmen for bull’s-eyes
and, hooting, nailed them naked to painted poles.