Harry Crosby Fire Poems
- 1. Invocation To The Mad Queen
I would you were the hollow ship
fashioned to bear the cargo of my love
the unrelenting glove
hurled in defiance at our blackest world
... - 2. Ritual
Venus is sleeping with Fire
Because it is winter and cold
With Echo
... - 3. Scorn
You business men with your large desks with your stenographers and your bell-boys and your private telephones I say to you these are the four walls of your cage.
You are tame as canaries with your small bird-brains where lurks the evil worm you are fat from being over-fed you know not the lean wild sunbirds that arrow down paths of fire.
I despise you. I am too hard to pity you. I would hang you on the gallows of the Stock Exchange. I would flay you with taxes. I would burn you alive with Wall Street Journals. I wouild condemn you to an endless round of bank banquets. I deride you. I mock at you. I laugh you to scorn.
... - 4. Quatrains To The Sun
I
A sunfort flourished in my sunless heart
Beyond the Sun. Here in a tower apart
The sunbirds of my lady's eyes were caged
... - 5. Assassin
I exchange eyes with the Mad Queen.
The mirror crashes against my face and bursts into a thousand suns. all over the city flags cracle and bang. Fog horns scream in the harbor. The wind hurricanes through the window. Tornadoes are unmuzzled as I begin to dance the dance of the Kurd Shepherds.
I stamp upon the floor. I whirl like dervishes. Colors revolve dressing and undressing. I lash them with fury stark white with iron black harsh red with blue marble green with bright orange and only gold remains naked. I roar with joy.
Black-footed ferrets disappear into holes.
... - 6. Threnody
O ye who claim to be our loyal friends
Come now and build for us a funeral pyre,
And lay our emptied bodies on the fire,
Pray for our souls, murmur your sad amens;
... - 7. I Drink To The Sun
Mad day flags crackling in the dawn the sharp intensity of drink dentelleries thrown over the mill fire sun and candlelight and at midnight I squeeze the juice of the silver fruit of the moon into the red glass of my heart. I drink to the Sun who lies concealed in his bed under the sheets of night. In the morning he will rise like a Red Indian to run his marathon across the sky.
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