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Lola Ridge
(1873-1941)
BABEL
Oh, God did cunningly, there at Babel–
Not mere tongues dividing, but soul from soul,
So that never again should men be able
To fashion one infinite, towering whole.
BROOKLYN BRIDGE
Pythoness body–arching
Over the night like an ecstasy–
I feel your coils tightening…
And the world’s lessening breath.
DREAMS
Men die…
Dreams only change their houses.
They cannot be lined up against a wall
And quietly buried under ground,
And no more heard of…
However deep the pit and heaped the clay–
Like seedlings of old time
Hooding a sacred rose under the ice cap of the world–
Dreams will to light.
LULLABY
Rock-a-by baby, woolly and brown…
(There’s a shout at the door an’ a big red light…)
Lil’ coon baby, mammy is down…
Han’s that hold yuh are steady an’ white…
Look piccaninny–such a gran’ blaze
Lickin’ up the roof an’ the sticks of home–
Ever see the like in all yo’ days!
–Cain’t yuh sleep, mah bit-of-honey-comb?
Rock-a-by baby, up to the sky!
Look at the cherries driftin’ by–
Bright red cherries spilled on the groun’–
Piping-hot cherries at nuthin’ a poun’!
Hush, mah lil’ black-bug–doan yuh weep.
Daddy’s run away an’ mammy’s in a heap
By her own fron’ door in the blazin’ heat
Outah the shacks like warts on the street…
An’ the singin’ flame an’ the gleeful crowd
Circlin’ aroun’… won’t mammy be proud!
With a stone at her hade an’ a stone on her heart,
An’ her mouth like a red plum, broken apart…
See where the blue an’ khaki prance,
Adding brave colors to the dance
About the big bonfire white folks make–
Such gran’ doin’s fo’ a lil’ coon’s sake!
Hear all the eagah feet runnin’ in town–
See all the willin’ han’s reach outah night–
Han’s that are wonderful, steady an’ white!
To toss up a lil’ babe, blinkin’ an’ brown…
Rock-a-by baby–higher an’ higher!
Mammy is sleepin’ an’ daddy’s run lame…
(Soun’ may yuh sleep in yo’ cradle o’ fire!)
Rock-a-by baby, hushed in the flame…
(An incident of the East St. Louis Race Riots, when some white women
flung a living colored baby into the heart of a blazing fire.)
LOLA RIDGE POETRY
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Lola Ridge
(1873-1941)
THE EDGE
I thought to die that night in the solitude where they would never find me…
But there was time…
And I lay quietly on the drawn knees of the mountain,
staring into the abyss…
I do not know how long…
I could not count the hours, they ran so fast
Like little bare-foot urchins–shaking my hands away…
But I remember
Somewhere water trickled like a thin severed vein…
And a wind came out of the grass,
Touching me gently, tentatively, like a paw.
As the night grew
The gray cloud that had covered the sky like sackcloth
Fell in ashen folds about the hills,
Like hooded virgins, pulling their cloaks about them…
There must have been a spent moon,
For the Tall One’s veil held a shimmer of silver…
That too I remember…
And the tenderly rocking mountain
Silence
And beating stars…
Dawn
Lay like a waxen hand upon the world,
And folded hills
Broke into a sudden wonder of peaks, stemming clear and cold,
Till the Tall One bloomed like a lily,
Flecked with sun,
Fine as a golden pollen–
It seemed a wind might blow it from the snow.
I smelled the raw sweet essences of things,
And heard spiders in the leaves
And ticking of little feet,
As tiny creatures came out of their doors
To see God pouring light into his star…
… It seemed life held
No future and no past but this…
And I too got up stiffly from the earth,
And held my heart up like a cup…
ART AND LIFE
When Art goes bounding, lean,
Up hill-tops fired green
To pluck a rose for life.
Life like a broody hen
Cluck-clucks him back again.
But when Art, imbecile,
Sits old and chill
On sidings shaven clean,
And counts his clustering
Dead daisies on a string
With witless laughter….
Then like a new Jill
Toiling up a hill
Life scrambles after.
LOLA RIDGE POETRY
kempis poetry magazine
More in: Ridge, Lola
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Lola Ridge
(1873-1941)
THE SONG OF IRON
I
Not yet hast Thou sounded
Thy clangorous music,
Whose strings are under the mountains…
Not yet hast Thou spoken
The blooded, implacable Word…
But I hear in the Iron singing–
In the triumphant roaring of the steam and pistons pounding–
Thy barbaric exhortation…
And the blood leaps in my arteries, unreproved,
Answering Thy call…
All my spirit is inundated with the tumultuous passion of Thy Voice,
And sings exultant with the Iron,
For now I know I too am of Thy Chosen…
Oh fashioned in fire–
Needing flame for Thy ultimate word–
Behold me, a cupola
Poured to Thy use!
Heed not my tremulous body
That faints in the grip of Thy gauntlet.
Break it… and cast it aside…
But make of my spirit
That dares and endures
Thy crucible…
Pour through my soul
Thy molten, world-whelming song.
… Here at Thy uttermost gate
Like a new Mary, I wait…
II
Charge the blast furnace, workman…
Open the valves–
Drive the fires high…
(Night is above the gates).
How golden-hot the ore is
From the cupola spurting,
Tossing the flaming petals
Over the silt and furnace ash–
Blown leaves, devastating,
Falling about the world…
Out of the furnace mouth–
Out of the giant mouth–
The raging, turgid, mouth–
Fall fiery blossoms
Gold with the gold of buttercups
In a field at sunset,
Or huskier gold of dandelions,
Warmed in sun-leavings,
Or changing to the paler hue
At the creamy hearts of primroses.
Charge the converter, workman–
Tired from the long night?
But the earth shall suck up darkness–
The earth that holds so much…
And out of these molten flowers,
Shall shape the heavy fruit…
Then open the valves–
Drive the fires high,
Your blossoms nurturing.
(Day is at the gates
And a young wind…)
Put by your rod, comrade,
And look with me, shading your eyes…
Do you not see–
Through the lucent haze
Out of the converter rising–
In the spirals of fire
Smiting and blinding,
A shadowy shape
White as a flame of sacrifice,
Like a lily swaying?
III
The ore leaping in the crucibles,
The ore communicant,
Sending faint thrills along the leads…
Fire is running along the roots of the mountains…
I feel the long recoil of earth
As under a mighty quickening…
(Dawn is aglow in the light of the Iron…)
All palpitant, I wait…
IV
Here ye, Dictators–late Lords of the Iron,
Shut in your council rooms, palsied, depowered–
The blooded, implacable Word?
Not whispered in cloture, one to the other,
(Brother in fear of the fear of his brother…)
But chanted and thundered
On the brazen, articulate tongues of the Iron
Babbling in flame…
Sung to the rhythm of prisons dismantled,
Manacles riven and ramparts defaced…
(Hearts death-anointed yet hearing life calling…)
Ankle chains bursting and gallows unbraced…
Sung to the rhythm of arsenals burning…
Clangor of iron smashing on iron,
Turmoil of metal and dissonant baying
Of mail-sided monsters shattered asunder…
Hulks of black turbines all mangled and roaring,
Battering egress through ramparted walls…
Mouthing of engines, made rabid with power,
Into the holocaust snorting and plunging…
Mighty converters torn from their axis,
Flung to the furnaces, vomiting fire,
Jumbled in white-heaten masses disshapen…
Writhing in flame-tortured levers of iron…
Gnashing of steel serpents twisting and dying…
Screeching of steam-glutted cauldrons rending…
Shock of leviathans prone on each other…
Scaled flanks touching, ore entering ore…
Steel haunches closing and grappling and swaying
In the waltz of the mating locked mammoths of iron,
Tasting the turbulent fury of living,
Mad with a moment’s exuberant living!
Crash of devastating hammers despoiling..
Hands inexorable, marring
What hands had so cunningly moulded…
Structures of steel welded, subtily tempered,
Marvelous wrought of the wizards of ore,
Torn into octaves discordantly clashing,
Chords never final but onward progressing
In monstrous fusion of sound ever smiting on sound
in mad vortices whirling…
Till the ear, tortured, shrieks for cessation
Of the raving inharmonies hatefully mingling…
The fierce obligato the steel pipes are screaming…
The blare of the rude molten music of Iron…
LOLA RIDGE POETRY
kempis poetry magazine
More in: Ridge, Lola
Lola Ridge
(1873-1941)
Manhattan
Out of the night you burn, Manhattan,
In a vesture of gold –
Span of innumerable arcs,
Flaring and multiplying –
Gold at the uttermost circles fading
Into the tenderest hint of jade,
Or fusing in tremulous twilight blues,
Robing the far-flung offices,
Scintillant-storied, forking flame,
Or soaring to luminous amethyst
Over the steeples aureoled –
Diaphanous gold,
Veiling the Woolworth, argently
Rising slender and stark
Mellifluous-shrill as a vender’s cry,
And towers squatting graven and cold
On the velvet bales of the dark,
And the Singer’s appraising
Indolent idol’s eye,
And night like a purple cloth unrolled –
Nebulous gold
Throwing an ephemeral glory about life’s vanishing points,
Wherein you burn…
You of unknown voltage
Whirling on your axis…
Scrawling vermillion signatures
Over the night’s velvet hoarding…
Insolent, towering spherical
To apices ever shifting.
kempis poetry magazine
More in: Archive Q-R, Ridge, Lola
Lola Ridge
(1873-1941)
Broadway
Light!
Innumerable ions of light,
Kindling, irradiating,
All to their foci tending…
Light that jingles like anklet chains
On bevies of little lithe twinkling feet,
Or clingles in myriad vibrations
Like trillions of porcelain
Vases shattering…
Light over the laminae of roofs,
Diffusing in shimmering nebulae
About the night’s boundaries,
Or billowing in pearly foam
Submerging the low-lying stars…
Light for the feast prolonged –
Captive light in the goblets quivering…
Sparks evanescent
Struck of meeting looks –
Fringed eyelids leashing
Sheathed and leaping lights…
Infinite bubbles of light
Bursting, reforming…
Silvery filings of light
Incessantly falling…
Scintillant, sided dust of light
Out of the white flares of Broadway –
Like a great spurious diamond
In the night’s corsage faceted…
Broadway,
In ambuscades of light,
Drawing the charmed multitudes
With the slow suction of her breath –
Dangling her naked soul
Behind the blinding gold of eunuch lights
That wind about her like a bodyguard.
Or like a huge serpent, iridescent-scaled,
Trailing her coruscating length
Over the night prostrate –
Triumphant poised,
Her hydra heads above the avenues,
Values appraising
And her avid eyes
Glistening with eternal watchfulness…
Broadway –
Out of her towers rampant,
Like an unsubtle courtezan
Reserving nought for some adventurous night.
kempis poetry magazine
More in: Archive Q-R, Ridge, Lola
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