Lola RIDGE: 2 Poems

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

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