[Ed Shacklee]

Here's one by Elizabeth Bishop that wouldn't qualify, except for the last three lines --



Cirque d’Hiver

Across the floor flits the mechanical toy,
fit for a king of several centuries back.
A little circus horse with real white hair;
His eyes are glossy black.
He bears a little dancer on his back.

She stands upon her toes and turns and turns.
A slanting spray of artificial roses
is stitched across her skirt and tinsel bodice.
Above her head she poses
another spray of artificial roses.

His mane and tail are straight from Chirico.
He has a formal, melancholy soul.
He feels her pink toes dangle on his back
along the little pole
that pierces both her body and her soul

and goes through his, and reappears below,
under his belly, as a big tin key.
He canters three steps, then he makes a bow,
canters again, bows on one knee,
canters, then clicks and stops, and looks at me.

The dancer, by this time, has turned her back.
He is the more intelligent by far.
Facing each other rather desperately –
his eye is like a star –
we stare and say, “Well, we have come this far.”

[Jeff Holt]

John,

Thanks for your post--I agree strongly that Larkin's poem was about a state of mind, and, as I tried to explain when I posted it, I think that it is the best poetic representation of that state of mind I have ever seen. I also don't believe in "God," in any traditional sense, but I'm open to being proved wrong about it.

My main point is, as it has been throughout this thread, that for people in the right state of mind, it can be a healing poem, in that such people can read it and see that someone else has so clearly elucidated what they have been feeling. At the very least, they can then feel a sense of community. More than that, they may actually feel more of a sense of sanity, if they were feeling any doubts about that.

[Ed Shacklee]

It seems we're running out of despair, of the quiet kind, at least. Here's one by Lousie Bogan that might qualify: it's beautiful, anyway --



Winter Swan

It is a hollow garden, under the cloud;
Beneath the wheel a hollow earth is turned;
Within the mind the live blood shouts aloud;
Under the breast the willing blood is burned,
Shut with the fire passed and the fire returned.
But speak, you proud!
Where lies the leaf-caught world once thought abiding,
Now but a dry disarray and artifice?
Here, to the ripple cut by the cold, drifts this
Bird, the long throat bent back, the eyes in hiding.