Purple as tulips in May, mauve
into lush velvet, purple
as the stain blackberries leave
on the lips, on the hands,
the purple of ripe grapes
sunlit and warm as flesh.
Every day I will give you a color,
like a new flower in a bud vase
on your desk. Every day
I will paint you, as women
color each other with henna
on hands and on feet.
Red as henna, as cinnamon,
as coals after the fire is banked,
the cardinal in the feeder,
the roses tumbling on the arbor
their weight bending the wood
the red of the syrup I make from petals.
Orange as the perfumed fruit
hanging their globes on the glossy tree,
orange as pumpkins in the field,
orange as butterflyweed and the monarchs
who come to eat it, orange as my
cat running lithe through the high grass.
Yellow as a goat’s wise and wicked eyes,
yellow as a hill of daffodils,
yellow as dandelions by the highway,
yellow as butter and egg yolks,
yellow as a school bus stopping you,
yellow as a slicker in a downpour.
Here is my bouquet, here is a sing
song of all the things you make
me think of, here is oblique
praise for the height and depth
of you and the width too.
Here is my box of new crayons at your feet.
Green as mint jelly, green
as a frog on a lily pad twanging,
the green of cos lettuce upright
about to bolt into opulent towers,
green as Grand Chartreuse in a clear
glass, green as wine bottles.
Blue as cornflowers, delphiniums,
bachelors’ buttons. Blue as Roquefort,
blue as Saga. Blue as still water.
Blue as the eyes of a Siamese cat.
Blue as shadows on new snow, as a spring
azure sipping from a puddle on the blacktop.
Cobalt as the midnight sky
when day has gone without a trace
and we lie in each other’s arms
eyes shut and fingers open
and all the colors of the world
pass through our bodies like strings of fire.
End of the poem
15 random poems
- Юнна Мориц – Вместо сноски
- Михаил Лермонтов – В рядах стояли безмолвной толпой
- The Bangle Sellers by Sarojini Naidu
- The Fairies’ Siege by Rudyard Kipling
- Life, wait for me by Martin Zakovski
- Владимир Высоцкий – Свет потушите, вырубите звук
- The Rice Boat
- Eudaemonism In A Senryu Novel
- Ольга Берггольц – От сердца к сердцу
- Алексей Плещеев – Цветок
- Epistle to John Rankine by Robert Burns
- Love Preparing to Fly poem – Gerard Manley Hopkins poems
- Sonnet 77: Thy glass will show thee how thy beauties wear by William Shakespeare
- Владимир Маяковский – Notre-Dame
- The place that is dark without space and the moonlight off the pond (The Gray) by Olivia Lewis
Some external links:
Duckduckgo.com – the alternative in the US
Quant.com – a search engine from France, and also an alternative, at least for Europe
Yandex – the Russian search engine (it’s probably the best search engine for image searches).