This is almost certainly for ilza, but the race is open to allcomers.
What is the rest of this poem?
Black Monday Lovesong:
In love's dances, in love's dances
One retreats and one advances.
One grows warmer and one colder,
One more hesitant, one bolder.
Stephen
BLACK MONDAY -- LOVESONG--ASJ Tessimond
In love's dances, in love's dances
One retreats and one advances.
One grows warmer and one colder,
One more hesitant, one bolder.
One gives what the other needed
Once, or will need, now unheeded.
One is clenched, compact, ingrowing
While the other's melting, flowing.
One is smiling and concealing
While the other's asking, kneeling.
One is arguing or sleeping
While the other's weeping, weeping.
And the question finds no answer
And the tune misleads the dancer
And the lost look finds no other
And the lost hand finds no brother
And the word is left unspoken
Till the theme and thread are broken.
When shall these divisions alter?
Echo's answer seems to falter:
"Oh the unperplexed, unvexed time
Next time...one day...one day...next time!"
M
In love's dances, in love's dances
One retreats and one advances.
One grows warmer and one colder,
One more hesitant, one bolder.
One gives what the other needed
Once, or will need, now unheeded.
One is clenched, compact, ingrowing
While the other's melting, flowing.
One is smiling and concealing
While the other's asking, kneeling.
One is arguing or sleeping
While the other's weeping, weeping.
And the question finds no answer
And the tune misleads the dancer
And the lost look finds no other
And the lost hand finds no brother
And the word is left unspoken
Till the theme and thread are broken.
When shall these divisions alter?
Echo's answer seems to falter:
"Oh the unperplexed, unvexed time
Next time...one day...one day...next time!"
Glenda
I am sorry
for some reason I did not see your reply when posting mine
Thankyou ladies, both.
I have a copy of his "La Marche des Machines" which I found in a 1938 anthology. Is it in one of his published books?
Stephen
sorry, I don't know
Wow that brings back memories.
La Marche Des Machines (Suggested by Deslav's film)
This piston's infinite recurrence is
night morning night and morning night and death and birth and death and birth and this
crank climbs (blind Sisyphus) and see
steel teeth greet
bow deliberate
delicately lace
in lethal kiss
God's teeth bite whitely tight
slowly the gigantic oh slowly the steel spine dislocates
wheels grazing (accurately missing) waltz
two cranes do a hundred-ton tango against the sky.
A S J Tessimond
The poetry book from which I have copied it says the poem "appeared in New Signatures 1932. This was suggested by a Russian film. Both in subject and in its precise representation of mechanical motion the poem is a concentrated example of the contemporary interest in the internal combustion engine, evident in many fields of thought and action."
Anyone know anything about the film?
Stephen
it is Eugene Deslaw, not Deslav
La Marche des Machines 1928
Dir. Eugene Deslaw, b&w 5 min ( some say 7 minutes), silent
Early experimental film views the machine as a source of fascinating forms and functions
it doesn't seem too difficult to see a copy of it . . .
I can now say with certainty that La Marche de Machines is in the Collected Poems. I spent an enthralling afternoon in the Poetry Library on the South Bank, reading every bit of Tessimond I could find. And there was me thinking that I had discovered a lost poem! Ah well.
Anyone who wants to read a shedload of his stuff can now find it on the plagiarist.com site - whilst I was away from emule, I spent my time productively!
And thankyou again, ilza, for leading me to his work.
Stephen
you have been working hard !
so many poems !
thanks !!!
Posting things to plagiarist is very easy, and it does enable overlooked poets to achieve representation on the net. If you would like me to put any more on there, say the word, or you could try for yourself.
Have you ever been to London and the Poetry Library? It's awesome! Anything like it anywhere else in the world?
Stephen
I have an enquiry on the Poetry Library website which I can't answer. Can anyone help please?
The Tessimond poem has as its first line "When I first met you" and ends "These words are the beginning(s?)of my thanks".
Btw, his Complete Poems is now out of print. Anyone know where I can get a copy?
Stephen
Just tidying up - here's the poem. Good, innit?
FIRST MEETING
When I first met you I knew I had come at last home,
Home after wandering, home after long puzzled searching,
Home after long being wind-borne, wave-tossed, night-caught,
Long being lost;
And being with you as normal and needful and natural
As sleeping or waking; and I was myself, who had never
been wholly myself; I was walking and talking and laughing
Easily at last;
And the air was softer and sounds were sharper
And colours were brighter and the sky was higher
And length was not measured by milestones and time was not measured by clocks….
And this end was a beginning…
And these words are the beginning of my thanks.
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/20/2008 03:41AM by misterF.
Yes, it's a good one, Stephen.
Does it have a title?