老姚拾麦: November, 2006

November 27

Red Shoes - Andrew Motion

Reaching the restaurant late
I find the empty shells
Of your gloves on the cold kerb:

Stretchy, crushed red velvet
Which slithered off your lap
To float in the sodium stream.

What could they mean, except
You have arrived before me,
And simply taken your place?

The things we forget, or lose,
Live in a heaven of debris,
Waiting for us to collect them;

Already your naked hands
Are fluttering over the table,
Missing they don't know what.

November 17

Was this the face that launch'd a thousand ships,

And burnt the topless towers of Ilium?

Sweet Helen, make me immortal with a kiss.

Her lips suck forth my soul: see, where it flies!

Come, Helen, come, give me my soul again.

Here will I dwell, for heaven is in these lips,

And all is dross that is not Helena.

I will be Paris, and for love of thee,

Instead of Troy, shall Wittenberg be sack'd;

And I will combat with weak Menelaus,

And wear thy colours on my plumed crest;

Yea, I will wound Achilles in the heel,

And then return to Helen for a kiss.

O, thou art fairer than the evening air

Clad in the beauty of a thousand stars;

Brighter art thou than flaming Jupiter

When he appear'd to hapless Semele;

More lovely than the monarch of the sky

In wanton Arethusa's azur'd arms;

And none but thou shalt be my paramour!

Christopher Marlowe

November 14

The first day that you ran in to the sun,

Sweat dissolves from blood, lubricating

between the thunder and ground

Voices come from all over the place

Quarrels to ring me like a bell.

Ass flicks upon the sky,

The hole stares down like a little god,

To tell you there are really no differences

between women and men,

evil or good.