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Poetry by Carl Selph

Page 3

"And I am in despair that time may bring
Approved patterns of women or of men
  But not that selfsame excellence again."
                           --  W.B.Yeats

 

Song

 
Behold this age of wart and wen
that Demos -- strong, well-washed -- acclaims,
the loveliness of hydrogen.
Where are the souls that soared like flames?
      
 
Where walk those lithe and learnèd men?
Where plot those bright and baleful dames,
Minerva, they, and Magdalen?
Where beat those hearts the world acclaims?
      
 
The sweating world the great disfames.
The eagle's now a brevipen.
They faint, those bright and baleful dames.
They nod, those lithe and learnèd men.
      

© Carl Selph, 1993
    First published in The Lyric

 

Gino at Mass

 
Initiate of Mysteries,
He bows before the Hierophants,
God on his tongue.  Pains in his knees
Recall his new, expensive pants.
      
 
To Miniato's holy shrine
His vaguely kindred soul is led
To honor with the bread and wine
Another disconnected head.
      
 
Does sanctity perfume the air
From his petition, perfect, clean?
The aura glowing round his hair
Is the result of brilliantine.
      
 
A goatish smell makes one beware
The holiness in Gino's eyes
And hold as somewhat doctrinaire
The hasty news of Pan's demise.
 

© Carl Selph, 1999

(Note:  Miniato, a Roman soldier martyred for his 
Christian beliefs, climbed a hill beside the Arno carrying 
his severed head in his hands, set it down, and there a 
church was built.)
               
               

The Butcher

 
His taurine head may sign Cretan descent;
but, with a gaze like Ferdinand's, he cuts
a succulent small chop (perhaps
from a distant cousin's loin), each movement deft,
no finger risked, as one bull's eye takes in,
ankle to crotch, the long, brown, leaper's legs
come to the white-tiled heart of the labyrinth
to check the price of carnal tenderness.
      

© Carl Selph, 1999

 

The Greengrocer's Daughter

 
Amid raspberries, canteloupes,
fresh lettuces and shelled white beans,
potatoes, broccoli, asparagus,
dimpled and fat before the shining scale
she rises like the Venus, gold and rose,
accepting with a calm regard
a sacrifice of cabbages
as tribute to her lavish limbs.
      

© Carl Selph, 1999

All text on this page is copyrighted by Carl Selph and appears here by permission. All rights reserved. It may not be archived beyond one personal electronic copy for offline reading; such a copy must include the entire text of the present notice and the author's name. It may not be printed, posted on a web-site, distributed publicly or privately, used or quoted in whole or in part, or published in any manner or form whatsoever without the author's explicit permission. E-mail Wordreign to contact Carl Selph and your request will be promptly forwarded.

 

 

 

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