Collected Poems 1931-74

Metadata

• Author: Lawrence Durrell
• Full Title: Collected Poems 1931-74
• Category: #books

Highlights

• AT RHODES
  Anonymous hand, record one afternoon,
  In May, some time before the fig-leaf:
  Boats lying idle in the sky, a town
  Thrown as on a screen of watered silk,
  Lying on its side, reddish and soluble,
  A sheet of glass leading down into the sea …
  Down here an idle boy catches a cicada:
  Imprisons it, laughing, in his sister’s cloak
  In whose warm folds the silly creature sings.
  Shape of boats, body of a young girl, cicada,
  Conspire and join each other here,
  In twelve sad lines against the dark.

(Location 3638)

• A WINTER OF VAMPIRES
  From a winter of vampires he selects one,
  Takes her to a dark house, undresses her:
  It is not at all how the story-books say
  But another kind of reversed success.
  A transaction where the words themselves
  Begin to bleed first and everything else follows.
  The dissolution of the egg In the mind of the lady suggests new
  Paths to follow, less improbable victories,
  Just as illusory as the old, I fear.
  Well, but when the embraces go astray,
  When you finger the quick recipes
  Of every known suggestion, why,
  The whole prosperity of the flesh may be in question.

  1973/1971

(Location 5601)