A Pledge
by Theodora Goss
I pledge myself to the Earth, my mother,
whose air I breathe tonight,
pledge myself to her and no other
beneath starlight.
While I live, she shall have the work of my hands
and the thoughts in my brain,
my laughter, my tears, compounded
of joy and pain.
When I die, she shall have my body,
such as it is,
to feed the slender white birches
and wood-anemones.
(The painting is Farmhouse With Birch Trees by Gustav Klimt.)
The Wanderer
by Theodora Goss
“Where are you going, wanderer?”
I asked as she walked by.
“Through the valleys and over the hills,
to the halls of the sky.”
“What will you do there?” I asked, confused.
“Study nature’s book.
Its pages are leaves, its words are rain
that runs into a brook,
and all the brooks together run
into a river, deep
as thought and swift as time. Its subject
makes the reader weep.”
“Why do you read such a sorrowful book?”
I asked her, standing there.
Her hair was black, her eyes as bright
as swallows in the air.
She wore a coat of autumn leaves,
yellow and brown and red.
She looked at me so solemnly,
then said,
“Because my mother wrote it.
I want to read her words:
the pattering of raindrops,
the crash of ocean waves,
the murmur of insects busy
among the summer flowers,
the silent yet insistent
descent of winter snows.
Although her central theme
moves me to tears:
that beauty and sorrow dance
together through the years.”
I gave her bread and water
and bade her stay awhile.
She shook her head and said,
with a distant smile,
“I’m on my mother’s business,
but my sister comes behind.
I beg you, greet her as kindly,
for she will bring the cold and frost,
reminders of what you have lost.
And keep in mind
what my mother has written, although
you may read it with tears:
that beauty and sorrow dance
together through the years.”
(The image is by Emile Eisman-Semenowsky. I thought the woman in it looked like autumn . . .)
The Frost
by Theodora Goss
The frost came on the harvest,
and fallow flowed the air;
the sheaves cleaved off in earnest
and all the skies grew bare.
The clouds fled off and blankness
arrayed the atmosphere,
and autumn in her fastness
had not one cloth to wear.
The leaves betrayed the branches
and grasses hueless hung
upon the valley’s haunches,
the lambent weeds among,
and over all that landscape
the season turned,
while swallows made escape
and the berries burned.
(The illustration is by Arthur Rackham. This poem was published in my collection Songs for Ophelia.)
Isolde in the Forest
by Theodora Goss
Isolde walked among the leafless trees.
A month ago, the aspen had been green
and quivering like a maiden at the touch
of her first lover. Then the grove of oaks
had rustled its red leaves like dowagers
whispering gossip, and the stream had run
between moss-covered banks. How they had changed.
The aspen stood, a slender, shaking thing
stripped of her robes. The oaks stirred silently.
The stream now flowed between bare earth and rock.
All had turned gray, and where not gray then brown.
Just like my love for Tristan, she thought, and his
for me. And as she thought and walked and thought,
the chill wind nipping at her fingertips
and her thoughts growing colder than the wind,
high in the oaks a squirrel chirred, and a bird
called from the aspen, and a drop of rain
fell on the stream’s blank surface, promising
that spring would come again.
(The illustration is by Arthur Rackham. This poem was published in my collection Songs for Ophelia.)
I Have Walked Alone
by Theodora Goss
I have walked alone
between the rain and the rain,
unable to explain.
I have walked alone
where the sun touched the tops of the trees
and a breeze
ruffled the grasses at my feet,
thinking: it has been sweet
but it is done.
And down the muddy lane,
listening to a chickadee’s two notes,
unable to explain
what it all meant, even
whether it mattered.
Meanwhile, the sun
shone through the tops of the trees,
red and yellow and brown,
as though through an autumnal
cathedral window.
Suddenly, the birds broke forth,
robin and nuthatch and oriole,
into a hymn.
And it was enough
without more, without
an explanation.
(The image is Girl in Thorns by Emma Florence Harrison.)
Nymphs Finding the Head of Orpheus
by Theodora Goss
The water has a dim and glassy hue.
A mass of airy bubbles clings to curls
that tumble through the river-bottom’s marls,
and cypresses hang heavy with their woe.
Our hair-tips touch the water’s urgent tow
as we lift this possessor of blue lips
and single eye that out its substance weeps,
from the dark river bound by thorny may.
Now sing, my sisters, piercingly and slow,
and sweetly as the honey of the comb,
for this rank weed, and beat the hollow drum,
and kiss and turn the leprous cheeks away.
(The painting is Nymphs Finding the Head of Orpheus by John William Waterhouse. I wrote this poem a long time ago, but I’m almost certain it was inspired by the Waterhouse painting. It can be found in my collection Songs for Ophelia.)
Autumn, the Fool
by Theodora Goss
The leaves float on the water like patches of motley.
Autumn, the fool, has dropped them into the lake,
where they rival the costume, not of the staid brown duck,
but the splendid drake.
He capers down the lanes in his ragged garments,
a comical figure shedding last year’s leaves,
but as he passes the crickets begin their wailing
and the chipmunk grieves.
The willow bends down to watch herself in the water
and shivers at the sight of her yellow hair.
Autumn the fool has passed her, and soon her branches
will be bare.
(The image is Autumn Landscape with Four Trees by Vincent van Gogh.)
