POETRY SWAP MEET: Poetry we don't usually know about, or?

Gu Cheng (1956–1993) was born in Beijing, China. In 1978, Gu Cheng became involved with Jintian, a magazine that became the center for the “Misty Poets,” a group of modernist poets who wrote “misty” or “obscure” poetry. Gu Cheng was exiled, along with other Misty Poets Bei Dao, Duo Duo, and Yang Lian, in 1989 after the Tiananmen Square protests. He died in 1993

Sleeping Soundly In Daytime

people sleep lightly in the dark of night
and sleep soundly in daytime

lids drooping they smile
turn their faces and go
parasols turn too
flowers bloom skirts
lax lovers
lie on green sofas in a daze
fat babies and mothers sleep on stones
dusty boys draw up their legs
mumbling that they want to go see the black bear
old men ream tobacco pipes
opening their mouths painfully wide

the sun too sleeps soundly
breathing among pale blue flames
motionless as they flicker
the clouds are asbestos
the lead is brand new
silver distorted pain
glitters in each grain of sand

and the night hasn’t moved
in the photo studio
a wind coolly blows
behind smiles of every dimension
a wind coolly blows
the dust is getting sleepy
the camera's empty magazine is empty

Sylvia Plath (1932-1963)

Sylvia Plath was an American poet, novelist, and short-story writer. Born in Boston, Massachusetts, she studied at Smith College and Newnham College at the University of Cambridge before receiving acclaim as a poet and writer.

In 1982, Plath became the first person to win a posthumous Pulitzer Prize.


The Moon and the Yew Tree

(one of seven Plath poems published in the New Yorker issue of August 3, 1963, six months after her death)

The yew tree points up. It has a Gothic shape.
The eyes lift after it and find the moon.
The moon is my mother. She is not sweet like Mary.
Her blue garments unloose small bats and owls.
How I would like to believe in tenderness—
the face of the effigy gentled by candles,
Bending, on me in particular, its mild eyes. I have fallen a long way. Clouds are flowering,
Blue and mystical over the face of the stars.
Inside the church, the saints will be all blue,
Floating on their delicate feet over the cold pews,
Their hands and faces stiff with holiness.
The moon sees nothing of this. She is bald and wild.
And the message of the yew tree is blackness—blackness and silence.

John Greenleaf Whittier
(1807-1892)

What the Birds Said

The birds against the April wind
Flew northward, singing as they flew;
They sang, "The land we leave behind
Has swords for corn-blades, blood for dew."

"O wild-birds, flying from the South,
What saw and heard ye, gazing down?"
"We saw the mortar's upturned mouth,
The sickened camp, the blazing town!

"Beneath the bivouac's starry lamps,
We saw your march-worn children die;
In shrouds of moss, in cypress swamps,
We saw your dead uncoffined lie.

"We heard the starving prisoner's sighs
And saw, from line and trench, your sons
Follow our flight with home-sick eyes
Beyond the battery's smoking guns."

"And heard and saw ye only wrong
And pain," I cried, "O wing-worn flocks?"
"We heard," they sang, "the freedman's song,
The crash of Slavery's broken locks!

"We saw from new, uprising States
The treason-nursing mischief spurned,
As, crowding Freedom's ample gates,
The long-estranged and lost returned.

"O'er dusky faces, seamed and old,
And hands horn-hard with unpaid toil,
With hope in every rustling fold,
We saw your star-dropt flag uncoil.

"And struggling up through sounds accursed,
A grateful murmur clomb the air;
A whisper scarcely heard at first,
It filled the listening heavens with prayer.

"And sweet and far, as from a star,
Replied a voice which shall not cease,
Till, drowning all the noise of war,
It sings the blessed song of peace!"

So to me, in a doubtful day
Of chill and slowly greening spring,
Low stooping from the cloudy gray,
The wild-birds sang or seemed to sing.

They vanished in the misty air,
The song went with them in their flight;
But lo! they left the sunset fair,
And in the evening there was light.

César Vallejo
(1892 - 1938)


   LOS HERALDOS NEGROS

Hay golpes en la vida, tan fuertes... ¡Yo no sé!
Golpes como del odio de Dios; como si ante ellos,
la resaca de todo lo sufrido
se empozara en el alma... ¡Yo no sé!

Son pocos; pero son... Abren zanjas oscuras
en el rostro más fiero y en el lomo más fuerte.
Serán tal vez los potros de bárbaros Atilas;
o los heraldos negros que nos manda la Muerte.

Son las caídas hondas de los Cristos del alma
de alguna fe adorable que el Destino blasfema.
Esos golpes sangrientos son las crepitaciones
de algún pan que en la puerta del horno se nos quema.

Y el hombre... Pobre... ¡pobre! Vuelve los ojos, como
cuando por sobre el hombro nos llama una palmada;
vuelve los ojos locos, y todo lo vivido
se empoza, como charco de culpa, en la mirada.

Hay golpes en la vida, tan fuertes... ¡Yo no sé!



The Black Heralds


  There are blows in life, so formidable... I don't know!
Blows as if from God's hatred; as if when struck
the undertow from everything ever suffered
were forming wells in your soul... I don't know!

 They are few, but they are....they open dark gullies
in the fiercest face and strongest back.
Perhaps they are the colts of barbarous Attilas;
or the black heralds sent to us by Death.

  Thy are profound abysses of the Christs of the soul,
of some exalted faith that Destiny blasphemes.
Those blood-soaked blows are crepitations
from bread burning at the oven door.

 And man...Poor...creature!  His eyes turn back, as
when someone claps us on the shoulder;
his crazed eyes turn back, and all that he has lived
forms a well, like a pool of guilt, in his gaze.

  There are blows in life, so formidable.....I don't know!



César Abraham Vallejo Mendoza (March 16, 1892 – April 15, 1938) was a Peruvian poet, writer, playwright, and journalist. Although he published only three books of poetry during his lifetime, he is considered one of the great poetic innovators of the 20th century in any language. He was always a step ahead of literary currents, and each of his books was distinct from the others, and, in its own sense, revolutionary. Thomas Merton called him "the greatest universal poet since Dante". The late British poet, critic and biographer Martin Seymour-Smith, a leading authority on world literature, called Vallejo "the greatest twentieth-century poet in any language."

Brunette  (1886)

by Victor Daley, 1858-1905)

When trees in Spring
Are blossoming
 My lady wakes
From dreams whose light
Made dark days bright,
  For their sweet sakes.

Yet in her eyes
A shadow lies
  Of bygone mirth;
And still she seems
To walk in dreams,
  And not on earth.

Some men may hold
That hair of gold
  Is lovelier
Than darker sheen:
They have not seen
  My lady's hair.

Her eyes are bright,
Her bosom white
  As the sea foam
On sharp rocks sprayed;
Her mouth is made
  Of honeycomb.

And whoso seeks
In her dusk cheeks
  May see Love's sign —
A blush that glows
Like a red rose



  Victor James William Patrick Daley (5 September 1858 – 29 December 1905) was an Australian poet. Daley serves chiefly as an example of the Celtic Twilight in Australian verse. He also serves as a lyrical alternative to his contemporary bush balladists of Henry Lawson, Banjo Paterson, and Will H. Ogilvie.

Bob Hicok (b. 1960)

Bob Hicok, born in Grand Ledge, Michigan, is an award-winning American poet.


GOING BIG

For Hanukkah,
for my wife, I tried putting candles
on the antlers of deer.
It’s not that I believe in God:
I believe in light, and deer,
and a man pulling his weight
in the adaptation of the species.
I believe antlers
the most natural menorah,
in a twelve point buck
glowing in falling snow, in hunters
dropping their rifles to their sides,
in the cool air
cupping our faces in its hands.
To say it didn’t work is to miss
that I got to know how to wait
for deer, which is different
than waiting for bear, or love,
or a phrase of sufficient tenderness
to capture the evanescence of life
to arrive, and last beyond the feeling
nothing lasts.
Light lasts.
Light runs and runs
without tiring or giving up, the universe
is bigger now, and now, and now,
just as intimacy grows
when my wife lights candles
with a scarf over her head,
holds her hands up to the light
while repeating a prayer
repeated millions of times,
adding to the distance
the words have traveled
and the complicated life
they’ve lived, and better still,
reminding me there’s a bloom
in her face only I can see
in this light, so yes,
I know what luck is.

__________

Bob Hicok: “I like starting poems. After I start a poem, I like getting to the middle, and after the middle, an end seems a good thing to reach. When the end is reached, I like doing everything that isn’t writing poems, until the next day, when my desk is exactly where I left it, though I am a slightly different person than the last time we met.”

Wallace Stevens, 1879 - 1955

Wallace Stevens is one of America's most respected poets. He was a master stylist, employing an extraordinary vocabulary and a rigorous precision in crafting his poems. But he was also a philosopher of aesthetics, vigorously exploring the notion of poetry as the supreme fusion of the creative imagination and objective reality.

Sunday Morning

I

Complacencies of the peignoir, and late
Coffee and oranges in a sunny chair,
And the green freedom of a cockatoo
Upon a rug mingle to dissipate
The holy hush of ancient sacrifice.
She dreams a little, and she feels the dark
Encroachment of that old catastrophe,
As a calm darkens among water-lights.
The pungent oranges and bright, green wings
Seem things in some procession of the dead,
Winding across wide water, without sound.
The day is like wide water, without sound,
Stilled for the passing of her dreaming feet
Over the seas, to silent Palestine,
Dominion of the blood and sepulchre.

II

Why should she give her bounty to the dead?
What is divinity if it can come
Only in silent shadows and in dreams?
Shall she not find in comforts of the sun,
In pungent fruit and bright, green wings, or else
In any balm or beauty of the earth,
Things to be cherished like the thought of heaven?
Divinity must live within herself:
Passions of rain, or moods in falling snow;
Grievings in loneliness, or unsubdued
Elations when the forest blooms; gusty
Emotions on wet roads on autumn nights;
All pleasures and all pains, remembering
The bough of summer and the winter branch.
These are the measures destined for her soul.

III

Jove in the clouds had his inhuman birth.
No mother suckled him, no sweet land gave
Large-mannered motions to his mythy mind
He moved among us, as a muttering king,
Magnificent, would move among his hinds,
Until our blood, commingling, virginal,
With heaven, brought such requital to desire
The very hinds discerned it, in a star.
Shall our blood fail? Or shall it come to be
The blood of paradise? And shall the earth
Seem all of paradise that we shall know?
The sky will be much friendlier then than now,
A part of labor and a part of pain,
And next in glory to enduring love,
Not this dividing and indifferent blue.

IV

She says, “I am content when wakened birds,
Before they fly, test the reality
Of misty fields, by their sweet questionings;
But when the birds are gone, and their warm fields
Return no more, where, then, is paradise?”
There is not any haunt of prophecy,
Nor any old chimera of the grave,
Neither the golden underground, nor isle
Melodious, where spirits gat them home,
Nor visionary south, nor cloudy palm
Remote on heaven’s hill, that has endured
As April’s green endures; or will endure
Like her remembrance of awakened birds,
Or her desire for June and evening, tipped
By the consummation of the swallow’s wings.

V

She says, “But in contentment I still feel
The need of some imperishable bliss.”
Death is the mother of beauty; hence from her,
Alone, shall come fulfilment to our dreams
And our desires. Although she strews the leaves
Of sure obliteration on our paths,
The path sick sorrow took, the many paths
Where triumph rang its brassy phrase, or love
Whispered a little out of tenderness,
She makes the willow shiver in the sun
For maidens who were wont to sit and gaze
Upon the grass, relinquished to their feet.
She causes boys to pile new plums and pears
On disregarded plate. The maidens taste
And stray impassioned in the littering leaves.

VI

Is there no change of death in paradise?
Does ripe fruit never fall? Or do the boughs
Hang always heavy in that perfect sky,
Unchanging, yet so like our perishing earth,
With rivers like our own that seek for seas
They never find, the same receding shores
That never touch with inarticulate pang?
Why set the pear upon those river-banks
Or spice the shores with odors of the plum?
Alas, that they should wear our colors there,
The silken weavings of our afternoons,
And pick the strings of our insipid lutes!
Death is the mother of beauty, mystical,
Within whose burning bosom we devise
Our earthly mothers waiting, sleeplessly.

VII

Supple and turbulent, a ring of men
Shall chant in orgy on a summer morn
Their boisterous devotion to the sun,
Not as a god, but as a god might be,
Naked among them, like a savage source.
Their chant shall be a chant of paradise,
Out of their blood, returning to the sky;
And in their chant shall enter, voice by voice,
The windy lake wherein their lord delights,
The trees, like serafin, and echoing hills,
That choir among themselves long afterward.
They shall know well the heavenly fellowship
Of men that perish and of summer morn.
And whence they came and whither they shall go
The dew upon their feet shall manifest.

VIII

She hears, upon that water without sound,
A voice that cries, “The tomb in Palestine
Is not the porch of spirits lingering.
It is the grave of Jesus, where he lay.”
We live in an old chaos of the sun,
Or old dependency of day and night,
Or island solitude, unsponsored, free,
Of that wide water, inescapable.
Deer walk upon our mountains, and the quail
Whistle about us their spontaneous cries;
Sweet berries ripen in the wilderness;
And, in the isolation of the sky,
At evening, casual flocks of pigeons make
Ambiguous undulations as they sink,
Downward to darkness, on extended wings.

Sun Yung Shin
(b. 1974)


Return of the Native


Because of time being an arrow, I had to imagine everything.

I had to fold the song with my mind because of the time being. Wash the rice here, in the present.

Because of the arrow I pent up the fourth wall as though I were diapering my own newborn.

I put time to the breast, though I feared it was not an arrow but an asp.

Being time I kept that fear under my tongue like a thermometer. I felt its mercury rolling under my teeth, boiling like language.

A deaf man, an old man, I am his hand, rough and gentle, an arrow here and then.

Time, I can see what I feel.

In the future even your future becomes my past. Arrow, I have died. There is peace. I pull it from me like a blanket.

As in a dream, because of time being an arrow, I put on the dress of a young, lovely mother. Because of her, because of the time, here I am, always watching over you.



Korean American poet, writer and educator Sun Yung Shin was born in Seoul, South Korea and was adopted and raised in Chicago. She earned a BA in English from Macalester College and a Masters degree in teaching from the University of St. Thomas.

Irina Ratushinskaya
(1954–2017)


I will live and survive


I will live and survive and be asked:


How they slammed my head against a trestle,


How I had to freeze at nights,


How my hair started to turn grey...


But I'll smile. And will crack some joke


And brush away the encroaching shadow.


And I will render homage to the dry September


That became my second birth.


And I'll be asked: 'Doesn't it hurt you to remember?'


Not being deceived by my outward flippancy.


But the former names will detonate my memory –


Magnificent as old cannon.


And I will tell of the best people in all the earth,


The most tender, but also the most invincible,


How they said farewell, how they went to be tortured,


How they waited for letters from their loved ones.


And I'll be asked: what helped us to live


When there were neither letters nor any news - only walls,


And the cold of the cell, and the blather of official lies,


And the sickening promises made in exchange for betrayal.


And I will tell of the first beauty


I saw in captivity.


A frost-covered window! No spy-holes, nor walls,


Nor cell-bars, nor the long endured pain –


Only a blue radiance on a tiny pane of glass,


A cast pattern- none more beautiful could be dreamt!


The more clearly you looked the more powerfully blossomed


Those brigand forests, campfires and birds!


And how many times there was bitter cold weather


And how many windows sparkled after that one –


But never was it repeated,


That upheaval of rainbow ice!


And anyway, what good would it be to me now,


And what would be the pretext for the festival?


Such a gift can only be received once,


And perhaps is only needed once."



Irina Ratushinskaya, the Ukrainian poet and dissident, was sentenced to 7 years jail in Mordovia in 1983 for “anti Soviet agitation and propaganda”. In prison, she wrote poetry in miniscule script on cigarette papers or bars of soap which she later dissolved in water after memorizing the verses.

Patti Smith :

"Because The Night"

Take me now baby here as I am
Pull me close, try and understand
Desire is hunger is the fire I breathe
Love is a banquet on which we feed

Come on now try and understand
The way I feel when I'm in your hands
Take my hand come undercover
They can't hurt you now,
Can't hurt you now, can't hurt you now
Because the night belongs to lovers
Because the night belongs to lust
Because the night belongs to lovers
Because the night belongs to us

Have I doubt when I'm alone
Love is a ring, the telephone
Love is an angel disguised as lust
Here in our bed until the morning comes
Come on now try and understand
The way I feel under your command
Take my hand as the sun descends
They can't touch you now,
Can't touch you now, can't touch you now
Because the night belongs to lovers ...

With love we sleep
With doubt the vicious circle
Turn and burns
Without you I cannot live
Forgive, the yearning burning
I believe it's time, too real to feel
So touch me now, touch me now, touch me now
Because the night belongs to lovers ...

Because tonight there are two lovers
If we believe in the night we trust
Because tonight there are two lovers ...

Yes!! I absolutely love her and this work!!!

Another one of the unknown musical poets to this generation !

( sadly enough...Horses is another ! )

You Want It Darker

*Leonard Cohen*

If you are the dealer, I'm out of the game
If you are the healer, it means I'm broken and lame
If thine is the glory then mine must be the shame
You want it darker
We kill the flame
Magnified, sanctified, be thy holy name
Vilified, crucified, in the human frame
A million candles burning for the help that never came
You want it darker
Hineni, hineni
I'm ready, my lord
There's a lover in the story
But the story's still the same
There's a lullaby for suffering
And a paradox to blame
But it's written in the scriptures
And it's not some idle claim
You want it darker
We kill the flame
They're lining up the prisoners
And the guards are taking aim
I struggled with some demons
They were middle class and tame
I didn't know I had permission to murder and to maim
You want it darker
Hineni, hineni
I'm ready, my lord
Magnified, sanctified, be thy holy name
Vilified, crucified, in the human frame
A million candles burning for the love that never came
You want it darker
We kill the flame
If you are the dealer, let me out of the game
If you are the healer, I'm broken and lame
If thine is the glory, mine must be the shame
You want it darker
Hineni, hineni
Hineni, hineni
I'm ready, my lord
Hineni
Hineni, hineni
Hineni


Songwriters: Leonard Cohen / Patrick Leonard
You Want It Darker lyrics © Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC, Kobalt Music Publishing Ltd.

Shortly after this album was released , Leonard died ;

Another great crossed over the great divide ;

A great poet turned great songwriter !

Leonard Cohen - Hallelujah

Now, I've heard there was a secret chord
That David played, and it pleased the Lord
But you don't really care for music, do you?
It goes like this, the fourth, the fifth
The minor fall, the major lift
The baffled king composing hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Your faith was strong but you needed proof
You saw her bathing on the roof
Her beauty and the moonlight overthrew ya
She tied you to a kitchen chair
She broke your throne, and she cut your hair
And from your lips she drew the hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah
You say I took the name in vain
I don't even know the name
But if I did, well really, what's it to you?
There's a blaze of light in every word
It doesn't matter which you heard
The holy or the broken hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah
I did my best, it wasn't much
I couldn't feel, so I tried to touch
I've told the truth, I didn't come to fool you
And even though it all went wrong
I'll stand before the lord of song
With nothing on my tongue but hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah


Songwriters: Leonard Cohen

Patti Smith (b. 1946)

Chelsea girl: on the eve of the Edie Sedgwick biopic, Patti Smith recalls the troubled Youthquaker whose edgy glamour fired the imaginations of Dylan and Warhol

From: W | Date: September 1, 2006 | Author: Smith, Patti

When I was a young girl I got a job at a factory to help pay for my education. On lunch breaks I would sit by myself and devour discarded fashion magazines. They provided a window to a world that was not immediately accessible to a girl growing up in rural South Jersey. In an issue of Vogue from August 1965, a photograph of another Factory girl caught my eye. A so-called Youthquaker named Edie Sedgwick. Something about her image was liberating. A self-possessed little minx in black tights poised on a leather rhino, ballet-style. The outline of a horse was sketched upon the wall. She projected playful yet concentrated, irreverent energy. So full of life, falling into no category. Who was she? What did she do? She was herself. She did it all. I tore out the picture and tacked it on my wall alongside John Lennon, Maria Callas, and Arthur Rimbaud. A new muse reminding me to stay on track. To stay in balance. I had dreams of getting out of New Jersey, and like the girl in the picture, I was on the edge, ready to fly.

In November of 1965, there was much excitement in the Philadelphia area because Andy Warhol was attending his opening at the Institute of Contemporary Art. The entrance of Warhol and his entourage nearly overshadowed the art. There were lots of pictures in the newspapers of his controversial soup cans and his silver Elvis. But what really ignited my imagination was the girl accompanying him. Black-eyed, ermine-haired Edie Sedgwick in her white, white furs. There was something about her. It wasn't necessarily sexuality but a charismatic energy that seemed as much rooted in intelligence as beauty. She seemed completely connected with the moment. There was something international about her. She made everywhere seem like Paris. She had a sweet, expressive face like Monroe but possessed a slim, modern body. She was edgy yet so fresh that even her false eyelashes came off as real.

Edie Sedgwick was born in Santa Barbara, California. She was a true American blue blood. Her line boasted artists and patriots, including William Ellery, who signed the Declaration of Independence, and Theodore Sedgwick, who was the first to plead and win a case for the freedom of a female slave under the Massachusetts Bill of Rights, stating all men to be born free and equal.

When she hit New York in 1964, everyone adored her. She teamed up with Andy Warhol, and for a time they were inseparable. She was his social mirror. She was his star circling him as he worked, pulling silk screens, assisting, teasing, inspiring. They were connected. He, the secret one with no secrets. She, completely open with too many secrets. They shuffled between art openings and discotheques. I was so deeply curious about this world that I donned a miniskirt and tights, took a bus to New York City, and sat on a street corner hoping to catch a glimpse of them as they exited a black car to dance at Ondine's. It was all image. Black and white and silver all over.
I followed the exciting debris of these times via music and magazines. Speed was the drug then, and Edie lived in an accelerated world that projected her from Warhol's Factory to the Chelsea Hotel scene that revolved around Bob Dylan as he scripted his masterpiece Blonde on Blonde. She left Andy Warhol's sphere for this one, shivering past Andy into the arms of Bob Neuwirth, the Svengali and shadow of Highway 61.

She was the glittering, speeding, tragic heroine of Blonde on Blonde. Real or imagined, that was the way it seemed. The poor little rich girl who had it all lost the most important part of the equation. Herself.

In 1969, I moved into the Chelsea Hotel with Robert Mapplethorpe. The specter of the Chelsea Girls still haunted the historic hotel as much as Dylan Thomas or Oscar Wilde. The atmosphere was still charged with the energy of the Warhol-Dylan circuit.

There were strange stories circulating about Edie. She suffered a swift decline. It was said that she consumed so much amphetamine it consumed her. Her hands shook so much that while applying her long, famous eyelashes, she knocked over a candle and set fire to her room. There were stories of her dark departure. Of Bob Dylan disappearing. Of Andy turning his back. Her shattered mirror had less than seven years' bad luck ahead.

On a cold November afternoon in 1971, Bobby Neuwirth called me at the Chelsea Hotel. "The lady's dead," he said, and he seemed genuinely sad. "You're a poet; write her a line," which I did. I sat in Room 1019, which belonged to the artist Sandy Daley. It was a huge white room with white floors. Two of the original helium silver pillows from the Factory floated freely through the room. I wrote Edie a poem. A girl I never knew. She was only three years older than I, and she was dead. Young. Electric. Talented. Dead. This was my initiation into the world of drugs, as much as any drug experience seeing secondhand the destruction of a human being. She was just a shooting star. Her white light illuminated Manhattan.

She provided us with one of the exciting, energetic images of the sixties. But at what cost? The mischievous-faced poor little rich girl who elevated the word "cute" into art was gone. Whether she pawned her diamond rings, I do not know. She certainly fit the description of the Miss Lonely of "Like a Rolling Stone." But she would never be back to claim her goods. Her furs or her jewels. She was a rural girl's entrance into the cream of our culture. My first image of her is the one I like to remember. In Vogue. No drugs. No fame. Just an ermine-haired girl in black tights with perfect balance.


Edie Sedgwick
1943-1971


oh it isn't fair
oh it isn't fair
how her ermine hair
turned men around
she was white on white
so blonde on blonde
and her long long legs
how I used to beg
to dance with her
but I never had
a chance with her
oh it isn't fair
how her ermine hair
used to swing so nice
used to cut the air
how all the men
used to dance with her
I never got a chance with her
though I really asked her
down deep
where you do
really dream
in the mind
reading love
I'd get
inside
her move
and we'd
turn around
and turn the head
of everyone in town
her shaking shaking
glittering bones
second blonde child
after brian jones
oh it isn't fair
how I dreamed of her
and she slept
and she slept
and she slept
forever
and I'll never dance
with her no never
she broke down
like a baby
she suffocated
like a baby
like a baby girl
like a lady
with ermine hair
oh it isn't fair
and I'd like to see
her rise again
her white while bones
with baby brian jones
baby brian jones
like blushing
baby dolls

[c] 1971 patti smith
COPYRIGHT 2006 Fairchild Publications, Inc.