( me / via )

Ship to Wreck.

“Poetry confines itself more and more to what only poetry can do: but this turns out to be something which not many people want done.” –C S Lewis

Famous Blue Raincoat.

“I honour you in dread

Since your voice like a soft vapour laps me
and my eyes, offered to the eternal scythe,
dare for you to contemplate the coffin;
since to me your red sanctuary affords
a joy half chill, half cardinalate, before
the posthumous avalanche weeps upon the vane;
since the bold cervix of the ardent skeleton,
predestined to the brand of the funeral
walnut, has hurled for you defiance to Death;
I honour you in dread of a lost alcove,
necromantic, with your rigid face
ecstatic, on a shin, as on a pillow;
and since you are my blood’s harmonious chosen,
Amada, and life’s convulsions seem a bridge
above an abyss, on which we tread together,
my kisses scour you devoutly serried
over a sacrilegious cloak of skulls
as over an erotic domino.”

–Ramon Lopez Velarde (1888-1921), in: Octavio Paz’s anthology Mexican Poetry

My Grandfather's Church Goes Up.