Nathalia Crane Quotes

Said the tiger to the lily, Said the viper to the rose, Let us marry so our children May attain the double pose. With a feline half a flower — With the attar in the asp We could institute a slaughter That would make a planet gasp.

Across the downs a hummingbird Came dipping through the bowers, He pivoted on emptiness To scrutinize the flowers.

The very serpents bite their tails; the bees forget to sting, For a language so celestial setteth up a wondering. And the touch of absent mindedness is more than any line, Since direction counts for nothing when the gods set up a sign.

The sign work of the Orient it runneth up and down; The Talmud stalks from right to left, a rabbi in a gown; The Roman rolls from left to right from Maytime unto May; But the gods shake up their symbols in an absent-minded way. Their language runs to circles like the language of the eyes, Emphasised by strange dilations with little panting sighs.

The sun shall shine in ages yet to be, The musing moon illumine pastures dim, And afterwards a new nativity For all who slept the dreamless interim.

He found the harem filled with rocking maids Surrendered to the orgies of the sob.

When you return, the youngest of the seers, Released from fetters of ancestral pose, There will be beauty waiting down the years — Revisions of the ruby and the rose.

I linger on the flathouse roof, the moonlight is divine. But my heart is all aflutter like the washing on the line.

The world is growing gentle, But few know what she owes To the understanding lily And the judgment of the rose.

Oh I'm in love with the janitor's boy, And the janitor's boy loves me; He's going to hunt for a desert isle In our geography.

And the eyes of all look upward seeing sign-word drawing nigh, The stony wings of Egypt coming back across the sky; We hear the clinking tamborine of Miriam anew; We believe in every miracle since Lindbergh flew the blue — The wonder of the long draw when the bowstring is a thread — The beauty of a courage that can raise the wings of lead.

Treating the sword blade the same as the staff, Turning the chariot wheel into chaff. Toppling a pillar and nudging a wall, Building a sand pile to counter each fall. Yielding to nothing — not even the rose, The dust has its reasons wherever it goes.

A single-motored miracle, a lead mine on each flank; Below a shadow swept and awed the hundred-fathom bank.

Once a pallid Vestal Doubted truth in blue; Listed red in ruin, Harried every hue; Barricaded vision, Garbed herself in sighs; Ridiculed the birthmarks Of the butterflies.

Great is the rose Infected by the tomb, Yet burgeoning Indifferent to death.