Isabel

 Dover beach BY MATTHEW ARNOLD

The sea is calm tonight. The tide is full, the moon lies fair Upon the straits; on the French coast the light Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand, Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay. Come to the window, sweet is the night-air! Only, from the long line of spray Where the sea meets the moon-blanched land, Listen! you hear the grating roar Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling, At their return, up the high strand, Begin, and cease, and then again begin, With tremulous cadence slow, and bring The eternal note of sadness in. Sophocles long ago Heard it on the Ægean, and it brought Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow Of human misery; we Find also in the sound a thought, Hearing it by this distant northern sea. The Sea of FaithWas once, too, at the full, and round earth’s shore Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled. But now I only hearIts melancholy, long, withdrawing roar, Retreating, to the breathOf the night-wind, down the vast edges drear And naked shingles of the world. Ah, love, let us be true To one another! for the world, which seems To lie before us like a land of dreams,So various, so beautiful, so new, Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light, Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain; And we are here as on a darkling plain Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight, Where ignorant armies clash by night.

Harp Song of the Dane Women
By Rudyard Kipling

//“The Knights of the Joyous Venture”—Puck of Pook’s Hill//

What is a woman that you forsake her, And the hearth-fire and the home-acre, To go with the old grey Widow-maker?

She has no house to lay a guest in— But one chill bed for all to rest in, That the pale suns and the stray bergs nest in.

She has no strong white arms to fold you, But the ten-times-fingering weed to hold you— Out on the rocks where the tide has rolled you.

Yet, when the signs of summer thicken, And the ice breaks, and the birch-buds quicken, Yearly you turn from our side, and sicken—

Sicken again for the shouts and the slaughters. You steal away to the lapping waters, And look at your ship in her winter-quarters.

You forget our mirth, and talk at the tables, The kine in the shed and the horse in the stables— To pitch her sides and go over her cables.

Then you drive out where the storm-clouds swallow, And the sound of your oar-blades, falling hollow, Is all we have left through the months to follow.

Ah, what is Woman that you forsake her, And the hearth-fire and the home-acre, To go with the old grey Widow-maker ?


 * Pumpernickel**

Monday mornings Grandma rose an hour early to make rye, onion & challah, but it was pumpernickel she broke her hands for, pumpernickel that demanded cornmeal, ripe caraway, mashed potatoes & several Old Testament stories about patience & fortitude & for 1 which she cursed in five languages if it didn’t pop out fat //as an apple-cheeked peasant bride//. But bread, after all, is only bread & who has time to fuss all day & end up with a dead heart if it flops? Why bother? I’ll tell you why. For the moment when the steam curls off the black crust like a strip of pure sunlight & the hard oily flesh breaks open like a poem pulling out of its own stubborn complexity a single glistening truth & who can help but wonder at the mystery of the human heart when you hold a slice up to the light in all its absurd splendor & I tell you we must risk everything for the raw recipe of our passion.