The Scarlet Cupboard

This little poem was most definitely influenced by both Christina Rossetti and early Emily Dickinson.


There is a scarlet cupboard
     Inside a scarlet room,
Whose door is locked
And cracks are sealed:
     A silent, scarlet tomb.

It stands in scarlet penance
     While days and nights dance by
With lilting or
With ponderous step
     Till earthly time shall die.

Then shall its door be opened
     And all its content known;
The scarlet notes
And scarlet knots
     To judging eyes be shown.


© Leticia Austria 2007

Inspired by a Dream

     Temptation

     My past came back and kissed me
     When it saw my eyes were closed;
     It told me how it missed me,
     Then revealed its reddest rose.

     My past tried to seduce me
     With the old familiar charms;
     But it could not induce me
     From the other's whiter arms.

     This little poem was inspired by a very vivid dream I had years ago: 

     A tenor I worked with at Houston Grand Opera, a piano surrounded by dusty antique clutter, my university and its practice rooms. The tenor asked me to give him a coaching, and when he led me to the piano surrounded by dusty antiques, I told him I hadn't played in years; then I tentatively tried the opening bars of Bohème, and that was when he kissed me.

 

 

"Temptation" © Leticia Austria 2008

 

The Two Faces of Possibility

Here are two different poetical views of the possibilities of writing poetry—one positive and hopeful, the other doubtful and filled with struggle. Dickinson, the genius, is positive. I, something less than genius, am the struggler.


        I dwell in Possibility—
        A fairer House than Prose—
        More numerous of Windows—
        Superior—for doors—

        Of Chambers as the Cedars—
        Impregnable of Eye—
        And for an Everlasting Roof—
        The Gambrels of the Sky—

        Of Visitors—the Fairest—
        For occupation—This—
        The spreading wide my narrow Hands—
        To gather Paradise—

        —Emily Dickinson


Awaiting Dawn

I dwell in Possibility. ~ Emily Dickinson

I find this shifting space
A questionable habitation.  Hope
Remains a nocturne scarcely audible;
I scratch the notes into my book of songs
With feathers sharpened by a bitter blade.
What prayers are wrought inside this cage of night
Become a liquor brewed from sorrow's rain,
Libation for the hosts that crowd my bed,
That carol with the confidence of those
Who've passed the night of possibility
And woke to tell the tale.  Theirs is the song
My pen stays poised above the page to write.
However many feathers used and tossed,
I know the dawn will never come till this
Night's song is done.


Aside from the principal reference to Dickinson's poem above, you'll notice other Dickinsonian references: "hope" and "feathers" from her well-known "Hope" is the thing with feathers; "hosts" from this poem; and "a liquor brewed" obviously from this famous poem. If you know these works, you'll know why I referenced them.


"Awaiting Dawn" © Leticia Austria

Apologia

     A conversation with a friend of mine this afternoon prompted me to post this poem. We were browsing in a bookshop, one of those cozy, cluttered used bookshops whose poetry sections contain as many forgotten, out of print, "old-fashioned" poets as the most widely anthologized and currently studied.

     My friend is not a poet, and found it interesting when I told her that, despite being a poet myself, I really don't read as much poetry as perhaps I should. The poetry I do read is of the type that was quite admired in its day by critics and readers alike but would now be considered sentimental and hackneyed by academics. "Old-fashioned," to put it briefly. My friend remarked that she enjoys reading my poetry and that of my sister, probably because she knows us and therefore knows where our poetry is "coming from." She finds our poems readable, accessible, understandable. I told her I seldom read contemporary poetry because I truly don't understand much of it. Some famous living poet said, "You don't have to understand it; just feel it" which, frankly, I consider a lot of hooey. Why waste my time reading something I should only "feel"? For that, I'd rather watch a movie.

     I know, I know, I'm a funny kind of "poet." To quote myself, I only write that which I know. And I only read what I can readily identify with. If what I identify with is considered hackneyed and sentimental, I'm glad of it. I'm not ashamed of sentiment.

     Regarding living poets: I love Mary Oliver. Billy Collins. Richard Blanco. Mark Strand. Random pieces from a few others. To sum up, if I don't "get" a poem on the first reading, I don't bother reading it again. Life's too short!

     I really enjoyed writing this poem. One of the things I've been trying to do lately in my formal poems is to include more inner rhymes along with end-of-line rhymes. You'll discover the inner rhymes near the beginning of the second and third lines of each stanza.

Apologia

My verses are but letters never sent,
The wringing out of years too full to bear,
The winging of a heart consumed and spent,
Laid out for judgment "excellent and fair." *

My words are only echoes of the words
Unspoken, hostages of heart unvoiced
And broken like a captured wing-clipped bird
That gave its higher songs to silent joys.

My poems are paradoxes better read
By eyes unschooled, uncritical of skill,
By readers ruled by heart instead of head,
Whose hope has never waned and never will.


© Leticia Austria
First published in The Road Not Taken: A Journal of Formal Poetry
* excellent and fair - from Emily Dickinson's poem "Ample make this bed"

Holiday in the Rain

The first poem was inspired by a trip to London I took in 1987. I stayed in a hotel around the corner from Russell Square. Every morning at sunrise, I had coffee at a sandwich bar in Sicilian Avenue, then took a cup "to take away" and went through the smaller Bloomsbury Square to Russell Square and spent a leisurely half hour just strolling.

 

The second poem was inspired by my first summer participating in the American Institute of Musical Studies in Graz, Austria. A group of us students had been told of a wonderful restaurant called Häuserl im Wald (Little House in the Woods), which was indeed in the middle of a heavily wooded park. We set out on foot through the woods and got caught in a rainstorm.

RUSSELL SQUARE

In the slate air
a medieval mist
hovers, mingles
with the steam from
my Styrofoam cup.
I pass benches
that are moist from
night's lingering breath
and take slow steps
round the flower beds,
drawing slender sips
from my cup, savoring
the waking of my limbs.
The pavement
beneath my feet
shudders with a sudden breath
as a lorry passes
unseen.  Beyond
antique roses
the great city stirs.


HÄUSERL IM WALD

With madcap exuberance
we forged ahead, swinging
our tightly furled umbrellas.
Cool drops from
piney clustered limbs
streamed in slim strands
down our hair,
into our collars, and we
chanted like children, giddy,
defiant of the thunder's
grumbled scolding.
Ahead lay the bright promise
of schnitzel and strudel.
Through the gloom
we went ever onward
toward the goal, undaunted
in primal mutual need,
leaving behind us not
a trail of crumbs, but
only the day's details.



© Leticia Austria 2013

The Silent Voice

She pushes on rusted wheels

the sum of her existence

 

furrowed mouth forming

words obscured by

 

hip-hop pounding

from passing cars

 

suits barking business

into bluetooths

 

the laborious sigh

of bus doors shutting

 

 

© Leticia Austria 2011

To Dante and Petrarch

 

 

To Dante and Petrarch

 



Now I understand

and may call you "comrades,"

 

you for whom the earth's one reality

was the thing most unattainable,

 

in which are found the colors,

the language, that can paint

 

the landscape of the heart.

Though a nameless novice,

 

I intuit the clasp of your hands

across the centuries, on the page

 

where you have poured out

your voiceless ardor.

 

 

© Leticia Austria 2007



Prompted by Emily

     A few years ago, I received a newsletter from a poetry site in which were listed several exercises a poet could try when experiencing writer's block. One of the exercises was this: take a line from a favorite poem as the opening line of your own, then use one word (or more) from that line in every succeeding line. You can use the same word, or choose different words.

     Sounded pretty simple to me. So I decided to use a line from Emily Dickinson that I love a lot. The result is this little lyric, written in heroic couplets.

Prompted by Emily

"My wars are laid away in Books—," she said.
And in the books I've written or have read,

the wars that I have witnessed or have fought
are laid with ghosts I've fled and ghosts I've sought.

I laid away my books before the wars
were fairly won, before my battle scars

were barely formed, and put them far away
from less destructive wars of Everyday.

The wars I've laid away are numberless,
but ghosts are never really laid to rest.


© Leticia Austria 2010
First published in Decanto

Beyond the Screen

     Nowadays, I don't spend a great deal of time outdoors. The neighborhood in which I live is not congenial for walking, neither atmospherically nor from a safety standpoint. However, when I do go out to retrieve the mail or the newspaper, or to take out the garbage, I can't help revelling in the sights, sounds, and scents around me. I note the color of the sky and the arrangement of the clouds. I listen for the familiar ramblings of our neighborhood mockingbirds, the mellow coos of mourning doves, and the sharp chastisements of grackles. A stray cat may be curled up in one of our large round flower tubs, or in the corner of the box beneath our picture window. In spring, I look up to see our purple martins, the ones that nest in our backyard condos, gliding and circling overhead like miniature airplanes. The breeze may carry the sweet perfume of our neighbor's mountain laurel. Those brief moments provide a much needed respite from electric light, the sound of the TV, and the non-human companionship of the computer.

     At least the computer is situated by a large window, and from time to time as I sit clicking and scrolling and typing, there is a welcome distraction in the form of birdsong or a glimpse of a passing cat.

 

 

Beyond the Screen

 

Sometimes when at my desk, facing

the impersonal face of the flat screen,

 

I hear a mockingbird rejoicing in the rose arbor.

My mouse pauses its questing course as I listen

 

to a repertoire of songs gathered from

all the arbors and all the forests of the world.

 

I look beyond the screen and out the window

to see a cardinal perched on the door of my car,

 

grooming herself at the side view mirror.

She is fastidious in her routine.

 

She knows she must be lovely

before flying into the day to chase the sun.

 

Outside my window a cat saunters silkily

across the flower box and onto the sill.

 

When I tap the pane it stops—

seemingly without surprise—raises a paw

 

to touch the glass in solemn blessing,

then saunters on to windows unknown.

 

I turn back to the screen and its

ever-widening net, an infinitely smaller world.

 

 

© Leticia Austria 2012

The Scarlet Cupboard

I suppose this is a nod to both Emily Dickinson and Christina Rossetti. I have a predilection for small, slightly quirky, sing-songy poems that are conceits.


There is a scarlet cupboard
     Inside a scarlet room
Whose door is locked
And cracks are sealed:
     A silent, scarlet tomb.

It stands in silent penance
     While days and nights dance by
With lilting or
With ponderous step
     Till earthly time shall die.

Then will its door be opened
     And all its contents known;
The scarlet notes
And scarlet knots
     To judging eyes be shown.


© Leticia Austria 2007

A Singer's Farewell

     This is an early poem, written before I ever heard of syllabics. I simply liked the comfortable length of ten-syllable lines, and found that they suited a conversational style. Seven-syllable lines were also very comfortable, but felt more "verse-like" than conversational. Some years later I discovered that this technique of adhering to a certain number of syllables, but without using formal meter, was widely used and had an actual name.

     Saying goodbye to my dream of becoming an opera singer—indeed, to my voice, period—was not nearly as difficult as it would seem. I suppose I was never really very "attached" to singing, though I've sung all my life. Daily vocalizing and keeping my technique at its best are no longer the manic obsessions they once were. Nowadays I use my voice, which is only a modest shadow of what it was, to serve as cantor at Mass.

A Singer's Farewell

Never mind; it doesn't really matter.
Such things as were not meant to set the world
on fire, make scant smoke what at last they die.

No, mine was a small, unassuming flame,
just bright and strong enough to glorify
a modest room filled with second-hand chairs.

But change of room can be a world of change,
one flame unchecked alter the horizon,
and "just enough" may one day be too much.

Then reason asks, what does it amount to,
this cleaving to a thing ephemeral?
Only the scant smoke of futility.

Set free, it has become sweeter incense,
an immolation—yes, a holocaust—
but oh-so-slightly dampened by regret;

for I do miss the smaller warmth of old,
that empathetic flame whose color changed
with each song of my mercurial heart.

© Leticia Austria 2006

Revisiting My Very First Sonnet

     What formalist can forget the first sonnet he or she ever wrote? Mine came as an assignment for senior English. I can't remember the name of my teacher (as I recall, she wasn't that great a teacher), but I clearly recall that she only required we stick to either the Shakespearean or the Petrarchan rhyme scheme, but she didn't expect meter (much more difficult than rhyme). The day we handed our sonnets in, our teacher perched on her desk and read them all out loud, but without revealing their authors. They were, one after another, half-hearted, jokey, disrespectful attempts, and I could see her becoming both discouraged and angry with each poem. Finally, she came to mine. She began reading it in a weary voice, expecting it to be yet another jokey attempt. At the end of the fourth line, she paused in surprise and looked at the class with a relieved smile. When she finished, she asked, "Did you all understand what the poem was saying?" Then she read it again.

     I think that was the moment my childhood desire to write was cemented.

     Incredibly, after all these years, I still remember that sonnet word for word, even though all written copies of it are long lost. A few years ago, I revised it, primarily giving it meter and polishing up the language. I also changed the rhyme scheme from Petrarchan to Shakespearean. Many of my friends have read both versions; some actually prefer the original for its simplicity and youthful voice.

Small Talk (1977)

As we weave our web of words, staring,
Gazing out the window with private dreams
Locked in our minds, how strange it seems
That here we are, speaking, but not really sharing.
Too tired to listen, not in the least caring
What the other says, we think of schemes
To escape this farce of masks and screens,
To rid ourselves of the frozen smiles we're wearing.
Instead, we go on with our pointless chat,
Fidgeting uncomfortably with each prolonged pause,
While searching desperately for some silly sentence.
What would it be like if we simply sat,
Without feeling so obliged to the dubious cause
Of prim convention and social eloquence?


The Art of Conversation (2010)

We weave a silken thread while private dreams
unfurl behind the diptych of our eyes
and cool façades of polished smiles; we scheme
to flee this habitat where broidered lies
and glib embellishments of fact reside.
Instead, we chatter on. Our platitudes
will serve to mask the homeliness inside.
But as the thread winds round the attitudes
we have so deftly wrought, beneath the pause
inevitably born, we ponder what
would come about if—artlessly—we sat,
unburdened from our duty to the cause
of weaving (for convention's dubious sake)
a thread that only truth could ever break.

© Leticia Austria

Music Monday: Bach and Winter Rain

The Pianist Recalls

I longed for silence; but instead, I found
that winter raindrops tapping on the ground
reminded me of fingers playing Bach.
And with the lissome beat of that courante,
I heard the voice of my old confidante
behind the door I had so firmly locked.

© Leticia Austria 2010
First published in The Road Not Taken: A Journal of Formal Poetry

Bach: Partita No. 2, Courante - Tatiana Nikolayeva

Reflection: Looking Inward and Backward

     I thought it fitting, this being the start of a new year, and everyone reflecting on the old year, to post a sonnet that's "backwards." I call it "Sonnet in Reflection" for two reasons: 1) the meter is trochaic pentameter rather than iambic and therefore backwards, or in "reflection" as in a mirror; and 2) it is a sonnet about reflection in solitude. When we are alone in silence or near-silence, we tend to self-examination and/or meditation on the past. That is only human nature, whether we like it or not.

     I suppose I could have taken the backwards concept all the way and put the ending couplet at the beginning. In fact, I could still do that; the poem would still work starting with the couplet, then the rest as is. Maybe I will do that someday. But I'll leave it for now. It's not my favorite poem, nor do I think it's my best effort. If I were to revise it, or try to write an altogether new "sonnet in reflection," I'd attempt to make the linebreaks more graceful, using fewer enjambments, and use nothing but two-syllable rhymes (to better reinforce the trochees). But someone liked this one enough to publish it, and for that I'm grateful!

Sonnet in Reflection

Thoughts loom larger in a room made narrow
by necessity, and blunted dreams take
on a sharper edge; the days, once furrowed
with the care of ordinary things, make
smoother strides from dark to light. Reflections
are the tapestries of solitude; their
stitches stitch themselves, and vivisect one's
reasoning in disconcerting ways. Bare
images emerge that one would rather
keep beneath one's clothing, manifesting
secrets spun where old ambitions gather
dust: the stuff of truth, the soul's divesting.
Self, obscured by living, now is clearer,
seen in solitude's relentless mirror.

© Leticia Austria 2009
First published in The Lyric



"Lady Looking in the Mirror"
John William Waterhouse



Hindsight

How could I love so long, yet long to love?
If such a paradox could truly be,
Such question raised, it would perhaps behoove
Us both to view the past with clarity.
Now that denial's turbid haze has flown,
I see I touched you with the desperate hand
Of one whose need was wildly overgrown,
And held you in a girl's possessive bond.
A sort of love it was, but not of truth;
And woman's better sense acknowledged this,
Not with resentment or regret for youth,
But new resolve to search for what was missed.
I loved you long, but longing sharpened sight;
By letting go, we both have won the fight.

© Leticia Austria 2008

Requiescat (May he rest)

This is another poem that began as a Facebook status. It was inspired by a visit to my father's grave.

Requiescat

In the midst of
military precision decorated
with discreet bouquets,
one grave

near my father's
breaks rank,
boasting
a 3-ft. Christmas tree,

fully decked
(lights included);
the family has
roped off the site

with silver
tinsel garland strung
on giant candy cane poles and
plastic poinsettias

thrust into the ground.
The crowning touch:
mammoth Santa hat stretched
onto the headstone.

My mother and I walk on
to wreathe
my father's name
with holly.

© Leticia Austria 2012

A Change of Pace

     I don't often write "humorous" poems. In fact, my sisters often tease me about my poetic voice, which is admittedly introspective and at times downright somber (or, as one sister bluntly puts it, "depressing"). But every once in while, something moves me to depart from my usual tone. I won't go into the "something" that prompted this poem, which was a particular recent event, but I will say that it was obviously influenced by Dorothy Parker, with a dash of Lewis Carroll thrown in for good measure.

          KATY DID
         
          Katy did a pretty tune
          All by her little lonely,
          And asked the owls beneath the moon
          To sing their praises only.

          "Too-whoo, too-whoo, to you?" said they,
          Impassive, eyes a-winking.
          "Do you not want that we should say
          What we be truly thinking?"

          "No, no!" cried Katy with a pout.
          "Not now, not ever, pray ye!
          The truth must never be said out,
          For it would surely slay me!"

          So Katy did what Katy will,
          And sang whatever pleased her;
          To truth she does not listen still,
          Since praise is always easier.

          © Leticia Austria 2012

A Pianist's Farewell

     I wrote this in the monastery when I decided once and for all to give up the piano. Since I knew full well and for a long time that the day would come, when it did come it really wasn't as painful as I thought it would be. Still, it was emotional.

     After I left the cloister and began to submit my poems for publication, I sent this one in to the 2008 Utmost Christian Poets Contest (Novice Division), an international contest out of Canada. At that time it was titled "A Pianist's Farewell upon Entering the Cloister." To my genuine surprise, it won Best Rhyming Poem and Third Prize Over All. Shortly after that, it was published in The Storyteller magazine under its present, less cumbersome, title.

 

A Pianist's Farewell

 

I never thought to leave you, friend,

Who were the very breath of me,

My working day, my restless night,

The steersman of my destiny.

I made a solemn vow to you—

Or was it you to me? Who knows?

It was so long a life ago,

And thieving time too fleeting goes.

 

Was ever there a day, an hour,

That was not colored by your voice?

You snatched me from the womb, I think,

Purloined from me all will and choice ...

Ah, no, I tease you, dearest friend!

To you I may so freely speak,

For you have known my deepest deep

And bore me up to heaven's peak.

 

With you, I soared beyond my self;

Upon your keys, I knew no fear

Of man, or dreams, or my own heart—

My aim was true, my vision clear.

Through you, I gave my laughter words;

Through you, I let my sorrow weep;

To you I told my greatest love,

And in you, let my secret sleep.

 

You were my solace and my strength,

My wise and faithful confidante.

Though now I live without your voice,

My memory its echoes haunt.

It must be so. If ever we

Should meet again, I cannot tell.

I loved you, heart and soul and mind,

O truest, dearest friend. Farewell.

 

© Leticia Austria 2006

To Music, from an Old Lover

My dear,

I sometimes thought I’d die without you—you who shook my soul and filled the wasteland of my womb with fertile singing. Yet I left you fully conscious of the risk of slow and agonizing death, or of an ever-bleeding wound where ancient ecstasies had hymned and sighed. I knew I could expect the wrenching of my heart whenever I perceive you suffering beneath the unrefined or disrespectful treatment you so often have to bear. I suffer with you, as a faithful lover should, regretting the predicament in which I placed myself and you. Perhaps, though, I presume too much—you have survived for centuries without me; and although I feel as if I’ve loved you since you first began to use your charms to soothe the savage breast of man, you owe me nothing. Rather, it is I who owe my very life to you. Although I chose to leave you, you could never part from me. You are the organ of my thought, the beat that pulses through my veins, the breath that feeds my being until death—and I remain, at heart,

                                                                                     Forever yours

I had originally written this poem, four years ago, in strict iambic tetrameter, which on paper made it look long and narrow, with very short lines, not at all like a letter. I decided to reconfigure it, preserving the iambs, but converting it into a prose poem so that it looks and feels more like a real letter. 

© Leticia Austria 2012

In Celebration of the Coming of Autumn

source

 

At Summer's End

 

At summer's end I'll harvest all the fruit,

clusters of hope made ripe by rain and sun

on wizened, gnarled vines sinewy of root.

 

I'll crush it with the weight of life begun

in youth-blind earnestness, burnished by dust

of shattered goals and victories hard-won;

 

and when the broken flesh, fermented must,

is freed of all its pomace, I will fine

it till it's pure, then wait with steady trust.

 

Matured by nature's hand, sweetened with time

in weathered oaken barrels, the fruit born

of callow dreams will yield a mellow wine.

 

I'll sip the wine with wisdom lately learned,

in autumn leisure, fought for, sorely earned.

 

 

© Leticia Austria 2009

First published in The Storyteller