Interesting poem, David, though the energy of it seems
to be in lines 5-9 in the past tense, and the doll
framework like the book framework at the end seems
like a framework and not as compelling.
I didn't much like dolls, though I didn't hate them
either, and it's only lately that I've remembered my
sister's attachment to dolls and noticed how dolls
often occur in connection with women in poems. Dahlia
Ravikovich wrote about them from a different interior
perspective, so I'll type in this poem.
The Marionette
(By Dahli Ravikovich, trans. by Chana Bloch)
To be a marionette.
In this gray, precious light before dawn
to drift under the new day
pulled
by the undercurrents.
To be a marionette,
a pale fragile china doll
held by threads.
To be a marionette.
The threads on which my whole life depends
are real silk.
A marionette,
she too is real.
She has memories.
Four hundred years ago
she was Dona Elvira, Countess of Seville,
with three hundred chambermaids.
And only when she glanced at
her fine silk handkerchief
did she know her fate:
she would be a china marionette
or a wax doll.
Dona Elvira, Countess of Seville,
dreamt of late-ripening vines.
Her knights always spoke softly to her.
Dona Elvira, the Countess and so forth,
was gathered unto her people.
She left two sons and a daughter
to a gloomy future.
In the twentieth century, in a gray, precious dawn,
how fortunate
to be a marionette.
This woman is not responsible for her actions,
say the judges.
Her fragile heart is gray as the dawn.
And her body is held by threads.
Best,
Rebecca
--- David Bircumshaw <[log in to unmask]>
wrote:
> As I sat on the floor at your feet
> handing you your dolls
> and a little in the air above my head
> (a child's arm's distance)
> you recalled the great flood
>
> (that stripped them)
> that rotted their raiment like an eye
> and our continuous flesh
> breathed undertow as you dressed
> them anew like books
>
> for the sanctuary of shelves.
>
>
> Best
>
> Dave
>
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