Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, BOOK OF VISIONS: PHILOMEL, by PAUL FORT


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

BOOK OF VISIONS: PHILOMEL, by                    
First Line: To the heart of silence sing, shy bird that none may see! The garden
Last Line: Listens to philomel.
Subject(s): Birds; Silence


To the heart of silence sing, shy bird that none may see! The garden, listening,
ecstatic bends to thee.

The crescent moon reposes enchained in music's spell. No zephyr stirs the roses
where chanteth Philomel.

No breath in all the bower, where thicker perfumes throng from souls that lack
the power to merge with that sweet song!

Like an appeal to gods of nether shade's desmesne, the panting nightingale sings
in the night serene,

not to the flowers that lie where thicker perfumes throng because they cannot
die to that requiem of song!

Is it the silence breathes from its melodious heart? . . . A rose-bush sheds its
leaves new torpors to impart.

Silence, with lightnings dressed, like Tempest, dusky-browed, then gently lulled
to rest, a floating summer cloud,

by that modulated hymn with pure and strident swell that to the moon exhales the
soul of Philomel!

Is it a bird alone breathes that immortal song? -- Ah, the enchanting tone
forever should prolong.

Or is it out of Hell that voice sings deathlessly. There is no wind at all to
let the blossoms die.

Night's shade no breeze discloses. Strange metamorphoses! The moonlight gives
its aid to the ruin of the roses.

Already every flower on its stem doth fail, and lo, like a white squall they
drift, roses in vertigo,

across the rapid space of dormant grasses dim in terror of your hymn, O secret
nightingale!

In shiverings of dread, corollas leave their place. A mask hath overspread the
scared moon's shining face.

O'er turf athrill with fears, pale petals shuddering, you oscillate towards
earth and towards this thing one hears.

Hark! . . . From the shadows deep what sound profound doth start? Is it the
world's great heart that 'neath the garden beats?

Hark! . . . Like the pulse of Fate, a single stroke . . . two . . . three.
Muffled, precipitate, they mount sonorously.

Prisoned in depths of earth a heart this way doth pass. Throbs of a mighty heart
traverse the shaven grass.

Where fluttering petals drift, earth heaves. What form divine a regal brow doth
lift, blued in the soft moonshine?

The immortal goddess, she whose youth no years can quell, the puissant Cybele,
listens to Philomel.





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