RPO -- Louise Bogan : Medusa

Louise Bogan (1897-1970)

Medusa

1I had come to the house, in a cave of trees,

2Facing a sheer sky.

3Everything moved, -- a bell hung ready to strike,

4Sun and reflection wheeled by.

5When the bare eyes were before me

6And the hissing hair,

7Held up at a window, seen through a door.

8The stiff bald eyes, the serpents on the forehead

9Formed in the air.

10This is a dead scene forever now.

11Nothing will ever stir.

12The end will never brighten it more than this,

13Nor the rain blur.

14The water will always fall, and will not fall,

15And the tipped bell make no sound.

16The grass will always be growing for hay

17Deep on the ground.

18And I shall stand here like a shadow

19Under the great balanced day,

20My eyes on the yellow dust, that was lifting in the wind,

21And does not drift away.

Notes

1] For the poet's own recording of this poem, see Louise Brogan Read from Her Own Works (Decca Records DL 9132; Carillon Records 308).
Medusa: a Gorgan of classical myth who possessed a scaled body, hands of brass, boar's tusks, and locks that were living snakes, and who turned anyone unfortunate enough to look at her into stone.

Online text copyright © 2009, Ian Lancashire (the Department of English) and the University of Toronto.
Published by the Web Development Group, Information Technology Services, University of Toronto Libraries.

Original text: Louise Bogan, Body of this Death: Poems (New York: Robert M. McBride, 1923): 3. PS 3503 O195 B66 1923 Robarts Library.
First publication date: 21 December 1921
Publication date note: New Republic 29 (Dec. 21, 1921): 101
RPO poem editor: Ian Lancashire
RP edition: RPO 2000.
Recent editing: 2:2002/1/16

Rhyme: mostly abcb

Other poems by Louise Bogan