All you need to know about me you will find here in each poem, in a turn of phrase, in a photo. I am a Best Friend and I love one. I am an artist and I am fighting cancer. I'd paint anything that stood still long enough and I have a few cats (no specific number here).
A man recently told me he has simple tastes and I wanted to pull him close to me and tell him there is a big difference in wanting less and expecting nothing We are our expectations and it's easy to forget as one day turns to another as the leaves of fall are crushed under winter snows and then somehow disappear when spring approaches it's so easy to forget who we are and what we want And we wait because polite people wait we wait to hear what we need to hear believing that want is selfish like we wait for the tulips to push and push and push their arrival expected to help mark another season
And how to tell someone you love someone you love ferociously that they are supposed to expect more from the world and not risk the insult that if you leave want unwatched that boiling pot will grow to a mighty fire and all you will want to do is scorch the earth
You will wake one day and want everyone who ever uttered the words I love you to notice that you haven't been the same that your blue eye doesn't shine as bright that you haven't been the same person for quite some time and while the earth was revolving inside you were evolving and aren't we we all? and inside we turn and we twist just to get to the problem trying to understand the gist avoiding at all costs that empty little hole right next to the aortic valve
In that hole is a little piece of you waiting to hear "I need you inside me" waiting to kiss someone who isn't kissing you to say hello or goodbye where life is not so polite and so carefully planned where chaos rules the day and you can't quite taste the tip of your tongue you're willing to bite off to avoid any moment of crisis where wonky girls live to steal your heart and take it on a picnic near the stream where there are so many trout that they wave as they swim by wave to lovers on a blanket in the middle of a wednesday afternoon when the whole world is working pushing one paper into another
It's ok to want the sweetest wine to run over that thirsty tongue Our mothers arent watching and the priest is sleeping and all that is here is you and I the gentle reader who steals into my day to whisper thoughts I dreamed of in my garden where you and I were having a conversation years above you ever said hello in a whisper in a library late at night while I read you poetry of a heart's desire
********************************************************** and if you are wondering why taking what you want in the now is so important, something to remind you...
Mothers Day was quiet here. Finally Spring was here and Richie was preparing for finals and graduation. My niece sent me a book, The Lady In The Water. When she was here visiting when I was ill, we watched the movie together. I love the movie, the story full of folklore and one of my favorites. She wrote me a card that made me cry. When people who aren't your children treat you as though you are a mothering figure it's quite touching and I love my nieces and nephews each of them as though they were a little of my own. Richie has friends he's had since he was a very young child and they are a little of mine also. Richie sent me a card and flowers and in the card he mentioned that he was sorry he wouldn't be home for the weekend because he was trying to tie everything up before we arrived in a few short days to watch him walk the stage. He tells me that May 15th is not only a celebration for him but for us. When he called it felt like he was close and I was happy he was finishing up there and starting yet another degree somewhere else, something else.
The following Saturday I was in the auditorium for his graduation and in the sea of people in graduation tassels I couldn't find him, not that my vision is all that great to start. I sent him a text, asking him to wave or stand up something so I could see him and he waves, Best Friend could find him, all is well. Then he sends me a text that he loves me and thanks me for all my support over the past few years. It was strange, technology, bringing him to the seat next to me whispering in my ear the way we've whispered since he was a little boy. "I wish dad was here." he sends me. I did too, not for me but to celebrate the day we both stood by as that creature made his appearance for the first time. "I know baby." I send back. On days likes this you want the impossible to be the possible. Yet I could feel his presence, smiling so broad, knowing our son fought for this, this great accomplishment. My family was there around me and I felt loved and I know Richie felt that this was important for all of us to drive and drive and drive.
So for now he's home. I'm not sure how I feel about it other than I do like living alone and have liked it a great deal. Even when the house feels oh so large I do like the space. The cats were kicked from the third floor and they are adjusting, wandering about looking for a new sleeping and hiding place. Leroy is taking up residency in the studio and I like knowing he's close. I am feeling better, stronger, but I think that's due to the garden. The yellow flowers on the tomatoes are already producing fruit. I have a poem in my heart I am working through and I have been playing the violin again. All seems well. I am working on a yard project with an old light that is broken and I am turning it into a bird feeder. When I am done, I will post some photos. I will also post some photos of the flower bed that's new this year. I thought blue and purple flowers seemed appropriate for a spring when the sky always looks like a bruise.
Last night it rained so hard I thought for a moment my bed had floated down the stairs and out to the garden I reached under my pillow found the umbrella and read poetry to the garden spiders with the rain keeping time those poems were songs of the poets who knew so much of the human nature that they walked into rivers or blew off their heads in foreign hotel rooms and just when I think it's such waste I understand that maybe they knew they had written all they could write the world had taken all from them that they had and rather than be JD Salinger rather than drink and drink until their livers looked like Bukowski's weathered face they just ended it and forever they will be young and beautiful and talented we all will have wished for more and read them with the color of melancholy written on our souls Tonight their tears fell and made the noises when rain hits the leaves of the trees and if I could I'd conjure Anne Sexton to sit with me and have her tell me the story of the girl with one eye and two eyes and of course three I'd make her tea and drink from very old tea cups and for a moment I'd carry the burden of her sadness sometimes I bathe in sadness when I read of lives lost in the struggle to be human to have empathy of the condition that is life and to understand how I fit into any part of it it all
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My poem of Anne Sexton is not nearly as wonderful as her own, of course.
Her poetry was madness and brilliant. She was a feminist and a mother and a wife. She reminds me of the movie, Revolutionary Road. She only wrote poetry after she was failed by therapy after an attempt at suicide. Later that attempt would bring her to another world. She won the Prize, she now dances with the Gods and we just well get to miss her.
It Is A Spring Afternoon
Everything here is yellow and green. Listen to its throat, its earthskin, the bone dry voices of the peepers as they throb like advertisements. The small animals of the woods are carrying their deathmasks into a narrow winter cave. The scarecrow has plucked out his two eyes like diamonds and walked into the village. The general and the postman have taken off their packs. This has all happened before but nothing here is obsolete. Everything here is possible.
Because of this perhaps a young girl has laid down her winter clothes and has casually placed herself upon a tree limb that hangs over a pool in the river. She has been poured out onto the limb, low above the houses of the fishes as they swim in and out of her reflection and up and down the stairs of her legs. Her body carries clouds all the way home. She is overlooking her watery face in the river where blind men come to bathe at midday.
Because of this the ground, that winter nightmare, has cured its sores and burst with green birds and vitamins. Because of this the trees turn in their trenches and hold up little rain cups by their slender fingers. Because of this a woman stands by her stove singing and cooking flowers. Everything here is yellow and green.
Surely spring will allow a girl without a stitch on to turn softly in her sunlight and not be afraid of her bed. She has already counted seven blossoms in her green green mirror. Two rivers combine beneath her. The face of the child wrinkles. in the water and is gone forever. The woman is all that can be seen in her animal loveliness. Her cherished and obstinate skin lies deeply under the watery tree. Everything is altogether possible and the blind men can also see.
'Do you like me?' I asked the blue blazer. No answer. Silence bounced out of his books. Silence fell off his tongue and sat between us and clogged my throat. It slaughtered my trust. It tore cigarettes out of my mouth. We exchanged blind words, and I did not cry, and I did not beg, blackness lunged in my heart, and something that had been good, a sort of kindly oxygen, turned into a gas oven. Do you like me? How absurd! What's a question like that? What's a silence like that? And what am I hanging around for, riddled with what his silence said?
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When someone takes their own life there is a feeling of loss, helplessness, why didn't she call? Why didn't she find someone who loved her and ask them to save her? Maybe she tried, maybe she was afraid to try. Maybe just maybe all her efforts were in vain and all she was mean to be was a poetess. Maybe.
You can miss someone before you even know them their absence can leave a hole in your life and you wait knowing that surely out there on some twinkling star in the swirl of some blue wind maybe in a bookstore he'll look up from a book you'd never read and you could have a conversation you've been waiting to have since you were old enough to know that someone out there somewhere could finish your sentences You could say "I want your hand" and he'd whisper "on your throat. I know baby" and you could get on with the rest of your life check off finding someone who gets it and who doesnt mind that you are a silly girl because sometimes he likes when you're just a little bit silly and I will always be the girl who wants to fill the world with silly love songs
In the background you could hear the rain hitting the awning and later when you hear it again and again when you try to capture those moments because when you aren't sure what it is just yet you want to hold on to each of those moments and play them again like they were a magical flute and the song if you heard it again could conjure love "I don't know if you will listen to this today on the way home or five days from now." and your heart full of stale spring air just waiting in the garden wringing out blood minding it's own business wondering where you'll plant the sunflowers and tasting the sauce on your tongue from those tomato plants Your stale heart feels this cool breeze blow in and the sky turns pea green and the air gets very still before the tornado hits and it's suddenly so cool you don't need to flip the pillow you hear a bee buzz and its all changed the trees are uprooted the air is clean wondering if you really did see a cow fly by your head just being there he fixes it washes off the dust of winter worries and if you lean your head back far enough yes his hand is there because God made your neck his safe place or maybe not so safe
It's easier to stand at the edge and look down when you can feel his arm around your waist the view is so beautiful I'll wait to see the green in the sky for the air to get very still and somewhere in Indiana an alarm is screaming people are seeking cover auntie Em is heading to the storm cellar I will be waiting feeling my breathing change and his hand slide over my left hip his tongue will taste like raw oysters I am so close to believing if you dream of something it can happen if you wait it will arrive the appointed hour when you are in the right place and room in your heart hearing your mother tell you stories about what men are supposed to be when you can hold them in a whisper and you just let go
This is the moment when the gods expect me To beg for help but I won't even try I want nothing in the world but myself to protect me But I won't lie down, roll over and die
All I have to do is to forget how much I love him All I have to do is put my longing to one side Tell myself that love's an ever-changing situation Passion would have cooled and all the magic would have died
It's easy, it's easy
Until I think about him as he was when I last saw him And how he would have been were I to be with him today Tender in his manner and my self-consolation All I ever wanted and I'm throwing it away
It's easy, easy as life
All I have to do is to pretend I never knew him On those very rare occasions when he steals into my heart Better to have lost him when the ties were barely binding Better the contempt of the familiar cannot start
It's easy, it's easy
Until I think about him as he was when I last touched him And how he would have been were I to be with him today Those very rare occasions don't let up, they keep on coming All I ever wanted and I'm throwing it away
It's easy, it's easy as life
And then I see the faces of a worn defeated people A father and a nation who won't let a coward run Is this how the gods reward the faithful through the ages Forcing us to prove that all the hardest things we've done
Are easy, so easy
And though I'll think about him until the earth draws in around me And though I choose to leave him for another kind of love This is no denial, no betrayal, but redemption Redeemed in my own eyes and in the pantheon above
It's easy, it's easy, it's easy as life
************************************************* Easily, my favorite Opera and of course the Elton John Adaptation my favorite. When Tina sings that song I am lost in it. All she had to do was pretend she never knew him on those very rare occasions when he steals into her heart. It's better to have lost him when the ties were barely binding.
Aida only had to forget that Radames (the warrior) ever loved her and she ever loved him. It's easy right? Aida the capture Nubian Princess is sent to be the handmaiden of Amernis, Radames soon to be wife. Love is an ever changing situation but does passion ever cool and how does magic die? When one tires of another. That can't happen when they are kept apart. It's easy right? When Aida is asked to betray Radames it doesn't seem that easy. The story elaborate as any opera in it's treachery and love and despair.
There is a line when the lovers need to keep love a secret and he tells her you don't have to ask me and I dont have to reply. I love that line. It is the secret lovers share. If you have to ask none of it was real and if you are waiting for a reply you never felt it in the first place.
I love that it's the green mermaid, hooray for the green mermaid. And in her darkest thoughts she wishes she'd never knew love or had it returned. The great stuff of operas. By the time we are old enough to figure out what we want from love we have already built our prison and living there is just so much easier than changing anything. And in any tragic story two lovers give up their lives and like Romeo and Juliet wait lifetimes to find one another again. All life is an italian opera, even one set in Egypt.
Wilde, an Irishman and a scholar, most known for The Picture of Dorian Gray and his acts of civil disobedience. He found himself in prison, died of his experience there, a tortured soul who loved men very much and admired the human frailties of mankind and wrote of them in fairy tales. I love these stories, one more touching than the other and my favorite below, shared because they are too wonderful not to share. He died poor in Paris at the age of 46. Sometimes I wonder what he would have written had he not been so tortured, had he not gone to prison. I suppose though dying poor in Paris is better than dying rich in London.
"Tread lightly, she is near Under the snow Speak gently, she can hear the daisies grow"
High above the city, on a tall column, stood the statue of the Happy Prince. He was gilded all over with thin leaves of fine gold, for eyes he had two bright sapphires, and a large red ruby glowed on his sword-hilt.
He was very much admired indeed. "He is as beautiful as a weathercock," remarked one of the Town Councillors who wished to gain a reputation for having artistic tastes; "only not quite so useful," he added, fearing lest people should think him unpractical, which he really was not.
"Why can't you be like the Happy Prince?" asked a sensible mother of her little boy who was crying for the moon. "The Happy Prince never dreams of crying for anything."
"I am glad there is some one in the world who is quite happy," muttered a disappointed man as he gazed at the wonderful statue.
"He looks just like an angel," said the Charity Children as they came out of the cathedral in their bright scarlet cloaks and their clean white pinafores.
"How do you know?" said the Mathematical Master, "you have never seen one."
"Ah! but we have, in our dreams," answered the children; and the Mathematical Master frowned and looked very severe, for he did not approve of children dreaming.
One night there flew over the city a little Swallow. His friends had gone away to Egypt six weeks before, but he had stayed behind, for he was in love with the most beautiful Reed. He had met her early in the spring as he was flying down the river after a big yellow moth, and had been so attracted by her slender waist that he had stopped to talk to her.
"Shall I love you?" said the Swallow, who liked to come to the point at once, and the Reed made him a low bow. So he flew round and round her, touching the water with his wings, and making silver ripples. This was his courtship, and it lasted all through the summer.
"It is a ridiculous attachment," twittered the other Swallows; "she has no money, and far too many relations"; and indeed the river was quite full of Reeds. Then, when the autumn came they all flew away.
After they had gone he felt lonely, and began to tire of his lady- love. "She has no conversation," he said, "and I am afraid that she is a coquette, for she is always flirting with the wind." And certainly, whenever the wind blew, the Reed made the most graceful curtseys. "I admit that she is domestic," he continued, "but I love travelling, and my wife, consequently, should love travelling also."
"Will you come away with me?" he said finally to her; but the Reed shook her head, she was so attached to her home.
"You have been trifling with me," he cried. "I am off to the Pyramids. Good-bye!" and he flew away.
All day long he flew, and at night-time he arrived at the city. "Where shall I put up?" he said; "I hope the town has made preparations."
Then he saw the statue on the tall column.
"I will put up there," he cried; "it is a fine position, with plenty of fresh air." So he alighted just between the feet of the Happy Prince.
"I have a golden bedroom," he said softly to himself as he looked round, and he prepared to go to sleep; but just as he was putting his head under his wing a large drop of water fell on him. "What a curious thing!" he cried; "there is not a single cloud in the sky, the stars are quite clear and bright, and yet it is raining. The climate in the north of Europe is really dreadful. The Reed used to like the rain, but that was merely her selfishness."
Then another drop fell.
"What is the use of a statue if it cannot keep the rain off?" he said; "I must look for a good chimney-pot," and he determined to fly away.
But before he had opened his wings, a third drop fell, and he looked up, and saw--Ah! what did he see?
The eyes of the Happy Prince were filled with tears, and tears were running down his golden cheeks. His face was so beautiful in the moonlight that the little Swallow was filled with pity.
"Who are you?" he said.
"I am the Happy Prince."
"Why are you weeping then?" asked the Swallow; "you have quite drenched me."
"When I was alive and had a human heart," answered the statue, "I did not know what tears were, for I lived in the Palace of Sans- Souci, where sorrow is not allowed to enter. In the daytime I played with my companions in the garden, and in the evening I led the dance in the Great Hall. Round the garden ran a very lofty wall, but I never cared to ask what lay beyond it, everything about me was so beautiful. My courtiers called me the Happy Prince, and happy indeed I was, if pleasure be happiness. So I lived, and so I died. And now that I am dead they have set me up here so high that I can see all the ugliness and all the misery of my city, and though my heart is made of lead yet I cannot chose but weep."
"What! is he not solid gold?" said the Swallow to himself. He was too polite to make any personal remarks out loud.
"Far away," continued the statue in a low musical voice, "far away in a little street there is a poor house. One of the windows is open, and through it I can see a woman seated at a table. Her face is thin and worn, and she has coarse, red hands, all pricked by the needle, for she is a seamstress. She is embroidering passion- flowers on a satin gown for the loveliest of the Queen's maids-of- honour to wear at the next Court-ball. In a bed in the corner of the room her little boy is lying ill. He has a fever, and is asking for oranges. His mother has nothing to give him but river water, so he is crying. Swallow, Swallow, little Swallow, will you not bring her the ruby out of my sword-hilt? My feet are fastened to this pedestal and I cannot move."
"I am waited for in Egypt," said the Swallow. "My friends are flying up and down the Nile, and talking to the large lotus- flowers. Soon they will go to sleep in the tomb of the great King. The King is there himself in his painted coffin. He is wrapped in yellow linen, and embalmed with spices. Round his neck is a chain of pale green jade, and his hands are like withered leaves."
"Swallow, Swallow, little Swallow," said the Prince, "will you not stay with me for one night, and be my messenger? The boy is so thirsty, and the mother so sad."
"I don't think I like boys," answered the Swallow. "Last summer, when I was staying on the river, there were two rude boys, the miller's sons, who were always throwing stones at me. They never hit me, of course; we swallows fly far too well for that, and besides, I come of a family famous for its agility; but still, it was a mark of disrespect."
But the Happy Prince looked so sad that the little Swallow was sorry. "It is very cold here," he said; "but I will stay with you for one night, and be your messenger."
"Thank you, little Swallow," said the Prince.
So the Swallow picked out the great ruby from the Prince's sword, and flew away with it in his beak over the roofs of the town.
He passed by the cathedral tower, where the white marble angels were sculptured. He passed by the palace and heard the sound of dancing. A beautiful girl came out on the balcony with her lover. "How wonderful the stars are," he said to her, "and how wonderful is the power of love!"
"I hope my dress will be ready in time for the State-ball," she answered; "I have ordered passion-flowers to be embroidered on it; but the seamstresses are so lazy."
He passed over the river, and saw the lanterns hanging to the masts of the ships. He passed over the Ghetto, and saw the old Jews bargaining with each other, and weighing out money in copper scales. At last he came to the poor house and looked in. The boy was tossing feverishly on his bed, and the mother had fallen asleep, she was so tired. In he hopped, and laid the great ruby on the table beside the woman's thimble. Then he flew gently round the bed, fanning the boy's forehead with his wings. "How cool I feel," said the boy, "I must be getting better"; and he sank into a delicious slumber.
Then the Swallow flew back to the Happy Prince, and told him what he had done. "It is curious," he remarked, "but I feel quite warm now, although it is so cold."
"That is because you have done a good action," said the Prince. And the little Swallow began to think, and then he fell asleep. Thinking always made him sleepy.
When day broke he flew down to the river and had a bath. "What a remarkable phenomenon," said the Professor of Ornithology as he was passing over the bridge. "A swallow in winter!" And he wrote a long letter about it to the local newspaper. Every one quoted it, it was full of so many words that they could not understand.
"To-night I go to Egypt," said the Swallow, and he was in high spirits at the prospect. He visited all the public monuments, and sat a long time on top of the church steeple. Wherever he went the Sparrows chirruped, and said to each other, "What a distinguished stranger!" so he enjoyed himself very much.
When the moon rose he flew back to the Happy Prince. "Have you any commissions for Egypt?" he cried; "I am just starting."
"Swallow, Swallow, little Swallow," said the Prince, "will you not stay with me one night longer?"
"I am waited for in Egypt," answered the Swallow. "To-morrow my friends will fly up to the Second Cataract. The river-horse couches there among the bulrushes, and on a great granite throne sits the God Memnon. All night long he watches the stars, and when the morning star shines he utters one cry of joy, and then he is silent. At noon the yellow lions come down to the water's edge to drink. They have eyes like green beryls, and their roar is louder than the roar of the cataract.
"Swallow, Swallow, little Swallow," said the Prince, "far away across the city I see a young man in a garret. He is leaning over a desk covered with papers, and in a tumbler by his side there is a bunch of withered violets. His hair is brown and crisp, and his lips are red as a pomegranate, and he has large and dreamy eyes. He is trying to finish a play for the Director of the Theatre, but he is too cold to write any more. There is no fire in the grate, and hunger has made him faint."
"I will wait with you one night longer," said the Swallow, who really had a good heart. "Shall I take him another ruby?"
"Alas! I have no ruby now," said the Prince; "my eyes are all that I have left. They are made of rare sapphires, which were brought out of India a thousand years ago. Pluck out one of them and take it to him. He will sell it to the jeweller, and buy food and firewood, and finish his play."
"Dear Prince," said the Swallow, "I cannot do that"; and he began to weep.
"Swallow, Swallow, little Swallow," said the Prince, "do as I command you."
So the Swallow plucked out the Prince's eye, and flew away to the student's garret. It was easy enough to get in, as there was a hole in the roof. Through this he darted, and came into the room. The young man had his head buried in his hands, so he did not hear the flutter of the bird's wings, and when he looked up he found the beautiful sapphire lying on the withered violets.
"I am beginning to be appreciated," he cried; "this is from some great admirer. Now I can finish my play," and he looked quite happy.
The next day the Swallow flew down to the harbour. He sat on the mast of a large vessel and watched the sailors hauling big chests out of the hold with ropes. "Heave a-hoy!" they shouted as each chest came up. "I am going to Egypt"! cried the Swallow, but nobody minded, and when the moon rose he flew back to the Happy Prince.
"I am come to bid you good-bye," he cried.
"Swallow, Swallow, little Swallow," said the Prince, "will you not stay with me one night longer?"
"It is winter," answered the Swallow, "and the chill snow will soon be here. In Egypt the sun is warm on the green palm-trees, and the crocodiles lie in the mud and look lazily about them. My companions are building a nest in the Temple of Baalbec, and the pink and white doves are watching them, and cooing to each other. Dear Prince, I must leave you, but I will never forget you, and next spring I will bring you back two beautiful jewels in place of those you have given away. The ruby shall be redder than a red rose, and the sapphire shall be as blue as the great sea."
"In the square below," said the Happy Prince, "there stands a little match-girl. She has let her matches fall in the gutter, and they are all spoiled. Her father will beat her if she does not bring home some money, and she is crying. She has no shoes or stockings, and her little head is bare. Pluck out my other eye, and give it to her, and her father will not beat her."
"I will stay with you one night longer," said the Swallow, "but I cannot pluck out your eye. You would be quite blind then."
"Swallow, Swallow, little Swallow," said the Prince, "do as I command you."
So he plucked out the Prince's other eye, and darted down with it. He swooped past the match-girl, and slipped the jewel into the palm of her hand. "What a lovely bit of glass," cried the little girl; and she ran home, laughing.
Then the Swallow came back to the Prince. "You are blind now," he said, "so I will stay with you always."
"No, little Swallow," said the poor Prince, "you must go away to Egypt."
"I will stay with you always," said the Swallow, and he slept at the Prince's feet.
All the next day he sat on the Prince's shoulder, and told him stories of what he had seen in strange lands. He told him of the red ibises, who stand in long rows on the banks of the Nile, and catch gold-fish in their beaks; of the Sphinx, who is as old as the world itself, and lives in the desert, and knows everything; of the merchants, who walk slowly by the side of their camels, and carry amber beads in their hands; of the King of the Mountains of the Moon, who is as black as ebony, and worships a large crystal; of the great green snake that sleeps in a palm-tree, and has twenty priests to feed it with honey-cakes; and of the pygmies who sail over a big lake on large flat leaves, and are always at war with the butterflies.
"Dear little Swallow," said the Prince, "you tell me of marvellous things, but more marvellous than anything is the suffering of men and of women. There is no Mystery so great as Misery. Fly over my city, little Swallow, and tell me what you see there."
So the Swallow flew over the great city, and saw the rich making merry in their beautiful houses, while the beggars were sitting at the gates. He flew into dark lanes, and saw the white faces of starving children looking out listlessly at the black streets. Under the archway of a bridge two little boys were lying in one another's arms to try and keep themselves warm. "How hungry we are!" they said. "You must not lie here," shouted the Watchman, and they wandered out into the rain.
Then he flew back and told the Prince what he had seen.
"I am covered with fine gold," said the Prince, "you must take it off, leaf by leaf, and give it to my poor; the living always think that gold can make them happy."
Leaf after leaf of the fine gold the Swallow picked off, till the Happy Prince looked quite dull and grey. Leaf after leaf of the fine gold he brought to the poor, and the children's faces grew rosier, and they laughed and played games in the street. "We have bread now!" they cried.
Then the snow came, and after the snow came the frost. The streets looked as if they were made of silver, they were so bright and glistening; long icicles like crystal daggers hung down from the eaves of the houses, everybody went about in furs, and the little boys wore scarlet caps and skated on the ice.
The poor little Swallow grew colder and colder, but he would not leave the Prince, he loved him too well. He picked up crumbs outside the baker's door when the baker was not looking and tried to keep himself warm by flapping his wings. But at last he knew that he was going to die. He had just strength to fly up to the Prince's shoulder once more. "Good-bye, dear Prince!" he murmured, "will you let me kiss your hand?"
"I am glad that you are going to Egypt at last, little Swallow," said the Prince, "you have stayed too long here; but you must kiss me on the lips, for I love you."
"It is not to Egypt that I am going," said the Swallow. "I am going to the House of Death. Death is the brother of Sleep, is he not?"
And he kissed the Happy Prince on the lips, and fell down dead at his feet.
At that moment a curious crack sounded inside the statue, as if something had broken. The fact is that the leaden heart had snapped right in two. It certainly was a dreadfully hard frost.
Early the next morning the Mayor was walking in the square below in company with the Town Councillors. As they passed the column he looked up at the statue: "Dear me! how shabby the Happy Prince looks!" he said.
"How shabby indeed!" cried the Town Councillors, who always agreed with the Mayor; and they went up to look at it.
"The ruby has fallen out of his sword, his eyes are gone, and he is golden no longer," said the Mayor in fact, "he is litttle beter than a beggar!"
"Little better than a beggar," said the Town Councillors.
"And here is actually a dead bird at his feet!" continued the Mayor. "We must really issue a proclamation that birds are not to be allowed to die here." And the Town Clerk made a note of the suggestion.
So they pulled down the statue of the Happy Prince. "As he is no longer beautiful he is no longer useful," said the Art Professor at the University.
Then they melted the statue in a furnace, and the Mayor held a meeting of the Corporation to decide what was to be done with the metal. "We must have another statue, of course," he said, "and it shall be a statue of myself."
"Of myself," said each of the Town Councillors, and they quarrelled. When I last heard of them they were quarrelling still.
"What a strange thing!" said the overseer of the workmen at the foundry. "This broken lead heart will not melt in the furnace. We must throw it away." So they threw it on a dust-heap where the dead Swallow was also lying.
"Bring me the two most precious things in the city," said God to one of His Angels; and the Angel brought Him the leaden heart and the dead bird.
"You have rightly chosen," said God, "for in my garden of Paradise this little bird shall sing for evermore, and in my city of gold the Happy Prince shall praise me."
A robin red breast heard a cricket's song she watched his thighs move in a magical way and the song but a whisper, a twist of phrase She spoke to him in bird song of careful thought until after a few nights it felt like occasion to celebrate this date of the robin and the cricket and the almost effortless song they shared
In a bird fluster of Summer things to do she, a Robin afraid of heights hadn't wanted to notice that in quiet moments she'd listen for a song not her own song, not a new song she'd sing she knew those songs a thousand times over melody of want and well more want chirping lyrics of children and flowers and of the quiet stillness in a night sky when the moon fills the garden with his pale face of love's light
And as of any anticipated boiling pot of watched want there it was almost a chirp, a whisper of "Are you there?" and her heart replied, almost bursting from her feathered plumage "Yes" and in perfect beat to her own heart's pounding she listened to his reply "I am always here" he sang and oh she wanted to believe with a want that would cause a rain cloud to fill the cement communal bathing pool
She looked a few more times and there he was her singing cricket of such whispering song and out of the dark sky that was turning fall she sang out it was quite unexpected but not without thought "I love you" she sang "just a little" only the little being a lie of such white careful praise and in those few moments of silence she waited knowing that in three seconds the world can change the colors much brighter the world at an easier pace any irritation colored over in the comfort of Love's song of its promise a few beats later "We are having lovely weather for the summer" the sweet cricket sang "I will always be here" and this was their Eine kleine Nachtmusik
For a Robin resting on the ground is a terrifying thought and she wondered at the cricket's courage and one night when they were simply singing one to the other and the other caught she asked "aren't you ever afraid of anything?" and he wasn't of course that's why she loved him in the first place and she dreamt of the day when she wouldn't be either, afraid that is and she'd fall as she'd already fallen to be on the ground next to him the world's most lyrical cricket and they would sing in the same breath his cheek next to hers in a garden after a long winter and with a heart of Spring's promise beating and singing and beating some more Such is the way of love and it's little night song
