The most recent books by MARLY YOUMANS are the book-length poem Seren of the Wildwood (Wiseblood Books, 2023), a novel set in Puritan New England, Charis in the World of Wonders (Ignatius Press, 2020) and her most recent collection of poems, The Book of the Red King (Phoenicia Press, 2019.) She divides her time between Cooperstown, New York, and Cullowhee, North Carolina

November Mandevillas                                                       

So long to fathom that the hectic world

And common lives are not what they appear

But rarer, else—that nothing’s as it seems,

That there are imps and wyverns in our midst

And angels perching in our backyard trees…

The mandevillas wheeled inside to live

Inside a kitchen still are flowering,

Last blossoms deeper, darker at the edge,

Flesh more ethereal, more ruby-clear,

Each one sending forth its secret name

In joy despite the ebbing of the light

And all green dormancy that’s soon to come,

The word of being drowsy in the leaves

And growing stranger, swooning into dream.

Blue and Shadow

Evening sorts its blues and chooses cobalt—

Only hours ago it was noon, shadows

Brief underfoot—my shadow lengthened, slipped

Silently behind me, gathering dark

Like the train of a dress made out of years.

---

And is the shining Lucifer at fault

That shadows grow, that every light-drenched rose

—its gold-bed mined by bees, its petals stripped—

Must go, that even an ascending lark

Will fall? Such gorgeous blue! No need for tears.

The Cartagena Fair

1. The Night Fair and the Crone

                        And no matter what…

                        there’s no night fair more wild

                        than here in Cartagena.

                               —Federico García Lorca, tr. Rothenberg

---

The good Lord sent these children, difficult

But radiant… In truth, they weren’t at fault

For their unsettled humors, nor their lack

Of industry. Made feckless by the age,

The shedding of our myths and rituals—

When I rocked them in the ash-wood cradle,

Who knew that they would be so tough to sell

At Cartagena’s wildfire fair, the famed

Night-fair of love and ache and secrecy?

For they were chatelaines of beauty’s keys,

And I instructed each in courtly ways,

Enough to charm a queen or nobleman.

I’ll pack them off again tomorrow night,

To shine and lure at our unbridled fair,

Though I expect to tote them home once more….

Their father not one whit the better man,

Always with the betraying, stroking flanks

Of any shape or shade, so long as the mark

Pleased the arrow of his momentary

Desire: and yet he still desired my flesh,

Longed to kneel in adoration’s bonfire,

And I eventually forgave his wrongs.

Perhaps I’ll sell him too, if Venus comes

To sneak around the night fair, slipping here

And there like some old moon-haunched carny tart!

Or maybe we’ll plunk down and have a cup

Of something wild and starred, to laugh at men

Who once were each Adonis with his wand,

And children useless as abandoned gods

Lolling about in alabaster heaps.

2.  The Maidens to the Crone

How can we heed your words when night-fairs call,

And the green minnow-vein at a wrist flickers

As Lorca’s lightwheel spins against the dark—

Then all we crave is for Adonis now

To sear us here and there and here again,

To tilt in a car at the very top

Of the ferris wheel: the rings of the carousel

Go flailing, flaming, flung as high as the moon,

And we forget the all you ever said.

---

Golden fish ignite

And spangle sky: wildfire’s ours,

Ours the fireworked fair.

3. The Young Man to the Crone

How could I ever leave my mother’s house—

She who tied my mind to sunset’s reins

And made my brothers leap in gingko leaves

Or tumbling cherry blossoms in the spring,

She who let the crystal of my mind

Be filled by far-off scents and golden birds

And deepest cobalt reaches of the seas

Where stir the winding lamplit mysteries.

---

My mind is an Adonis. I cannot go.

4. Her Adonis to the Crone

All my wanderings were hunts for you

Who hid from me so often, your image

Twinkling, fleeing behind a scrim of trees—

Who knows where you would fly away from me,

Maybe hunkering in some scriptorium,

Laughing and crying with the bawdy monks,

Or kneeling in a candled radiance

By whittled relic-bones of saints long dead.

I pictured you uprising from a pool

Ringed-round with massy stones, one crooked tree

Lifting its parasol above your head,

And you, your face gone naked, water-sluiced,

In that instant an eft-faced innocent.

---

How I hardened against you!

5. Crone Gazing in the Mirror

I throw away my veils and golden charms

And look with interest at my face, my self,

Grown old: the tiny flick of wisdom’s light

I might have dreamed, the worn, repentant heart,

The limbs that will lie naked in the arms

Of my Adonis, hunter of my flesh.

---

Shoo the children out of doors like chickens

And send them to the Cartagena fair

To win a love, to find some craft or work

That satisfies our ancient urge to make,

To spy some secret altarpiece and kneel….

---

A scent of lavender catches the breeze,

Cicadas ratchet up the evening’s song,

And Lorca’s garlic clove of moon will rise

Again in its gold glory, tossed to skies

Of Cartagena, and shine upon the fair.