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.
MARLY YOUMANS is the author of sixteen books of poetry and fiction. Recent work includes a long poem, Seren of the Wildwood (Wiseblood), a novel, Charis in the World of Wonders (Ignatius), and a poetry collection, The Book of the Red King (Phoenicia).
’Ælfstan the Illuminator Begins a Work’ was the President’s Choice Award
and Runner-up, Formal Verse Contest 2024, The English-Speaking Union (Victoria Branch, Australia)
