Interlude
By Dame Edith Sitwell (1887 - 1964)
Mid this hot green glowing gloom
A word falls with a raindrop's boom...
Like baskets of ripe fruit in air
The bird-songs seem, suspended where
Those goldfinches--the ripe warm lights
Peck slyly at them--take quick flights.
My feet are feathered like a bird
Among the shadows scarcely heard;
I bring you branches green with dew
And fruits that you may crown anew
Your whirring waspish-gilded hair
Amid this cornucopia--
Until your warm lips bear the stains
And bird-blood leap within your veins.
A word falls with a raindrop's boom...
Like baskets of ripe fruit in air
The bird-songs seem, suspended where
Those goldfinches--the ripe warm lights
Peck slyly at them--take quick flights.
My feet are feathered like a bird
Among the shadows scarcely heard;
I bring you branches green with dew
And fruits that you may crown anew
Your whirring waspish-gilded hair
Amid this cornucopia--
Until your warm lips bear the stains
And bird-blood leap within your veins.
The aristocratic English eccentric, Dame Edith Sitwell, was a controversial poet. The link on her name, above, leads you to a discussion of widely differing opinions of her work. It has been dismissed as nonsense and lauded as genius. I don't share either of those extreme opinions, but I do love her playfulness, her delight in unusual rhymes, words, and arrangements of words. I love that her poems are so highly visual in their imagery, and also so very musical. In fact, during her lifetime she collaborated with musicians and performed her work to musical accompaniment. I like this poem, Interlude, for all those reasons, and because, as a love poem, it manages to be both subtle and sensual, delicate and lush.
A detailed biography and a selection of her poems can be found at PoemHunter, and a different selection of poems, available for reading online or downloading as a whole book, here.
She was capable of very serious and powerful poems too, the most famous probably being Still Falls the Rain, applying Christian imagery to the London Blitz of World War II. The link takes you to the text of this poem plus a recording of Dame Edith reading it in strong, deliberate tones.
Though our focus here is on poetry, it is worth mentioning that she also wrote some books of prose. She said she did so only for money; nevertheless, she wrote them very well too. I fell in love with her study of the young Queen Elizabeth I, Fanfare for Elizabeth, when I was a young girl myself, and have never fallen out of love with it.
Poems and photos used in ‘I Wish I’d Written
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