  Poetry
This week: Conrad Aiken Edited by: Stormy Lady  
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All Lovely Things
by Conrad Aiken
All lovely things will have an ending,
All lovely things will fade and die,
And youth, that's now so bravely spending,
Will beg a penny by and by.
Fine ladies soon are all forgotten,
And goldenrod is dust when dead,
The sweetest flesh and flowers are rotten
And cobwebs tent the brightest head.
Come back, true love! Sweet youth, return!-
But time goes on, and will, unheeding,
Though hands will reach, and eyes will yearn,
And the wild days set true hearts bleeding.
Come back, true love! Sweet youth, remain!-
But goldenrod and daisies wither,
And over them blows autumn rain,
They pass, they pass, and know not whither.
Conrad Aiken was born on August 5, 1889 in Savannah, Georgia. Tragedy struck Conrad at a very young age. His father, a great physician, had a metal breakdown and killed his mother and then himself. Conrad was the one who found his parents bodies. After his parents untimely death he was sent to Massachusetts where he was raised by his aunt. Conrad's Aunt put Conrad into private schools from the age eleven until he graduated. Conrad went on to graduate from Harvard University in 1912. While at Harvard he edited the Advocate with fellow author T.S. Eliot. After graduation Conrad worked as a reporter.
In 1912 Conrad married married Jessie McDonald. Conrad's poems Earth Triumphant published in 1914 followed by The Charnel Rose in 1918. His first daughter Jane Aiken who became writer was born 1917. His early works were greatly influenced by Symbolism. In 1921 Conrad moved to England, shortly after that his wife gave birth to their third child, Joan Aiken, who also became a writer. The couple's marriage was rocky and by 1929, they divorced. He remarried Clarissa M. Lorenz in 1930. Also that same year Conrad received the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for his Selected Poems.
By the time Conrad reached his fathers age, at the time of his death, Conrad's metal health was also failing. He tried to commit suicide in 1932. Conrad wrote And In The Hanging Gardens which was published in 1933. Conrad's poem Music I Heard was set to music by Leonard Bernstein. Conrad then spent the next few years traveling and eventually divorcing Clarissa and getting remarried to Mary Hoover in 1937. Aiken's received many other awards besides the Pulitzer, he was awarded the National Book Award in 1954 followed by the Bollinger Prize in 1956. Then he received the Gold Medal in Poetry from the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1958 and he received the National Medal of Literature in 1969.
Conrad Aiken died in his home in Savannah on August 17, 1973. Aiken's grave is located in Bonaventure Cemetery on the banks of the Savannah River. According to legend Aiken's tombstones was designed as a bench so that people may come and sit on it to drink s martini at his grave. The inscriptions read "Give my love to the world," and "Cosmos Mariner-Destination Unknown."
The Window
by Conrad Aiken
She looks out in the blue morning
and sees a whole wonderful world
she looks out in the morning
and sees a whole world
she leans out of the window
and this is what she sees
a wet rose singing to the sun
with a chorus of red bees
she leans out of the window
and laughs for the window is high
she is in it like a bird on a perch
and they scoop the blue sky
she and the window scooping
the morning as if it were air
scooping a green wave of leaves
above a stone stair
and an urn hung with leaden garlands
and girls holding hands in a ring
and raindrops on an iron railing
shining like a harp string
an old man draws with his ferrule
in wet sand a map of Spain
the marble soldier on his pedestal
draws a stiff diagram of pain
but the walls around her tremble
with the speed of the earth the floor
curves to the terrestrial center
and behind her the door
opens darkly down to the beginning
far down to the first simple cry
and the animal waking in water
and the opening of the eye
she looks out in the blue morning
and sees a whole wonderful world
she looks out in the morning
and sees a whole world.
Music I Heard
by Conrad Aiken
Music I heard with you was more than music,
And bread I broke with you was more than bread;
Now that I am without you, all is desolate;
All that was once so beautiful is dead.
Your hands once touched this table and this silver,
And I have seen your fingers hold this glass.
These things do not remember you, beloved,
And yet your touch upon them will not pass.
For it was in my heart that you moved among them,
And blessed them with your hands and with your eyes;
And in my heart they will remember always,
-They knew you once, O beautiful and wise.
Thank you all!
Stormy Lady
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Summer's End
Softly, wisps of sound pierce the veil
that holds me captive for my crime.
My failing body is my jail;
my sole offense - I've past my prime.
There's no escape. I won't prevail
against the ravages of time.
For solace I seek days long past:
remembered romance, summer days
when all tomorrows stretched out vast
far beyond my temporal gaze.
Sweet memories, recalled at last;
the end of time is lost in haze.
Rolled up white sleeves on tight tee-shirts
holding Camels - a badge of youth.
Be-bop music and poodle skirts -
a time when people spoke the truth.
A lover's kisses soothed all hurts;
friends could be counted on for ruth.
Warm memories speed through my mind
like fast cars racing toward a goal.
A final breath - I leave behind
my shackles as I free my soul.
I drift in peace, no more confined,
as time yields up its last control.
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Poetry: July 07, 2010 Issue [#3837]
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