Byron at Shelley’s Burning

1923 –

1987

The brain of Shelley cooks
Inside its smoking case;
The bones and flesh fall off
And show the seed of Shelley’s thought.

The wine of Byron fumes
Inside his cup of skull;
The lengthy hair of Percy
Streams on his romantic pyre.

The scissor legs of Byron
Swim where Shelley drowned
In wine romantic seas
Of Italy. And Byron notes

The wine red beauty
In the sheets of flame
Of Shelley, as he sees
The body burn upon the beach.

But Byron’s brain could not
Foresee how he would die
In Greece, his blood ebbing
Into his eye out of a drunken leech.

Nude Kneeling in Sand

The girl in the sand
colored hat
of unfinished straw
with its sides of waves
of water weaving
in the winds of her
yellow hair, her eyes
hives of bees, touch-
es her breasts toward her knees.

Like a child she digs
and buries
her thin hands in the
desirable flesh
colored sands, as small
animals or pairs
of birds that wait to
rise and stir scat-
tering streams of amber myrrh.

John Logan

2001

New York Scene: May 1958

It is just getting dark as the rain stops.
He walks slow and looks, though he’s late. It’s all
Muted. It’s like a stage. A tender light
In the street, a freshness. He wonders, a
Funeral?: at uncertain intervals,
Up the block, the corner, small, old women
Walk home with soft lamps, holding them with love
Like children before them in the May night.
A few people move down East 10th Street. They
Do not look at these ladies with their lights
Blowing in the rain-wet airs by the stores,

John Logan

2001

Three Moves

Three moves in sixth months and I remain 
the same.
Two homes made two friends.
The third leaves me with myself again.
(We hardly speak.)
Here I am with tame ducks
and my neighbors' boats,
only this electric heat
against the April damp.
I have a friend named Frank—
the only one who ever dares to call
and ask me, "How's your soul?"
I hadn't thought about it for a while,
and was ashamed to say I didn't know.
I have no priest for now.
Who
will forgive me then. Will you
Tame birds and my neighbors' boats.
The ducks honk about the floats . .

John Logan

1989

Poems

Byron at Shelley’s Burning

More by this poet

Nude Kneeling in Sand

New York Scene: May 1958

Three Moves

Poems

Page submenu block

Byron at Shelley’s Burning

More by this poet

Nude Kneeling in Sand

New York Scene: May 1958

Three Moves

Newsletter Sign Up