Poetry Friday

cockscomb

Cockscomb image from http://plantfinder.sunset.com/sunset/plant-details.jsp?id=636

This poem makes me think of a fairy tale. But it doesn’t read as if Dame Edith saw Jane as a possible heroine; in fact, this is more like what the wicked mistress would say to her hapless servant.  Complete with the can’t-help-herself repeated references to the flower that will prove key to Jane’s secret identity and lead her to the adventures she was born for…

Aubade
by Dame Edith Sitwell

JANE, Jane,
Tall as a crane,
The morning light creaks down again;

Comb your cockscomb-ragged hair,
Jane, Jane, come down the stair.

Each dull blunt wooden stalactite
Of rain creaks, hardened by the light,

Sounding like an overtone
From some lonely world unknown.

But the creaking empty light
Will never harden into sight,

Will never penetrate your brain
With overtones like the blunt rain.

The light would show (if it could harden)
Eternities of kitchen garden,

Cockscomb flowers that none will pluck,
And wooden flowers that ‘gin to cluck.

In the kitchen you must light
Flames as staring, red and white,

As carrots or as turnips shining
Where the cold dawn light lies whining.

Cockscomb hair on the cold wind
Hangs limp, turns the milk’s weak mind . . .

Jane, Jane,
Tall as a crane,
The morning light creaks down again!

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