Chinese Mandarin
(An Attempt to Interpret the Ben Day Etching)
(Free Verse)
I am as the sun
In the honorable heavens
To these humble ones
Who come to me
For counsel.
My coat is redder
Than its flame,
And my wealth
And wisdom
Turn all that I look upon
To gold.
My ships
Wear mighty sails
And conquer dreadful seas
As swiftly as a bird
Ascends the clouds.
I am as a god.
These humble ones
Who are my people
Lift their faces
To me,
And I speak
In silence.
Evelyn Coffey
A bit of whimsey from Evelyn's wonderful sense of humor.
Bridges of dancing vapor
leaned across
The evening sky, and merged into
a heart design,
Embroidered with these words
in cloud-spun floss:
Adele, dear, won’t you be
My Valentine?
Evelyn Coffey
All Burred Up
A gauntish missile
Bleakened the air;
An arid thistle
Struck my hair.
The knife-tongued briar,
With frenzied touch,
Like lurid fire,
Steeled its clutch.
My ravaged skin-cells
Were rudely smirched,
Like tarnished tinsels,
Rubble-perched.
Disdainful thistle,
Do you not fear
To shrill your whistle
In my ear?
Evelyn Coffey
Again, what prompted this poem? Evelyn was so able to see a vignette of life and then get inside the mind of the person involved. (See "Farewell.") Clearly this speaker's eloquence inspired Evelyn to look deep inside the young woman's soul.
The Young Communist
A bell struck deep within me when she spoke.
It was as if my dormant flesh awoke
To life for the first time. It seemed to me
A strange and wondrous thing that I could be
Thus moved by one I had not seen before - -
By one whose creed my fathers would deplore.
Was it the music of her low-hung voice
That made my spirit answer and rejoice?
I had not seen the glowing eyes of her.
I had not felt the restless fires stir
In her warm body, though her lips framed words
That drew rapt followers to her in herds.
Her youth was like the burning flush of dawn
That lingers till the final dark is gone;
Enthusiasm like the maddest rush of waves
That piles its green-tongued foam ashore and laves
Bewildered sands. The pleading of her cause
Was met with ardent hand and heart applause.
What matter that her dreams are futile dreams?
Her words like drops of light in candle beams?
What matter that her youth will waste away
And ultimately seep through solid clay?
Her lips have held a multitude in thrall.
She is a prophet, flaunting Need’s thin call.
Evelyn Coffey
Tribute to Age
Let me but see,
And I will wear the sheaf of white,
Its banner straining my blinded sight,
In this, my youth,
With purple truth!
Let me but know,
And I will wear the sheaf of white,
That shining pinion of Life's night,
Upon my head
Until I’m dead!
E. Coffey
According to an Australian website called Suzie's Sanctuary, a triolet is an eight line poem or stanza with a set rhyme scheme. Line four and line seven are the same as line one, and line eight is the same as line two. The rhyme scheme is ABaAabAB.
line 1 - A
line 2 - B
line 3 - a
line 4 - A (line 1)
line 5 - a
line 6 - b
line 7 - A (line 1)
line 8 - B (line 2)
Triolet
What is a nice day?
Have you seen any lately?
November is gray.
What is a nice day?
When will pink winds play?
Why must clouds loom irately?
What is a nice day?
Have you seen any lately?
Triolet
Bring me an odorous jasmine spray.
My heart has need of its white breath
To sanctify each empty day.
Bring me an odorous jasmine spray
And let its hoary petals play
Day’s hollow chancels to sweet death.
Bring me an odorous jasmine spray.
My heart has need of its white breath.
Evelyn Coffey
What inspired this one, so different from the tone of Evelyn's other works?
Yes, I was hungry and you took me in.
But mine was not a hunger after bread.
You lavished on me luxuries of skin,
And powderings and jewels for my head.
You made me a very scented road of sin.
And, listless as a leaf that frost has bled,
We bumped along. Now my defiant boasts
Sneer paganly at idealistic ghosts.
Evelyn Coffey
This poem is dated April 8, 1935, which is shortly after the first anniversary of her sister Rose's death.
A BIRTHDAY SONG
The moon fashioned a design in the dusk
of musky clouds -- a rosy silhouette, spun
of moon-cloth and the shimmer of stars.
And she breathed into the design a living soul,
ethereal as mist and fanciful as an eagle’s wing
that seeks the mystery of hidden skies.
Like an Indian princess, the moon-girl grew
in closeness to earth, and the spirit of her
flung itself across the thread of dreams
that binds dense earth to sheer infinity.
Her feet danced with growing things,
and her hands formed a flower-chain
that brought beauty to loneliness.
Her mind hung gold-tipped lanterns
in the musty deeps of dormant intellects,
and radiance stirred blindness
to understanding.
Her heart flamed like a fountain
sprung from scented rock,
like a sanctuary mellowed with incense –
and its fire kindled love.
The moon fashioned a design in the dusk
of musky clouds – and the chalice of its spirit
Blends mortal earth with blue infinity.
Evelyn Coffey
THE SOPHISTICATE
You can not hurt me any more.
I know the diamond touch of snow
Can ravage poverty’s scant store.
I know the sun can rant and kill
The flowers who look to it to grow.
Sheer beauty is a marble till.
You can not hurt me any more.
Evelyn Coffey
Spring Scene
Crickets jump
Each greening clump
With slim, elastic knees.
Robins glance
With sweet askance
At bubbling cherry trees.
Violets,
In woodsy sets,
Make love to faithless bees.
Evelyn Coffey
(numbered 385)
Published Sunday, May 23, 1937
Cleveland Plain Dealer.
Citation reads:
“A special honor which befell Miss Evelyn Coffey was the reprinting of her poem “Revelation” which originally appeared in “Skyline,” literary quarterly of Cleveland College. It follows:”
Revelation
I stood before a city gate,
I and my lonely soul,
Shivering in a homespun coat,
Behind a tattered veil.
The city swung an empty heart
Upon its gilded door.
I shed my longing for earth’s court
And looked upon a star.
Evelyn Coffey
Morning Ride
At early dawn, at break of dawn,
give me a horse, and like a fawn
we two will race the waking sun!
Swift as the blazing of a gun
we’ll trace a dust-screen on the lawn.
Give me a horse and I’ll be gone,
lightly atop his spreading brawn,
blended into a moving one,
at early dawn!
We’ll ride the green turf’s morning yawn
as if an unseen hand had spun
the scented trail for us to run.
We’ll barter time with speed for pawn
while day on wings of night is drawn,
at break of dawn!
Evelyn Coffey
Evelyn Coffey by Pat Kyser is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
