St. Cecilia

My eyes, blue pupils—iris, red as blood, 

have sought a true path through the garden ways,

and fled the laurel’s shadow and its blaze—

while lions roared, I played the cello bowed.

I gold-marked my place inside a old book,

and poets, songwriters, and lyricists,

were examined by my ready physics:

for dexterity, vision, ordered flutes.

What love has descended to music’s mouth?

Mouthpiece to breathe upon, with trill unsure,

would bless orchestra’s liturgical red.

Then touch Cecilia Rose’s bloom—myrrh roof:

the shelter in our pain that waits for cure,

while raising us unaware from our beds.

—W.E. Isaacson

Poetry Analysis:

In St. Cecilia, music becomes both vocation and passage: a discipline by which the speaker searches for a “true path” through a symbolic garden of danger, tradition, and revelation. The Petrarchan sonnet form gives this pilgrimage an inherited sacred architecture, while the slant rhymes loosen that architecture just enough to suggest music heard at a distance—echoed rather than perfectly resolved. The opening octave gathers intensely sensuous emblems: the blood-red iris, the laurel, the roaring lions, the bowed cello, the gold-marked book. Poetry, music, bodily skill, and vision are placed under examination, as though artistic creation itself were a kind of spiritual physics. The speaker does not merely listen to music; she tests its makers for “dexterity, vision,” seeking the point at which technique becomes something more mysterious than technique.

The sestet turns toward that mystery with the question, “What love has descended to music’s mouth?” Here St. Cecilia, patron saint of music, becomes less a historical figure than a principle of sacred listening: breath enters the mouthpiece, uncertain trills become blessing, and the orchestra assumes the ceremonial colour of liturgy and sacrifice. Rose and myrrh deepen the devotional symbolism, joining beauty to burial, fragrance to suffering, and cure to pain. The poem finally suggests that music does not necessarily remove suffering; it shelters the sufferer within it, quietly performing a resurrection of consciousness. Its closing image—being raised “unaware from our beds”—makes Cecilia’s music almost sacramental: an unseen force by which the wounded are lifted before they even understand that healing has begun.

—Analysis provided by WLI

St. Eulalia

O my love, pardon my love on the ground.

Saint Eulalia, wreathed by winter’s shroud,

from your mouth flew doves, as spirit from cloud,

lamentations kind, your cross on this mound—

O my love, pardon my love crucified

by Roman hook, the wound upon your breast,

when refusing worship, offering-less

to pagan gods, now beaten in a sign.

O arms outstretched, pardon my evil hurt,

that you may rest observed, diametric

with burning hair below pillar’s marble,

and suffocating altar incense’s spurt,

smoke, trailing toward their heaven, rejected

in their sin as at the Fall and startled.

—W.E Isaacson

Destiny

Where ships sail into the lapis harbour

there is a mirror of tranquility,

now ask soothsayer, youthful destiny . . .

though prophecy laps globe, tincture water.

Here dwells no little black lamb: but brother

who in bitterness deserts harmony—

yet like a rhododendron, grows in peace

toward the sun, with five petal daughters

fused at a jewelled base in calyx green,

blotting out the sun of sixth earth effaced,

poisoning bees until they are toxin-

laced: enlisted, they produce mad honey—

the locals’ remedy—hallucinate—

a hostess’s golden drops, so rich as sun.

W.E. Isaacson

The Orchard

What I held out in the starry orchard:

redstarts on split bark, hollow trunks, rot holes,

aged wind, boisterous in the leaves, hollows,

rippling down verdant canopy of gnarled

branches reaching out as if days passing

in blossoms pristine and pure, grafter’s quest—

lichens’ range wrapped the woman in a dress,

while sun’s rays level themselves through her leaves,

and the nut trees sing in bright vibrato,

white corps de ballet bends in arabesque.

Apple cider is bottled William Blake,

over grassland rife with wildflower notes,

then Brahms waltzes to my inner silence—

I am as still as glass Bassenthwaite Lake.

W.E Isaacson

Medieval Letter

The waxen seal to hold a letter fast—

a kiss mark on an envelope, deep red—

from me to you. You’ve always liked your bread

hinted with buttercups, their gold amassed.

Somewhere in the back of my dress closet,

I unearthed my silk. When there is silence

your voice echoes in my mind, a white horse.

Somewhere in the depth of time, the wind stopped.

Horses ran down the hill in the morning.

Holding out my palms in open posture,

I was waiting for you—the sunrise, drenched

in colour. I think of you; a bell rings.

Observing myself in the glass mirror

of time, reminds me of all you defend.

Monet’s ‘Impression, Sunrise’

The boats of Port of Le Havre pass like dreams

of a woman, verdant blue and milky;

they are flowing on salt air, still lapping

at her shoulders in ripples of morning.

Long roundabout way, she, astute, perceives

through the mist, construction of the port dock,

from inner cages, wild birds light on rocks—

the way canaries peck dry, stoic seed,

is the same way she drinks blue Oolong tea,

Opium Hill, a steeping orange sun.

She breakfasts on rye off the fishing boats,

with pink marbled ham, slabs of white Comté,

the way, in the cold water, fish tracks run,

the nets canvassing the depths; silver loads

the boat decks with thrashing, scaling bodies.

(sonnet sequences form this 15 line ekphrastic poem)

Art: Claude Monet: Impression Sunrise, 1872.

Thisbe and Pyramus

When Thisbe bends down her ear to the wall,

strains as if to hear lilt of melody

from Pyramus, his sounding trumpet dies,

blast onward flows to lover’s labile call.

Grey heron’s harsh note flies over the springs,

moon rises, a lucid petal in white,

then lovers are prophets on beams of night,

and the nymph opens tepid mouth to sing.

Then token in the realm of regal love

would find its meaning, clothed in worm-spun silk,

and in its garments, a hand in pocket

finds another finite hand, beauty does

render all words mute, and turns ice to milk,

the warmth of fading summer’s gold locket.

 

Then Thisbe put her fingers to the crack,

ensured she’d tear apart restraining wall,

if lovers, human-distanced in their calls,

could not mulberry tree find, but barrack.

Her Pyramus, his water upwards springs

when separated from her in lines lost

to earth, a concentration camp, the cost

of forcible star on their coats: sprout wings

and fly away then from that barren place,

Babylon where lovers are in prisons

of time and chance and parentage, not lust,

where mouths, red roses, could not kiss nor taste,

up the figurative wall have risen,

river petals streaming in heron dust.

Emily Isaacson

Image: Thisbe by J.W. Waterhouse

Da Capo Aria of Miranda

 

Part I 

As a lone moon in Saturn’s sky unseen—

a woman was raised on a desert isle.

The faces that would look on her and smile,

she could not remember. Then shadowy

visions passed before her mind, bright unearthed

from when she was a babe before age three.

She sat beneath a budding ancient tree;

she wrote on parchment of compassion’s birth.

For she had been marooned in youth’s cool dress—

cerulean, never to see people,

or another woman with clearest eyes,

with their menial ways she was not bless’d.

In the church she was not raised, no steeple

conducted her being to other dyes.

 

T’was true, she would wear no other colour,

with her father, the ruler, Prospero,

and his slave, a spirit named Ariel,

who induced a slight wind to grow fuller:

the wind acquiesced with subtle dancing,

then rose with blood-red Italian fierceness,

begat a temper, became a tempest,

the wind was a Thoroughbred horse prancing,

and like a stately monsoon in cursive,

offshore the island her father had ruled

with his iron thumb: natives then, fitting

worship him, in mind duly submissive,

no less a god was he, his cruel fist curled.

Ariel’s tempest had been his bidding.

 

Before became a tempest, the breeze did

stir along, and there so blessed faintly.

When Miranda stood by the shore plainly

she wished no ill upon the drowning ship.

Her dress caught in the wind, then interspersed

with shades of bewildered blue of the sea,

querying whether enemies go free

when there was no sign of drunken remorse.

Her father, Prospero, conjured the storm

from the magic arts within his old books,

studying all his life, abandoning 

the Duke of Milan as rightful station,

what he allowed, his younger brother took,

filled with envy, rung with fraudulent ring.

 

Miranda, while still a child, had been set

adrift in a spoiled wooden hulk; ocean

in spirited rage had deposited

Prospero on far-away island, let

survive the two with barely a bold hope,

barely staving off their wayward hunger;

while she was the only female—stronger,

son of a witch, was his slave. They tied rope,

net deep in the sea, the silver fish teemed,

while she extracted cilantro from rocks,

beneath her hands, the herb was harvested:

off the cob coast of Africa she seemed

like sunflowers forlorn. Alone they talked

at length, lest in some way he be bested.

 

Part II

 

Observing the distress of distant sails,

Miranda pleaded with her wronged father

not to be cruel with those he saw, bothered

in sorcerous dreams, his sight not failing,

by the knowledge of their royal presence—

those who, knowing, had done Prospero ill:

all these twelve years, left on the desert isle.

Hearing her concern, he next relented,

bringing the royals safely to the shore.

No harm was done to them, for though insane,

Prospero responded to her beauty,

the essence of womanhood, gone before—

bred of nature and nurtured by the same.

Being gracious to him was her duty.

 

Tossed ashore like a white-warped mollusc shell,

Ferdinand comes from the ship undeterred,

he was separated from the others,

he was rejected from the dire ship’s hull.

Son of the king of Naples, he sees her:

Miranda, clothed in sea, her hair with kelp,

is small, and not without her father’s help,

she is the tide upon the rock, inferred

that she is only clothed in blue that’s spun,

her kindly manner catches him off guard,

her eyes, pure and deep as island tempest,

with his stalwart song, he begins to win

beauteous girl with wrinkled sandy bar.

Her father denies his only request.

 

Polonius then forbids Miranda:

she shall not say her name to those reigning,

she knows not flirting, nor art of feigning,

if she gives way she may be asked to dance.

Her name seemed to originate as crowned,

where her hands, from wrist to lucid finger,

traced the sudden forbidden word, linger

on her lips, she spoke it. Her father frowned.

She would go against his direct command,

her heart was not an antique dancing ball—

with her direct momentum breaking wave

upon the desert mind and parched lemons

in the possession of a lone royal;

it was her lovely soul for him to save.

 

Only Miranda was incarnate wife,

stating no less to his deserving ears,

proposing to now dine away the years

and spend her handsome wealth on his one life.

She had the wholesome and calm demeanor

of one with little invented pretense:

of her melody there was a sequence

that stoked the plain island to industry.

Seeking Ferdinand’s firm dedication

to his daughter, and his loyal kindness,

Prospero would test his love—eloquent

trite requests—that he, in abdication

would abandon her—like a waterless

river, or a hell-bent star, then resent.

 

Part III

 

It was not true that royal Ferdinand

would not slog, untethered, through deep black bogs,

that he would not carry heavy cut logs,

the eye of his heart was now contraband.

It was not true that emerald suitor

was not one to set sterling compass by.

It was hand in hand, she gave dulcet sigh;

he corralled her with purple passion fruit.

’Spite Prospero’s fatherly resistance,

Ferdinand would see clarion mirror

in Miranda’s virgin fifteen-year-old

and the azure ageless sea-like garments.

Of island rules, Ferdinand did not fear,

serenading her in, now loved, she’s told.

 

Miranda and Ferdinand gazed then each

at one another, swore their undying

love from this life into the next, crying

sea, next turquoise; Ariel to impeach

all higher authority that held him:

Prospero as ruler of the dark slaves

of the spiritual world he had made

subservient to him, he had incurred.

“O Miranda, water’s bride; sky closest;

blue bud to leafy tree, beryl-mirrored.

The reflection of my newborn morning

in you, is best seen after a Tempest,”

said Ariel. “Then pray we have censored

all violence of this isle and churning.”

Emily Isaacson

Da Capo Aria of The North Wind

Part I 

When a deer in the field lays down its head

in Orithyia’s lap, cooking smoke, rise

from the wide courtyard, then the North Wind cries,

flaps to and fro like a moth almost dead.

It could once render the earth a frozen

wasteland, where I could not, when thirsty, drink

from the glassy river, not even think.

A man with ice in his beard had chosen

me for his wife, and his cloak billowed long

behind him in the gale, unyielding late

had I been, and not domesticated,

but a lush garden of hyacinth, fawns

were born in my arms as it was my fate.

I held all Athens, bright, honey-sated.

 

I was a mortal princess, who gathered

flowers for garlands divine, my sisters

danced with me on the banks of the river

Ilisos near Athens’ gate and powers.

We twirled and sang like school girls, innocent

long into the afternoon where plovers

plaintive called, grey herons bent, sandpipers

rose and flew with our cries, then reticent.

Under chaste branches, we grabbed hold, fingers

delicate laced around the birds and trees,  

oleander, light and fresh, blossoming

where light and harmony early linger,

their allure: spices radiate in tea,

like the warmth of afternoon in late spring.

It was here the Anemoi, bearded wind,

stole my cluster of grapes while I was wrapped

in a cloud, in the viciousness grappled,

the elements’ finesse both matte and thin.

This was no bludgeoning dark storm’s thunder,

it was immediate, I was sucked dry

by my aggressor who ignored my cry:

Boreas’ violet-winged horse of winter.

Carried away, I was dark-abducted

while the cormorants circled empty grave,

and the Old World sycamore wept and fought

off winter while turning from green, blood red,

bowed its luminous spreading head and staved

off death before the river’s horrid plot.

 

He made me goddess of the mountain winds

but I would rage in my mind, voice escaped

my throat in a roar in our stony cave

on Mount Haimos. No, I would not rescind,

and became the goat-like mother of snow,

both fallen and immortal, I bequeathed

pearls and threw them in his face like fine lace,

before his goatish hair had burned coals low.

Earth-coloured mantle swept divinity,

as I was cast in women’s ravished role

of pouring and pouring soup in black pot,

where witchcraft’s heavy cauldron tempted me,

of the wintry herbs I grew from dank holes—

the henna soil of humanity’s lot.

 

Part II

 

I gave him two sons, the bright dusk Boreads,

the gold-haired children named Calais and Zetes,

who, from whitened nodes, sprouted their smooth wings

of feather or stone it was rumoured, lead

swans that eat the chaste berries from the trees,

as locks of graceful hair fell long from them,

as grape-white roses grow from gracious stem,

as monks’ collectives desire chastity.

I collected my ashes where they lay,

gathered up my tears from the cooking fire,

and here, I found my rough hands exhausted,

white willow bark was extracted for pay,

for the pains of loneliness and the dire

end of bitterness of those accosted.

 

Cleopatra, Chione, two daughters

I bore, with eyes of rain, and hair, sunshine

threaded: the oils of Damask rose and thyme,

distilled, gathered in the soul of laughter.

In token fertile soil of ancient Greece,

my first daughter grew figs, apples, and pears,

my second grew lettuce and cucumbers,

garlic, and onions, from small seeds of peace.

Beside their green vegetable beds, they grew

windflowers with vivid velvet petals,

Dianthus, to make ceremonial

flower crowns for the Olympics, when threw

the discus in competition, medals

of the gods, as a reward, bountiful.

Cleopatra, illustrious daughter,

was a vision of the moonlight alone,

was subject to the tide’s pull, and sea’s moan,

carnation crown in her hair, the former

capricious goddess was solemn vision

as she then married Phineus of Thrace,

her faith in him no demon could erase,

with vigour she carried out her mission

to live in the valley, not icy falls,

and grow like a vineyard of heady grapes,

to once and for all avenge her mother.

For she was a heroine, and stood tall;

she was averse to the North Wind’s cold rape,

and she was loved, she could love another.

 

Part III

 

When the Boreads reached manhood, boasting

of their long curling hair, they rose ringing

into the sky from their soft sprouted wings

against all demons of darkness fighting.

They stood with Cleopatra, side by side,

unflinching, they warm-wind-like hummed through rain,

and drove the freezing ice away of pain,

while heavy grotesque monsters could not fly.

The Boreads carried spears, with iron

points, and their engraved shields were polished bronze

mirror, so you could see your hair-framed face.

In the handles of their shortswords, lions—

on the xiphos, their double-edged weapons.

For midnight attacks, enemies would brace.

The wind brothers, fit athletes, thrust their spears,

blood of the lower levels dripped dark orange,

the caverns of the deep were dragon’s lore,

when scaly creatures were gored to arrears.

The Harpies appeared on the horizon,

they had with them their wind-royal hostage:

Phineus the king, of Zeus—demi-god,

for he had been seduced by a second

wife, who told him to condemn his children

to blindness and torture. The gods punished

him, sentencing him to Harpies’ torments.

Wings carved the rising sons of the North Wind:

they would not kill the Harpies; they gave chase,

sending them reeling to the underworld.

 

When all earth hangs sorrowful, in despair,

I am like the morning after the night,

binding up the old dark with glowing light,

and gather up the sheaves in my black hair.

I am wild blue hyacinth after rain:

in an earthy garden, satin and smooth,

nonchalant above the ebony hues

of the soil, banal and bright floral pain.

With my brush I paint a thousand flowers,

with my ear, I lean to the music of

each new greenly species under the oak

Time, rings in broad trunk, of living bower,

with its flax-grey thin scarves for my pale doves

to fly out, under little eaves they broke.

Emily Isaacson