Explore "Color and a Woman" by Maxwell Bodenheim on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
/ Cry the names of colors / And fail to reproduce / The brightly worried way / In which they burn ideas, / Sweeping hues of intangible blood / Into the conspiring fires of soul: / The darkly reticent manner / With which they embalm emotions, / Ending the spontaneous treachery / With a self-possessed attraction. / Chant the names of colors / And fascinate the brown / Coward, who surrounds himself / With crystal safeguards known as facts, / But likes the dangerous sounds / Of unattained realities. / Or, scorn this satirical advice / And storm the body of a woman / With words as deliberate as wind, / Yet heavier, and bearing / Colors without a label.
/ The substance of her hair -- / Ethereal stems that continue their quest / Beyond the warped confines of sight -- / Shows the darkness of intellect / Answering a miniature sunset / Whose dying light does not quite succumb. / The steep reserve of her forehead / Has been kindled by a flat burden / Pale as the cry of a child, yet carrying / The hint of trouble found in late afternoon. / Her eyes hold emotional evening, / With spurts of dawn remaining like anxious relics / Kept alive by unsatisfied designs / From that derided realm where logic dies. / Her breast is the color that a north wind / Would have if it were visible to eyes. / Upon her body, color in light and darkness / Subdues the ribald ponderousness of life / And brings the filmy, flashing seriousness / Detested by the prostrate toil of mud; / Hated in taverns at midnight; / Banished from every couch when morning / Rearranges the ancient jest.