Three Poems
Emily Bilman
The Pearl
A dream vision
Conscious of imminent social change, I crossed
The Styx with Elizabeth Browning. Her resonant
Speech shaped by determination became
The consolation that bound me to love, prompting
Me to continue my journey between the spry earth
And the vast sky wherein flowed a translucent
Stream. In contemplation, I saw a single pearl
In an oyster tainted by a bright crimson drop
Of blood whose weight anguished my awakening
With soft amplified waves of anguish and awe.
After waking, warped nerves harrowed me
Galling my legs by electrical impulses.
My scratched skin felt formicated, chafing
My blood like a river-bed scraped by its grit.
On the Causeway
The delta-fields under my feet
spurted into myriad twin orchid rows
after the seeding. I walked upon a long
causeway where the river’s umber alluvium
oozed into the cobalt sea languidly
as in rising dough, reminding me
of the wind-swept, shape-shifting
sepia sands moving among the dunes.
As I walked along, the day’s draught
scorched my skin when I, suddenly, heard
a flock of swifts migrating to a desert
abundant in ants, locusts, and scorpions.
I saw their swarms in rhythms of evolving
flight, fledgling patterns avoiding predators
as if imprinted with sequels of subdued
ancestral wisdom like the shaping spirit
brooding in the poem, linking metaphors,
the fluency of words boosting our memory.
The Screen Lady
With his ideal lady, tarrying in his imagination,
Love led the poet to deep self-analysis.
Yet, upon her sudden death, one luminescent
Rose shone like a paper-rose, a bright light
Emanating from its creased corolla.
“You own a beautiful white rose”, the poet
Said to the strained woman who repeated
His words. Subdued in thought, the poet
Still loved his lady with a dark conscience
Yet fell in love with her screened alter-ego
For her virtue, shielding her against harm.
Guilty of love for both, the virtual child-poet,
In the agony of his amorous initiation
Asked Love for genuine compassion.
Dr. Emily Bilman is London’s Poetry Society Stanza representative in Geneva. Her dissertation, The Psychodynamics of Poetry: Poetic Virtuality and Oedipal Sublimation in the Poetry of T.S. Eliot and Paul Valéry was published by Lambert Academic in 2010 and Modern Ekphrasis in 2013 by Peter Lang. Her poetry books, A Woman By A Well (2015), Resilience (2015), and The Threshold of Broken Waters (2018) were published by Troubador, UK. Poems were published in The London Magazine, Poetry Salzburg Review, Offshoots, San Antonio Review, Expanded Field, Poetics Research, Oxford School of Poetry Review, The Battersea Review, The Blue Nib, Poetica Review and Tipton Poetry Journal. She blogs at http://www.emiliebilman.wix.com/emily-bilman
