Light Poem for Jackson Mac Low
from James Joyce
in kindlelight
by swamplight
a tablelight
light kindling light
the silent query of
the world’s oldest
light against a lit rush.
the streamy morvenlight,
while the park birds curse
his floodlight.
to have lit thousands
in one nightlights,
to be daylighted,
the light of other days,
the dire dreary darkness.
a burning torchlight
in th’ amourlight -
luminous to laboured
only like the lamps in
Nassaustrass, that
rosy lampoons effluvious
burning,
a mooner by lamplight,
every evening a lighting
up o’clock -
the bauble light
and they leap so looply,
looply as they link to light.
and they look so loovely,
loovelit, noosed in a mysterious
night.
Angelinas, hide from light
those hues your sin beau
may bring to light!
a grape cluster of lights,
a roaryboaryellas.
eslucylamp aswhen
the surge seas sombren,
the like of her lightness
are look and you leap.
while try light is yet
slipping under their pillow,
hadn’t we heaven’s lamps
to hide us?
the crimsend dawn
when i ope my skylight
window...
a clean looking light
blinking upon this ear light.
Thy now paling light, lucerne,
we ne’er may see again.
11 - 12 November ‘05
15 November ‘05
Boulder, Colorado
This poem was derived from references to light found throughout
James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake
Timm Lenk
Copyright © by Anne Tardos, Executor of the Estate of Jackson Mac Low. All rights reserved.