I Held A Shelley Manuscript Poem by Gregory Corso

I Held A Shelley Manuscript

Rating: 2.7


My hands did numb to beauty
as they reached into Death and tightened!

O sovereign was my touch
upon the tan-inks's fragile page!

Quickly, my eyes moved quickly,
sought for smell for dust for lace
for dry hair!

I would have taken the page
breathing in the crime!
For no evidence have I wrung from dreams--
yet what triumph is there in private credence?

Often, in some steep ancestral book,
when I find myself entangled with leopard-apples
and torched-skin mushrooms,
my cypressean skein outreaches the recorded age
and I, as though tipping a pitcher of milk,
pour secrecy upon the dying page.

COMMENTS OF THE POEM
Dr Antony Theodore 07 June 2020

Often, in some steep ancestral book, when I find myself entangled with leopard-apples and torched-skin mushrooms, my cypressean skein outreaches the recorded age.. very fine poem. tony

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Jetty J Newnham 20 October 2013

Corso loved Shelley. He mentioned him in other poems

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Gregory Corso

Gregory Corso

New York City, New York
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