John Crowley's LJ (RSS Feed)
06-19-2008, 04:03 PM
The Readercon convention has this thing they do where writers submit a single sentence from their writings and then swap themwith others and with readers at a party. Friend http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif (http://nineweaving.livejournal.com/profile)nineweaving (http://nineweaving.livejournal.com/) on her page has listed a a string of her own for her firends to advise her on: which should she pick? Honest a heart as I believe hers to be, I can't help but think she's also showing off a little. Just look at his list she put up, every one a mystery and a beauty:
Where I stand is why.
Not Death, but Death’s pander.
His widow afterward did say he heard the bridles in his dream and followed.
By my neb, the fairies keep a pretty larder.
I have heard they feed on mince pies made of children; but never that they candy maidenhead.
His mother snowed.
So small a thing to hatch the summer.
He stank of sweat and sorcery, green rank and acrid as a fox amid the thorns.
We’ll be hanged, boy and all.
That the Heavens are indwelt in Woods, springs, standing Groves was credo to Antiquitie, who raised them Monuments in upright stones: which carols are the starres’ Epitome; the standing houses of the Moone her progresse; Stations of the Sunne.
[My choice, by the way. You think this is easy? You try it.]
At every Door, they drink his Wassall, of his Bowle, drink down the Sunne that will them wake: in his remembrance is Oblivion.
Aye, teach yer grandam to grope ducks.
He fed on carrion, but daintily: cracked marrow with ringed hands.
I’ve had three such green wives stale, ere I laid them in coffer.
Pushing up her smock, he fills her lap with nettles and with violets.
It brock, but I mended it.
As if he’d said, I wrote this tree.
Had drowned himself for death of love, and death had cast him back.
She walked starblind, like a traveller in a snowstorm, in the whirl and sting of revelations.
What Honey they do make of Ayr and darknesse, I know not.
Our barren wives do gather it; and wantons that would dream on Paramours.
Thou’s daughter to my sister’s daughter that’s herself, that’s one wi me. So thou’s me.
Thou can’t see but I has my spectacles.
Of the boy who took Journeyman’s boat to go a-fishing in, and caught his father’s soul.
O rare Cosmographie!
She dared not; yet she took a step beyond: and in an ecstasy of fear, she saw the pattern of the moveless stars unwreathe, resolve in strange new shapes.
Across the heavens retrograde, towards dawn, there ran a scuttling scrying mouse.
From what Green room we know not, the Soul is call’d; and enters at that Crossroads where the Fiddler and the Witches meet.
We die in Ashes’ lap, wherein the Sun is born.”
Riddle me: what’s i’ this house?
Her dance is with the sun; she dares it.
Thief, they call her, and the Ferrier, whose River is the starry Road: her lading is of souls.
She knew the heavens as she did her A and O; she had no map for this bewildering earth, but turned about her for a bearing.
Not over and again, but ever.
With her charms and with her bunch of keys—not all of matter—she undoes the nine witch locks, turns back the heavy lid.
Low in the heavens now, the Reaper bends, as if he gathered shadow in his hook, a harvest of the dead.
In the nightwine is a speck of gold, a spark, slow-tumbling upward; now a flake of fire, now a drowned face, all of gold and wreathed about its head with gold, and every hair a sheave.
She knew this dance, the soundless music of it moved them both.
Thou’s Ashes born, I’d swear: if ever vixen had a prick and stones.
Thy family was the first to break the earth with spades of iron.
All the branches now bore girls.
Some few had lived a space in agony, half-glass, half-grub: the larvae of transcendence.
All had drunk to him, and all were eaten; they must dance.
The sky’s unstrung.
(Original Post) (http://crowleycrow.livejournal.com/89854.html)
Where I stand is why.
Not Death, but Death’s pander.
His widow afterward did say he heard the bridles in his dream and followed.
By my neb, the fairies keep a pretty larder.
I have heard they feed on mince pies made of children; but never that they candy maidenhead.
His mother snowed.
So small a thing to hatch the summer.
He stank of sweat and sorcery, green rank and acrid as a fox amid the thorns.
We’ll be hanged, boy and all.
That the Heavens are indwelt in Woods, springs, standing Groves was credo to Antiquitie, who raised them Monuments in upright stones: which carols are the starres’ Epitome; the standing houses of the Moone her progresse; Stations of the Sunne.
[My choice, by the way. You think this is easy? You try it.]
At every Door, they drink his Wassall, of his Bowle, drink down the Sunne that will them wake: in his remembrance is Oblivion.
Aye, teach yer grandam to grope ducks.
He fed on carrion, but daintily: cracked marrow with ringed hands.
I’ve had three such green wives stale, ere I laid them in coffer.
Pushing up her smock, he fills her lap with nettles and with violets.
It brock, but I mended it.
As if he’d said, I wrote this tree.
Had drowned himself for death of love, and death had cast him back.
She walked starblind, like a traveller in a snowstorm, in the whirl and sting of revelations.
What Honey they do make of Ayr and darknesse, I know not.
Our barren wives do gather it; and wantons that would dream on Paramours.
Thou’s daughter to my sister’s daughter that’s herself, that’s one wi me. So thou’s me.
Thou can’t see but I has my spectacles.
Of the boy who took Journeyman’s boat to go a-fishing in, and caught his father’s soul.
O rare Cosmographie!
She dared not; yet she took a step beyond: and in an ecstasy of fear, she saw the pattern of the moveless stars unwreathe, resolve in strange new shapes.
Across the heavens retrograde, towards dawn, there ran a scuttling scrying mouse.
From what Green room we know not, the Soul is call’d; and enters at that Crossroads where the Fiddler and the Witches meet.
We die in Ashes’ lap, wherein the Sun is born.”
Riddle me: what’s i’ this house?
Her dance is with the sun; she dares it.
Thief, they call her, and the Ferrier, whose River is the starry Road: her lading is of souls.
She knew the heavens as she did her A and O; she had no map for this bewildering earth, but turned about her for a bearing.
Not over and again, but ever.
With her charms and with her bunch of keys—not all of matter—she undoes the nine witch locks, turns back the heavy lid.
Low in the heavens now, the Reaper bends, as if he gathered shadow in his hook, a harvest of the dead.
In the nightwine is a speck of gold, a spark, slow-tumbling upward; now a flake of fire, now a drowned face, all of gold and wreathed about its head with gold, and every hair a sheave.
She knew this dance, the soundless music of it moved them both.
Thou’s Ashes born, I’d swear: if ever vixen had a prick and stones.
Thy family was the first to break the earth with spades of iron.
All the branches now bore girls.
Some few had lived a space in agony, half-glass, half-grub: the larvae of transcendence.
All had drunk to him, and all were eaten; they must dance.
The sky’s unstrung.
(Original Post) (http://crowleycrow.livejournal.com/89854.html)