DEMETER
If it is a stone of sorrow, there I am seated
There, where ribbons fall sideways on the plain
White veils. This is nothing.
Where the wild-eyed goddess plunges the child of another into fire.
The tree refuses to orient itself. The emerald
Keeps its fist clenched. If it is
A stone of sorrow, I am seated there.
VENUS
What do lovers do they love and torment
Love and torment in order to love a little further still
And to be passed and passed again under their own trees
They lie scattered, unraveled arms in the forest
Gnawing tips of fleche and branch.
Unoccupied unchanging starting stopping
Charming herd kept to spellbound wood
By the strongest and most nonchalant of hands
What do lovers do they love and torment.
Their idioms their language
Their pearls their bees
Their usual energy
When goddesses of dawn
Proudly hunt
Then the ancient stillness.
What do lovers do they love and torment.
CAPRICORN
There is in the air an odor of savage dark
There is in the air a frigid military odor
A lacquered snap like a vulture’s beak
Under the despotic sky.
I am on a bench as the sparrowhawk perches
An old uniform fading in the branches.
And I think about captains
Whose wife, devout and overwrought, gives birth
Facing the window
By January night.
NIGHT
The winter night will return
For me to rest near you.
The faces will gravely drink
Moonlight and its wisdom
Will be hunted by our kisses and arms.
The room is there alone, curtains closed
You are there alone with your closed eyes
Moonlight––the light of your arms
Night carries this tranquil ship.
THE SHEPHERD
Distraught fairy shepherd
Every knowledge forgotten
Down the drain the wind the moon.
Inside wood paneled rooms
Dancing in hyena skin
For the saraband
Bittersweet Ancient
Will meet you
Smiling slightly
In beautiful golden hooves.
Then you will feed yourself salted silver
With water which runs on off.
And when that is enough
Chaotic gathering
Of gifts and senses
You will leave the candles and shadows to the ceiling
You will leave the irritated eternal in its tendrils
Charged bright by the fire, protesting against the beams
And you will go up there
Where the sibyl spins
Amethysts and wind.
—
Valentine Penrose (1898–1978) was born in Mont-de-Marsan, France to a bourgeois military family. After meeting while on holiday in Cassis, she married British painter Roland Penrose in 1925, though the marriage was never consummated. The desire to learn ancient occult practices, history, and philosophy drove Penrose to travel the world, eventually taking her to India where she pursued a passionate affair with Alice Rahon and where she would come to live on and off for the rest of her life. Considered one of the first Surrealist women, she led an ambitious and autonomous career, divorcing from her husband in 1939 and never remarrying. The author of several books of poetry and prose, her work explores themes of lesbianism, magic, myth, and melancholy.
Mia X. Pérez is a writer from Seattle, Washington. Their works have appeared or are forthcoming in The Brooklyn Review, Milk Press, Raw Art Review, and AGON Journal, among other publications. They are a PhD student in Comparative Literature at The Graduate Center, CUNY.