Sun-Up, and Other Poems

Produced by Catherine Daly
Sun-Up and Other Poems By Lola Ridge
DEDICATION (To my Mother)
Let me cradle myself back Into the darkness Of the half shapes… Of the cauled beginnings… Let me stir the attar of unused air, Elusive… ironically fragrant As a dead queen's kerchief… Let me blow the dust from off you… Resurrect your breath Lying limp as a fan In a dead queen's hand.
Thanks is due to THE NEW REPUBLIC, POETRY, A MAGAZINE OF VERSE, PLAY-BOY, and OTHERS for permission to reprint some of these poems.
(Shadows over a cradle… fire-light craning…. A hand throws something in the fire and a smaller hand runs into the flame and out again, singed and empty…. Shadows settling over a cradle… two hands and a fire.)
Cherry, cherry, glowing on the hearth, bright red cherry…. When you try to pick up cherry Celia's shriek sticks in you like a pin.
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When God throws hailstones you cuddle in Celia's shawl and press your feet on her belly high up like a stool. When Celia makes umbrella of her hand. Rain falls through big pink spokes of her fingers. When wind blows Celia's gown up off her legs she runs under pillars of the bank— great round pillars of the bank have on white stockings too.
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Celia says my father will bring me a golden bowl. When I think of my father I cannot see him for the big yellow bowl like the moon with two handles he carries in front of him.
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