# Sartorial poetry



## Buster Brown (Sep 28, 2008)

A poem I saw in a recent issue of _National Review_ that I thought members of this forum may enjoy:

THE SUIT

My grandfather, nineteen years of age, 
Falls from the pages of the unabridged 
Dictionary where I keep him pressed, 
A sepia print of him in his second suit, 
A double-breasted serge. The satin tie 
Flows from a knot held by a silver pin. 
His second suit. The first, he bought 
With six years of savings, pennies earned 
As cabin boy, deckhand, and seaman. 
The night he put it on and went ashore 
Some shipmate cracked wise about the cut 
Of the cloth or the man who wore it, that 
Somehow one was unsuited to the other, 
The one being too fine, the other crude. 
Whereupon my grandfather swung at him, 
And one blow led to another until the men 
Whirled into a blur of fisticuffs and blood, 
Fought until their clothing was in tatters.

So now he appears in his second suit, 
Bought off the rack in Hong Kong or London 
Just after the Great War. He's tough 
And handsome, bright-eyed, proud, 
Daring the whole world to call his bluff, 
Cocksure the clothes don't make the man.

- DANIEL MARK EPSTEIN


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## WouldaShoulda (Aug 5, 2009)

Perhaps not.

But they don't hurt!! 

(We all know it's the shoes anyway)


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## bblizzard (Nov 21, 2011)

Well, in terms of poetry.. i love Pablo Neruda's creation..

This is one of my favorites:

_*A Song of Despair*_


The memory of you emerges from the night around me.
The river mingles its stubborn lament with the sea.

Deserted like the wharves at dawn.
It is the hour of departure, oh deserted one!

Cold flower heads are raining over my heart.
Oh pit of debris, fierce cave of the shipwrecked.

In you the wars and the flights accumulated.
From you the wings of the songhttps://www.poemhunter.com/poem/a-song-of-despair/# birds rose.

You swallowed everything, like distance.
Like the sea, like time. In you everything sank!

It was the happy hour of assault and the kiss.
The hour of the spell that blazed like a lighthouse.

Pilot's dread, fury of blind driverhttps://www.poemhunter.com/poem/a-song-of-despair/#,
turbulent drunkenness of love, in you everything sank!

In the childhood of mist my soul, winged and wounded.
Lost discoverer, in you everything sank!

You girdled sorrow, you clung to desire,
sadness stunned you, in you everything sank!

I made the wall of shadow draw back,
beyond desire and act, I walked on.

Oh flesh, my own flesh, woman whom I loved and lost,
I summon you in the moist hour, I raise my song to you.

Like a jar you housed infinite tenderness.
and the infinite oblivion shattered you like a jar.

There was the black solitude of the islandshttps://www.poemhunter.com/poem/a-song-of-despair/#,
and there, woman of love, your arms took me in.

There was thirst and hunger, and you were the fruit.
There were grief and ruins, and you were the miracle.

Ah woman, I do not know how you could contain me
in the earth of your soul, in the cross of your arms!

How terrible and brief my desire was to you!
How difficult and drunken, how tensed and avid.

Cemetery of kisses, there is still fire in your tombs,
still the fruited boughs burn, pecked at by birds.

Oh the bitten mouth, oh the kissed limbs,
oh the hungering teeth, oh the entwined bodies.

Oh the mad coupling of hope and force
in which we merged and despaired.

And the tenderness, light as water and as flour.
And the word scarcely begun on the lips.

This was my destiny and in it was my voyage of my longing,
and in it my longing fell, in you everything sank!

Oh pit of debris, everything fell into you,
what sorrow did you not express, in what sorrow are you not drowned!

From billow to billow you still called and sang.
Standing like a sailor in the prow of a vessel.

You still flowered in songs, you still brike the currents.
Oh pit of debris, open and bitter well.

Pale blind diver, luckless slinger,
lost discoverer, in you everything sank!

It is the hour of departure, the hard cold hour
which the night fastens to all the timetables.

The rustling belt of the sea girdles the shore.
Cold stars heave up, black birds migrate.

Deserted like the wharves at dawn.
Only tremulous shadow twists in my hands.

Oh farther than everything. Oh farther than everything.

It is the hour of departure. Oh abandoned one!


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