marble

Keep a marble for yourself and keep marble for marble. Keep a marble self for a marble self.
--H.D., from HERmione



Vitality is Carved and cool.
My nerve in Marble lies --
A Breathing Woman
Yesterday -- Endowed with Paradise.
--Emily Dickinson, from poem #1046



In folklore, marble is associated with the astrological sign of Gemini. Pure white marble is an emblem of purity. It is also an emblem of immortality, and an insurer of success in education.



things of marble: statue, column, gravestone, game, town, heart, sanity.



her flesh-- folding-- under his hands.

ruby

Being red is the color of a white sun where it lingers
on an arm. Color of time lost in sparks, of space lost
inside dance. Red of walks by the railroad in the flush
of youth, while our steps released the squeaks
of shoots reaching for the light. Scarlet of sin, crimson
of fresh blood, ruby and garnet of the jewel bed,
early sunshine, vestiges of the late sun as it turns
green and disappears. Be calm. Do not give in
to the rabid red throat of age. In a red world, imprint
the valentine and blush of romance for the dark.
It has come. You will not be this quick-to-redden
forever. You will be green again, again and again.
--Marvin Bell, "Mars Being Red"

The ruby preserved its owner's house or vineyard from lightning, tempest, and worms if the former were touched by it. It was also a disinfectant and preventive of infectious diseases. Bruised in water it relieved weakness of the eyes, and cured liver complaints.
--Marbodus, writing in the latter part of the 11th century

amber

Their tears continue flowing, and sun-hardened,
fall from the trees; borne onward by the Po,
they will one day adorn the brides of Rome.
[And so, in myth, mourning becomes electrum;
the sister's tears are, now and forever, amber.]

--from Metamorphoses, Ovid

diamond

Margery and John entered the hall at Lambeth Palace in the afternoon. The walls were painted in blue and gold diamonds and a sideboard stood at the back. Clerks and yeoman swore oaths that tortured Jesus' golden flesh. Margery took sins against language personally.
"Do you know how God was made?" A squire pumped his finger into his fist. "Fucking and shitting!"
Margery said, "You will go straight to hell!"

-- From Margery Kempe, Robert Gluck

adamas

"Words function as signs here as they do everywhere else: everywhere they can be said to point to something." --The Phenomenological Theory of Meaning and of Meaning Apprehension, Edmund Husserl

"A kind in glass and a cousin, a spectacle and nothing strange a single hurt color and an arrangement in a system to pointing." --Tender Buttons, Gertrude Stein

moonstone

the night of the lunar eclipse, august 28th, 2007.

...

Your heart manholed
for the installation of feeling.

Your motherland’s parts
prefabricated.

Your milk-sister
a shovel.

--Paul Celan, "Your heart manholed"

Moonstone was very popular with the Romans, who thought it was formed out of moonlight, also used in Roman jewelry since 100 AD.