1247 Love poems

Valentine’s Day breakfast at Baker’s Square: Laura drinks coffee while I watch Andrew, who refuses to sit but chooses instead to stay in the restaurant’s vestibule where he opens and closes the big double doors over and over again, as if he’s practicing a grand entrance–entering, crossing the threshold, and letting the doors close behind him. I’m thinking, it wasn’t so long ago I carried my tiny son piggyback through the woods to a waterfall; wasn’t long ago I kissed Laura for the first time; wasn’t long ago I lived in the house with my dog and sat with my notebook at the kitchen table on Sunday morning after working all night– sipping burnt coffee and scratching out lines, lighting my hundredth cigarette, starting over again, determined to write a love poem.

The sea is calm tonight. The tide is full, the moon lies fair Upon the straits; on the French coast the light Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand, Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay. Come to the window, sweet is the night-air! Only, from the long line of spray Where the sea meets the moon-blanched land, Listen! you hear the grating roar Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling, At their return, up the high strand, Begin, and cease, and then again begin, With tremulous cadence slow, and bring The eternal note of sadness in. Sophocles long ago Heard it on the Ægean, and it brought Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow Of human misery; we Find also in the sound a thought, Hearing it by this distant northern sea. The Sea of Faith Was once, too, at the full, and round earth’s shore Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled. But now I only hear Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar, Retreating, to the breath Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear And naked shingles of the world. Ah, love, let us be true To one another! for the world, which seems To lie before us like a land of dreams, So various, so beautiful, so new, Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light, Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain; And we are here as on a darkling plain Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight, Where ignorant armies clash by night.

Down by the salley gardens my love and I did meet; She passed the salley gardens with little snow-white feet. She bid me take love easy, as the leaves grow on the tree; But I, being young and foolish, with her would not agree. In a field by the river my love and I did stand, And on my leaning shoulder she laid her snow-white hand. She bid me take life easy, as the grass grows on the weirs; But I was young and foolish, and now am full of tears.

falling into unearthed light or something like that is who I was last night. you brought me a drink you didn’t know the name of & told me I could get it. you not the drink which I downed even though it was my 9th of the night the drink not you. dancehall. always dancehall. a manner of movement learned & not easily lost so I wind my hips anyway & something is happening to you.you bout to start some shit& I say good. not because it would be. I haven’t been touched in a while. don’t start something you can’t finish is maybe the worst advice I’ve ever heard as you drop a handful of my ass thudding down a small flight of stairs. that’s what I am. a small flight of stairs, a small flight, down.

“The writer. It’s a cul-de-sac,” you wrote that winter of our nation’s discontent. That first time I found you, blue marble lying still in the trench, you, staked in waiting for something, anything but the cell of your small apartment with the fixtures never scrubbed, the seven great named cats you gassed in the move.I couldn’t keep them. You explained so I understood. And what cat never loved your shell-like ways, the claw of your steady fingers,firme from the rasping of banjos and steady as it goes from the nose to the hair to the shaking tip. My favorite tale was of the owl and the pussycat in love in a china cup cast at sea, or in a flute more brittle, more lifelike and riddled with flair, the exquisite polish of its gaudy glaze now puzzled with heat cracks, now foamed opalescent as the single espresso dish you bought from Goodwill. What ever becomes of the heart our common child fashioned, red silk and golden satin, the gay glitter fallen from moves, our names with Love written in black felt pen? Who gets what? Who knows what becomes of the rose you carried home from Spanish Harlem that morning I sat waiting for the surgeon’s suction. What ever becomes of waiting and wanting, when the princess isn’t ready and the queen has missed the boat, again? Do you still write those old remarks etched on a page of Kandinsky’s ace letting go? Like:Lorna meets Oliver North and she kicks his butt

Take this kiss upon the brow! And, in parting from you now, Thus much let me avow — You are not wrong, who deem That my days have been a dream; Yet if hope has flown away In a night, or in a day, In a vision, or in none, Is it therefore the less gone? All that we see or seem Is but a dream within a dream. I stand amid the roar Of a surf-tormented shore, And I hold within my hand Grains of the golden sand — How few! yet how they creep Through my fingers to the deep, While I weep — while I weep! O God! Can I not grasp Them with a tighter clasp? O God! can I not save One from the pitiless wave? Is all that we see or seem But a dream within a dream?

Wine comes in at the mouth And love comes in at the eye; That’s all we shall know for truth Before we grow old and die. I lift the glass to my mouth, I look at you, and I sigh.

I lov’d thee from the earliest dawn, When first I saw thy beauty’s ray, And will, until life’s eve comes on, And beauty’s blossom fades away; And when all things go well with thee, With smiles and tears remember me. I’ll love thee when thy morn is past, And wheedling gallantry is o’er, When youth is lost in age’s blast, And beauty can ascend no more, And when life’s journey ends with thee, O, then look back and think of me. I’ll love thee with a smile or frown, ’Mid sorrow’s gloom or pleasure’s light, And when the chain of life runs down, Pursue thy last eternal flight, When thou hast spread thy wing to flee, Still, still, a moment wait for me. I’ll love thee for those sparkling eyes, To which my fondness was betray’d, Bearing the tincture of the skies, To glow when other beauties fade, And when they sink too low to see, Reflect an azure beam on me.

I once loved a boy who built batteries for pacemakers, miniature machines that could glint a heart to life. There were no secrets in his fingertips; to make sure, I held them to the light. Even so, he had learned a way to make a pulse. He might have set it down like a wind-up toy: a small bear stomping across the table, escape on its mechanical mind. Now, my own steps stutter when I sneak into the hospital and figure out how to bring you back. With me comes every girl I've ever been, holding hands to let the current shiver through us like spun sunlight: flaxen, fizzy, a memory of miles, of measure, time tangled together, copper wires in my palm. Hello, gorgeous, give me your hand. We've been waiting for you. So rise, girl. Wake up.

For Annie You can come to me in the evening, with the fingers of former lovers fastened in your hair and their ghost lips opening over your body, They can be philosophers or musicians in long coats and colored shoes and they can be smarter than I am, whispering to each other when they look at us. You can come walking toward my window after dusk when I can’t see past the lamplight in the glass, when the chipped plates rattle on the counter and the cinders dance on the cross-ties under the wheels of southbound freights. Bring children if you want, and the long wounds of sisters branching away behind you toward the sea. Bring your mother’s tense distracted face and the shoulders of plane mechanics slumped in the Naugahyde booths of the airport diner, waiting for you to bring their eggs. I’ll bring all the bottles of gin I drank by myself and my cracked mouth opened partway as I slept in the back of my blue Impala dreaming of spiders. I won’t forget the lines running deeply in the cheeks of the Polish landlady who wouldn’t let the cops upstairs, the missing ring finger of the machinist from Spenard whose money I stole after he passed out to go downtown in a cab and look for whores, or the trembling lower jaw of my son, watching me back my motorcycle from his mother’s driveway one last time, the ribbons and cone-shaped birthday hats scattered on the lawn, the rain coming down like broken glass. We’ll go out under the stars and sit together on the ground and there will be enough to eat for everybody. They can sleep on my couches and rug, and the next day I’ll go to work, stepping easily across the scaffolding, feeding the cable gently into the new pipes on the roof, and dreaming like St Francis of the still dark rocks that disappear under the morning tide, only to climb back into the light, sea-rimed, salt-blotched, their patched webs of algae blazing with flies in the sun.