1247 Love poems

Fair is my love, and cruel as she's fair: Her brow shades frowns although her eyes are sunny, Her smiles are lightning though her pride despair, And her disdains are gall, her favours honey; A modest maid, deck'd with a blush of honour, Whose feet do tread green paths of youth and love, The wonder of all eyes that look upon her: Sacred on earth, design'd a saint above. Chastity and beauty, which were deadly foes, Live reconciled friends within her brow; And had she pity to conjoin with those, Then who had heard the plaints I utter now? For had she not been fair and thus unkind, My muse had slept, and none had known my mind.

A sweet disorder in the dress Kindles in clothes a wantonness; A lawn about the shoulders thrown Into a fine distraction; An erring lace, which here and there Enthrals the crimson stomacher; A cuff neglectful, and thereby Ribands to flow confusedly; A winning wave, deserving note, In the tempestuous petticoat; A careless shoe-string, in whose tie I see a wild civility: Do more bewitch me, than when art Is too precise in every part.

I A score of years ago I felled a hundred pines to build a house. Two stories, seven rooms in all. I built my love a home. Our daughter was in orbit in the womb. Mountains spun off like the arm of a galaxy into the emptiness our windows framed. "What a view!" our friends exclaimed, and "Sunsets to die for every single night!" 2 Vertigo of solitude, distillate of loneliness for blood, my wife untrue, my daughter flown, I, like a widower or worse, move among the rooms I made. Where once I was not alone, now each closed door is panic, and spaces grow immense with memory, like shadows at dusk. Gone that arrangement of allegiances called family we never really know before it ends. Like love itself, it isn't true till then. I have no family now but remembrences of tiny joys, tinier dramas we used to call our life, like pollen over everything: brightly colored clothespins on the line, a cross-shaped coral earring whose match is lost, books of fairy tales we read aloud at night. I must be dumb as a gunnysack of hammers. Wind still blows through open windows like it always used to do. What did I love that made me believe it would last?

A face that should content me wondrous well Should not be fair but lovely to behold, With gladsome cheer all grief for to expel; With sober looks so would I that it should Speak without words such words as none can tell; Her tress also should be of crisped gold; With wit; and thus might chance I might be tied, And knit again the knot that should not slide.

I. For that you never acknowledged me, I acknowledge the spring’s yellow detail, the every drop of rain, the anonymous unacknowledged men and women. The shine as it glitters in our child’s wild eyes, one o’clock at night.       This river, this city, the years of the shadow on the delicate skin of my hand, moving in time. Disinherited, annulled, finally disacknowledged and all of my own asking.        I keep that wild dimension of life and making and the spasm upon my mouth as I say this word of acknowledge to you forever.Ewig.        Two o’clock at night. II. While this my day and my people are a country not yet born it has become an earth I can acknowledge.       I must.        I know what the disacknowledgment does.        Then I do take you, but far under consciousness, knowing that under under flows a river wanting the other :  to go open-handed in Asia, to cleanse the tributaries and the air, to make for making, to stop selling death and its trash, pour plastic down men’s throats, to let this child find, to let men and women find, knowing the seeds in us all.        They do say Find. I cannot acknowledge it entire.        But I will. A beginning, this moment, perhaps, and you. III. Death flowing down past me, past me, death marvelous, filthy, gold, in my spine in my sex upon my broken mouth and the whole beautiful mouth of the child; shedding power over me death if I acknowledge him. Leading me in my own body at last in the dance.

Where true Love burns Desire is Love’s pure flame; It is the reflex of our earthly frame, That takes its meaning from the nobler part, And but translates the language of the heart.

We have done what we wanted. We have discarded dreams, preferring the heavy industry of each other, and we have welcomed grief and called ruin the impossible habit to break. And now we are here. The dinner is ready and we cannot eat. The meat sits in the white lake of its dish. The wine waits. Coming to this has its rewards: nothing is promised, nothing is taken away. We have no heart or saving grace, no place to go, no reason to remain.

I am here for a very particular reason: to buy a 6-pack of beer and berries out of season all for you, i did it all for you I noticed an oil spill on my drive past the bay, emergency broadcast on the radio —What do you have to say? all for you, i did it all for you You chopped down the plant that used to grow my pants, resurrected it in Indonesia like a blow-up doll with amnesia all for you, i did it all for you Poor people once lived here but you flooded the valley with psilocybin carcinogens, and forced the kids into shooting galleries all for you, i did it all for you You gave poor people jobs then you forced them to act like robots lining up for a real live heart attack, made them take apart their futures then you sold the parts back, repurposed the sutures to close a robocaller’s rap all for you, i did it all for you You got children in slums to make things that break, your unspoken credo— “If it lasts, it’s fake.” But you were there first when we were dying of thirst, with a pint of chilled water each, for me, my wife and two daughters, and even a kewpie doll and a tiny stuffed puppy —for my wife some paper slippers, for me, a stuffed yuppie —You saw every decision that I would make first, and you did get there first when we were dying of thirst every decision i make is part yours, every step i take, i take on your floor You mangled my fingers, polluted my streams, screamed in my face, closed deals over my dreams all for you, i did it all for you (and now it fades out, “The Commodity Sings to its Beloved” song. They’ll say it was a good idea done wrong —“They should have got a bigger budget, done it as a singalong.”)

She spun a line. She knew he was listening to her. She spun it and he took the fraying ends. Whatever she was saying, it was cotton, Then as he rolled the thread between Forefinger and thumb it turned to silk, And as he took the needle up to thread it The line she spun became thin finest gold. He knew not to believe her but he took it Because she kept on spinning like the truth Was ravelling from her lips; he watched her lips. Cotton, silk and gold, she wanted him To take the line and sew the wound right up Although she held the blade still in her hand Behind her back, and it was dripping, steaming. There under his left arm the gash lay open Like a mouth in disbelief. And he believed her.

My ghostly fader, I me confess, First to God and then to you, That at a window, wot ye how, I stale a kosse of gret swetness, Which don was out avisiness— But it is doon, not undoon, now. My ghostly fader, I me confess, First to God and then to you. But I restore it shall, doutless, Agein, if so be that I mow; And that to God I make a vow, And elles I axe foryefness. My ghostly fader, I me confesse, First to God and then to you.