1247 Love poems

It seemed as if we did not sleep One wink that night; I was sighing deep. The cruellest judge in the costliest court Could not condemn a night so short. We had the light out, but I know, Each time I turned, a radiant glow Suffused the room, and shining snow Alit from Heaven’s candle-fires Illuminated our desires. But the last time I held her, strong, Excited, closest, very long, Something started to go wrong. The edge of dawn’s despotic veil Showed at the eastern window-pale And there it was,—the morning light! Gwen was seized with a fearful fright, Became an apparition, cried, “Get up, go now with God, go hide! “Love is a salt, a gall, a rue, A vinegar-vintage.Dos y Ddw, Vaya con Dios, quickly, too!” “Ah, not yet, never yet, my love; The stars and moon still shine above.” “Then why do the raucous ravens talk With such a loud insistent squawk?” “Crows always cry like that, when fleas Nibble their ankles, nip their knees.” “And why do the dogs yip, yammer, yell?” “They think they’ve caught a fox’s smell.” “Poet, the wisdom of a fool Offers poor counsel as a rule. Open the door, open it wide As fast as you can, and leap outside. The dogs are fierce when they get untied.” “The woods are only a bound from here, And I can outjump a deer, my dear!” “But tell me, best beloved of men, Will you come again? Will you come again?” “Gwen, you know I’m your nightingale, And I’ll be with you, without fail, When the cloud is cloak, and the dark is sky, And when the night comes, so will I.”

(for E) I stop my hand midair. If I touch her there everything about me will be true. The New World discovered without pick or ax. I will be what Brenda Jones was stoned for in 1969. I saw it as a girl but didn’t know I was taking in myself. My hand remembers, treading the watery room, just behind the rose-veiled eyes of memory. Alone in the yard tucked beneath the hood of her car, lucky clover all about her feet, green tea-sweet necklace for her mud-pie crusty work boots. She fends off their spit & words with silent two-handed twists & turns of her socket wrench. A hurl of sticks & stones and only me to whisper for her, from sidewalk far, break my bones. A grown woman in grease-pocket overalls inside her own sexy transmission despite the crowding of hurled red hots. Beneath the hood of her candy-apple Camaro: souped, shiny, low to the ground. The stars over the Atlantic are dangling salt crystals. The room at the Seashell Inn is $20 a night; special winter off-season rate. No one else here but us and the night clerk, five floors below, alone with his cherished stack of Spiderman. My lips are red snails in a primal search for every constellation hiding in the sky of your body. My hand waits for permission, for my life to agree to be changed, forever. Can Captain Night Clerk hear my fingers tambourining you there on the moon? Won’t he soon climb the stairs and bam! on the hood of this car? You are a woman with film reels for eyes. Years of long talking have brought us to the land of the body. Our skin is one endless prayer bead of brown. If my hand ever lands, I will fly past dreaming Australian Aborigines. The old claw hammer and monkey wrench that flew at Brenda Jones will fly across the yard of ocean at me. A grease rag will be thrust into my painter’s pants against my will. I will never be able to wash or peel any of this away. Before the night is over someone I do not know will want the keys to my ’55 silver Thunderbird. He will chase me down the street. A gaggle of spooked hens will fly up in my grandmother’s yard, never to lay another egg, just as I am jump- ed, kneed, pulled finally to the high ground of sweet clover.

Avising the bright beams of these fair eyes Where he is that mine oft moisteth and washeth, The wearied mind straight from the heart departeth For to rest in his worldly paradise And find the sweet bitter under this guise. What webs he hath wrought well he perceiveth Whereby with himself on love he plaineth That spurreth with fire and bridleth with ice. Thus is it in such extremity brought, In frozen thought, now and now it standeth in flame. Twixt misery and wealth, twixt earnest and game, But few glad, and many diverse thought With sore repentance of his hardiness. Of such a root cometh fruit fruitless.

When she came into his room he was asleep and when she touched him, he woke— her hand on his shoulder, her knee at his mouth, and in the darkness, she looked like a boy. When he tried to sit up she covered his ears with her hands: “Save ourselves from ourselves,” she said, and then a wind stirred in the room as if she’d placed those words in his mouth.

A garden late spring, honeysuckle and lazy birds heavy with the round scent of tuberoses and jungle gardenia. There is a man in boots that make his thighs look lethal   with a whip no spurs medieval sorrow in his eyes or around the mouth, maybe. He is dangerous in this place he has the fertility of steel. There is a woman in a vine green habit   her veins are purple, her blue eyes. She is blonde though sometimes brunette:

Come live with me, and be my love, And we will some new pleasures prove Of golden sands, and crystal brooks, With silken lines, and silver hooks. There will the river whispering run Warm'd by thy eyes, more than the sun; And there the 'enamour'd fish will stay, Begging themselves they may betray. When thou wilt swim in that live bath, Each fish, which every channel hath, Will amorously to thee swim, Gladder to catch thee, than thou him. If thou, to be so seen, be'st loth, By sun or moon, thou dark'nest both, And if myself have leave to see, I need not their light having thee. Let others freeze with angling reeds, And cut their legs with shells and weeds, Or treacherously poor fish beset, With strangling snare, or windowy net. Let coarse bold hands from slimy nest The bedded fish in banks out-wrest; Or curious traitors, sleeve-silk flies, Bewitch poor fishes' wand'ring eyes. For thee, thou need'st no such deceit, For thou thyself art thine own bait: That fish, that is not catch'd thereby, Alas, is wiser far than I.

Flour on the floor makes my sandals slip and I tumble into your arms. Too hot to bake this morning but blueberries begged me to fold them into moist muffins. Sticks of rhubarb plotted a whole pie. The windows are blown open and a thickfruit tang sneaks through the wire screen and into the home of the scowly lady who lives next door. Yesterday, a man in the city was rescued from his apartment which was filled with a thousand rats. Something about being angry because his pet python refused to eat. He let the bloom of fur rise, rise over the little gnarly blue rug, over the coffee table, the kitchen countertops and pip through each cabinet, snip at the stumpy bags of sugar, the cylinders of salt. Our kitchen is a riot of pots, wooden spoons, melted butter. So be it. Maybe all this baking will quiet the angry voices next door, if only for a brief whiff. I want our summers to always be like this—a kitchen wrecked with love, a table overflowing with baked goods warming the already warm air. After all the pots are stacked, the goodies cooled, and all the counters wiped clean—let us never be rescued from this mess.

The ARGUMENT. A Vulgar Error having long prevailed among many Persons, who imagine Sally Salisbury the Subject of this Ballad, the Author begs leave to undeceive and assure them it has not the least allusion to her, he being a stranger to her very Name at the time this Song was composed. For as Innocence and Virtue were ever the Boundaries of his Muse, so in this little Poem he had no other view than to set forth the Beauty of a chaste and disinterested Passion, even in the lowest Class of human Life. The real Occasion was this: A Shoemaker’s ’Prentice making Holiday with his Sweet-heart, treated her with a sight of Bedlam, the Puppet-shews, the Flying-chairs, and all the Elegancies of the Moorfields: From whence proceeding to the Farthing Pye-house, he gave her a Collation of Buns, Cheesecakes, Gammon of Bacon, Stuff’d-beef, and Bottled-ale; through all which Scenes the Author dodged them (charm’d with the Simplicity of their Courtship), from whence he drew this little Sketch of Nature; but being then young and obscure, he was very much ridicul’d by some of his Acquaintance for this Performance; which nevertheless made its way into the polite World, and amply recompenced him by the Applause of the divine Addison, who was pleased (more than once) to mention it with Approbation. Of all the Girls that are so smart There’s none like pretty SALLY, She is the Darling of my Heart, And she lives in our Alley. There is no Lady in the Land Is half so sweet as SALLY, She is the Darling of my Heart, And she lives in our Alley. Her Father he makes Cabbage-nets, And through the Streets does cry ’em; Her Mother she sells Laces long, To such as please to buy ’em: But sure such Folks could ne’er beget So sweet a Girl as SALLY! She is the Darling of my Heart, And she lives in our Alley. When she is by I leave my Work, (I love her so sincerely) My Master comes like any Turk, And bangs me most severely; But, let him bang his Belly full, I’ll bear it all for SALLY; She is the Darling of my Heart, And she lives in our Alley. Of all the Days that’s in the Week, I dearly love but one Day, And that’s the Day that comes betwixt A Saturday and Monday; For then I’m drest, all in my best, To walk abroad with SALLY; She is the Darling of my Heart, And she lives in our Alley. My Master carries me to Church, And often am I blamed, Because I leave him in the lurch, As soon as Text is named: I leave the Church in Sermon time, And slink away to SALLY; She is the Darling of my Heart, And she lives in our Alley. When Christmas comes about again, O then I shall have Money; I’ll hoard it up, and Box and all I’ll give it to my Honey: And, would it were ten thousand Pounds; I’d give it all to SALLY; She is the Darling of my Heart, And she lives in our Alley. My Master and the Neighbours all, Make game of me and SALLY; And (but for her) I’d better be A Slave and row a Galley: But when my seven long Years are out, O then I’ll marry SALLY! O then we’ll wed and then we’ll bed, But not in our Alley.

1 AMETAS Think’st thou that this love can stand, Whilst thou still dost say me nay? Love unpaid does soon disband: Love binds love as hay binds hay. 2 THESTYLIS Think’st thou that this rope would twine If we both should turn one way? Where both parties so combine, Neither love will twist nor hay. 3 AMETAS Thus you vain excuses find, Which yourselves and us delay: And love ties a woman’s mind Looser than with ropes of hay. 4 THESTYLIS What you cannot constant hope Must be taken as you may. 5 AMETAS Then let’s both lay by our rope, And go kiss within the hay.

Love is no more. It died as the mind dies: the pure desire Relinquishing the blissful form it wore, The ample joy and clarity expire. Regret is vain. Then do not grieve for what you would efface, The sudden failure of the past, the pain Of its unwilling change, and the disgrace. Leave innocence, And modify your nature by the grief Which poses to the will indifference That no desire is permanent in sense. Take leave of me. What recompense, or pity, or deceit Can cure, or what assumed serenity Conceal the mortal loss which we repeat? The mind will change, and change shall be relief.