1247 Love poems

for Shelley Oh you, the sprightliest & most puggish, the brightest star Of all my lively loves, all Ladies, & to whom once I gave up My heart entire, thenceforth yours to keep forever Locked up in your own heart’s tiniest room, my best hope, or To throw away, carelessly, at your leisure, should that prove Your best pleasure, Who is that dumpy matron, decked out in worn & faded Shabby army fatigues which pooch out both before & behind, now screeching Scoring me painfully in philistine Commedia dell’arte farce, low summer fare Across a pedestrian Ferry’s stretch of water in some meshugganah Snug Harbor And once more, even, fiercely pecking at me in the cold drab Parish Hall of Manhattan’s Landmark Episcopal Church, where a once Avant-garde now Grade School Poetry Project continues to dwell, St. Mark’s Church-in-the-Bouwerie, whose Stones hold in tight grip one wooden leg & all of Peter Stuyvesant’s bones? Who is that midget-witch who preens & prances as she flaunts her lost wares, Otherwise hidden beneath some ancient boy’s flannel-shirt, its tail out & flapping, & who Is shrieking even now these mean words: “Hey     Ted!”     “Hey, you Fat God!” & called me, “Fickle!”         “Fickle!” & she points a long boney finger at me, & croons, gleefully. “Limbo!”     “That's where you really live!” & She is claiming to be you as she whispers, viciously, “Alone, & In Pain, In Limbo, is where you live     in your little cloud-9 home     Ted! Pitiful!” She has a small purse, & removing it from one of her shopping bags She brings out from inside that small purse, my withered heart; & lifting it high into the air over her head with her two hands, she turns it upside down unzips its fasteners, & shakes it out over the plywood floor, happily. “Empty,” she cries loudly, “just like I always knew it would be!” “Empty!” “Empty” “Empty” I watch her, and think, That’s not really you, up there, is it, Rose?     Rochelle?     Shelley? O, don’t be sad, little Rose! It’s still Your ribbon I wear, your favor tied to the grip of my lance, when I ride out to give battle, these golden days.

In memory of Octavio Paz not even lost in death the memory of why we burned, and therefore still a fire consuming all obsequious delay, now polvo, dust, of a desire but still alive and aching, not even lost to you within our common urn, urgent as an ash still burning alma, soul, still and moving toward you, la muerte, my amor— not even lost in death, memoria, and feeling some reply, alma, memory and ash, ash burning still, still and moving toward you, dust and dust, ash alma and amor constante más allá de la muerte, constant even in our common urn, polvo enamorado.

Because there are avenues Of traffic lights, a phone book Of brothers and lawyers, Why should you think your purse Will not be tugged from your arm Or the screen door Will remain latched Against the man Who hugs and kisses His pillow In the corridor of loneliness? There is a window of light A sprinkler turning As the earth turns, And you do not think of the hills And of the splintered wrists it takes To give you The heat rising toward the ceiling. You expect your daughter To be at the door any moment And your husband to arrive With the night That is suddenly all around. You expect the stove to burst A collar of fire When you want it, The siamese cats To move against your legs, purring. But remember this: Because blood revolves from one lung to the next, Why think it will After tonight?

Oh, my beloved, shall you and I Ever be young again, be young again?

Flow gently, sweet Afton, among thy green braes, Flow gently, I'll sing thee a song in thy praise; My Mary's asleep by thy murmuring stream, Flow gently, sweet Afton, disturb not her dream. Thou stock-dove, whose echo resounds thro' the glen, Ye wild whistling blackbirds in yon thorny den, Thou green-crested lapwing, thy screaming forbear, I charge you disturb not my slumbering fair. How lofty, sweet Afton, thy neighbouring hills, Far mark'd with the courses of clear winding rills; There daily I wander as noon rises high, My flocks and my Mary's sweet cot in my eye. How pleasant thy banks and green valleys below, Where wild in the woodlands the primroses blow; There oft, as mild Ev'ning sweeps over the lea, The sweet-scented birk shades my Mary and me. Thy crystal stream, Afton, how lovely it glides, And winds by the cot where my Mary resides, How wanton thy waters her snowy feet lave, As gathering sweet flowrets she stems thy clear wave. Flow gently, sweet Afton, among thy green braes, Flow gently, sweet river, the theme of my lays; My Mary's asleep by thy murmuring stream, Flow gently, sweet Afton, disturb not her dream.

Because I love you, and beneath the uncountable stars I have become the delicate piston threading itself through your chest, I want to tell you a story I shouldn’t but will and in the meantime neglect, Love, the discordant melody spilling from my ears but attend, instead, to this tale, for a river burns inside my mouth and it wants both purgation and to eternally sip your thousand drippings; and in the story is a dog and unnamed it leads to less heartbreak, so name him Max, and in the story are neighborhood kids who spin a yarn about Max like I’m singing to you, except they tell a child, a boy who only moments earlier had been wending through sticker bushes to pick juicy rubies, whose chin was, in fact, stained with them, and combining in their story the big kids make the boy who shall remain unnamed believe Max to be sick and rabid, and say his limp and regular smell of piss are just two signs, but the worst of it, they say, is that he’ll likely find you in the night, and the big kids do not giggle, and the boy does not giggle, but lets the final berries in his hand drop into the overgrowth at his feet, and if I spoke the dream of the unnamed boy I fear my tongue would turn an arm of fire so I won’t, but know inside the boy’s head grew a fire beneath the same stars as you and I, Love, your leg between mine, the fine hairs on your upper thigh nearly glistening in the night, and the boy, the night, the incalculable mysteries as he sleeps with a stuffed animal tucked beneath his chin and rolls tight against his brother in their shared bed, who rolls away, and you know by now there is no salve to quell his mind’s roaring machinery and I shouldn’t tell you, but I will, the unnamed boy on the third night of the dreams which harden his soft face puts on pants and a sweatshirt and quietly takes the spade from the den and more quietly leaves his house where upstairs his father lies dreamless, and his mother bends her body into his, and beneath these same stars, Love, which often, when I study them, seem to recede like so many of the lies of light, the boy walks to the yard where Max lives attached to a steel cable spanning the lawn, and the boy brings hot dogs which he learned from Tom & Jerry, and nearly urinating in his pants he tosses them toward the quiet and crippled thing limping across the lawn, the cable whispering above the dew-slick grass, and Max whimpers, and the boy sees a wolf where stands this ratty and sad and groveling dog and beneath these very stars Max raises his head to look at the unnamed boy with one glaucous eye nearly glued shut and the other wet from the cool breeze and wheezing Max catches the gaze of the boy who sees, at last, the raw skin on the dog's flank, the quiver of his spindly legs, and as Max bends his nose to the franks the boy watches him struggle to snatch the meat with gums, and bringing the shovel down he bends to lift the meat to Max's toothless mouth, and rubs the length of his throat and chin, Max arching his neck with his eyes closed, now, and licking the boy's round face, until the boy unchains the dog, and stands, taking slow steps backward through the wet grass and feels, for the first time in days, the breath in his lungs, which is cool, and a little damp, spilling over his small lips, and he feels, again, his feet beneath him, and the earth beneath them, and starlings singing the morning in, and the somber movement of beetles chewing the leaves of the white birch, glinting in the dark, and he notices, Darling, an upturned nest beneath the tree, and flips it looking for the blue eggs of robins, but finds none, and placing a rumpled crimson feather in his mouth slips the spindly thicket into another tree, which he climbs to watch the first hint of light glancing above the fields, and the boy eventually returns to his thorny fruit bush where an occasional prick leaves on his arm or leg a spot of blood the color of these raspberries and tasting of salt, and filling his upturned shirt with them he beams that he could pull from the earth that which might make you smile, Love, which you’ll find in the fridge, on the bottom shelf, behind the milk, in the bowl you made with your own lovely hands.

I loathe that I did love, In youth that I thought sweet, As time requires for my behove, Methinks they are not meet. My lusts they do me leave, My fancies all be fled, And tract of time begins to weave Grey hairs upon my head, For age with stealing steps Hath clawed me with his crutch, And lusty life away she leaps As there had been none such. My Muse doth not delight Me as she did before; My hand and pen are not in plight, As they have been of yore. For reason me denies This youthly idle rhyme; And day by day to me she cries, “Leave off these toys in time.” The wrinkles in my brow, The furrows in my face, Say, limping age will lodge him now Where youth must give him place. The harbinger of death, To me I see him ride, The cough, the cold, the gasping breath Doth bid me provide A pickaxe and a spade, And eke a shrouding sheet, A house of clay for to be made For such a guest most meet. Methinks I hear the clark That knolls the careful knell, And bids me leave my woeful wark, Ere nature me compel. My keepers knit the knot That youth did laugh to scorn, Of me that clean shall be forgot As I had not been born. Thus must I youth give up, Whose badge I long did wear; To them I yield the wanton cup That better may it bear. Lo, here the barèd skull, By whose bald sign I know That stooping age away shall pull Which youthful years did sow. For beauty with her band These crooked cares hath wrought, And shippèd me into the land From whence I first was brought. And ye that bide behind, Have ye none other trust: As ye of clay were cast by kind, So shall ye waste to dust.

Ah Margarida, If I gave you my life, What would you do with it? I’d take my earrings out of hock, Marry a blind man, And live on a tree-lined block. But Margarida, If I gave you my life, What would your mother say? (Her mother knows me inside out.) She’d say you’re a fool, Without a doubt. And Margarida, If I gave you my life Literally, by dying? I’d go to your funeral, firmly believing You’d gone mad To try to love by not living. But Margarida, If this giving of my life to you Were merely poetry? In that case, forget it, The deal’s off, Because I don’t sell on credit. Dictated by the Naval Engineer Sr. Álvaro de Campos in a state of alcoholic unconsciousness.

On one occasion Yūgen of Ise Province was offering to share, for a night or two, the comforts of his home with me when a distant, 
bemused expression came over his face as though at the recollection of a joke told him earlier that day; then, to a degree I would not have thought possible in one whose normal manner was so formal, that studiedly dour professorial expression gave way for an instant to one that positively beamed, illuminated from within by the sound of a beloved voice. So worn out, not even sure I was on the right road, 
I forgot myself awhile watching in weary amazement as his wife came and went, the two of them giving the impression of having long perfected some grave and complex dance known only to them, one of accord and the affection of two people moving hand-in-hand in the same direction, both possessed by desire while knowing themselves to be the source of that desire. But I am so tired, I heard my own voice say, one of them, that startlingly cruel, intrusive voice I hate, darkening everything, how sick I am of listening to it, and of having to go on! But after some time had passed once again I forgot all about it as I sat there, the witness of this marvel that brought peace to my heart or, perhaps, a hidden joy of my own, one I had so long considered extinct. When Yūgen fell on hard times and was dragged down into the most humiliating poverty, his wife made up her mind one day to have her long beautiful hair cut short so that she could sell it and he could afford to invite all their friends to an evening of laughter and drinking, renga competitions, and the conversation of those who have known one another for a long time, the kind look and humorous word that make it seem possible to live again. I think of her sometimes. Moon, come down and come alone. I have to tell you all about Akechi’s wife. — Bashō, translated by Franz Wright

Alas, madam, for stealing of a kiss Have I so much your mind there offended? Have I then done so grievously amiss That by no means it may be amended? Then revenge you, and the next way is this: Another kiss shall have my life ended, For to my mouth the first my heart did suck; The next shall clean out of my breast it pluck.