1247 Love poems

The world had fled, with all its silly cares and questionable aches, and in one swoon we rose above its stupefying airs like flying lovesick pigs up to the moon. In that blue light where two lives equaled all, our souls looked down upon a spinning ball. The world returned, and this was a surprise I raged against like someone on a rack, telling the sun, tears clouding my stunned eyes, give us our splendid isolation back. I craved third rails, a shot of something strong when I found out it doesn’t last for long. The world came back and stayed, pain never ended, but when the aches and cares begged for a hand, grew softer in the light we’d made and tended, I finally began to understand love’s widening third stage, and of the three this was the most outstanding ecstasy.

I wanted so ably to reassure you, I wanted the man you took to be me, to comfort you, and got up, and went to the window, pushed back, as you asked me to, the curtain, to see the outline of the trees in the night outside. The light, love, the light we felt then, greyly, was it, that came in, on us, not merely my hands or yours, or a wetness so comfortable, but in the dark then as you slept, the grey figure came so close and leaned over, between us, as you slept, restless, and my own face had to see it, and be seen by it, the man it was, your grey lost tired bewildered brother, unused, untaken— hated by love, and dead, but not dead, for an instant, saw me, myself the intruder, as he was not. I tried to say, it is all right, she is happy, you are no longer needed. I said, he is dead, and he went as you shifted and woke, at first afraid, then knew by my own knowing what had happened— and the light then of the sun coming for another morning in the world.

Cupid as he lay among Roses, by a Bee was stung. Whereupon in anger flying To his Mother, said thus crying; Help! O help! your Boy’s a dying. And why, my pretty Lad, said she? Then blubbering, replied he, A winged Snake has bitten me, Which Country people call a Bee. At which she smil’d; then with her hairs And kisses drying up his tears: Alas! said she, my Wag! if this Such a pernicious torment is: Come tell me then, how great’s the smart Of those, thou woundest with thy Dart!

But what lovers we were, what lovers, even when it was all over— the bull-black, deadweight wines that we swung towards each other rang and rang like bells of blood, our own great hearts. We slung the drunk boat out of port and watched our sober unreal life unmoor, a continent of grief; the candlelight strange on our faces like the tiny silent blazes and coruscations of its wars. We blew them out and took the stairs into the night for the night's work, stripped off in the timbered dark, gently hooked each other on like aqualungs, and thundered down to mine our lovely secret wreck. We surfaced later, breathless, back to back, and made our way alone up the mined beach of the dawn.

Our oneness is the wrestlers’, fierce and close, Thrusting and thrust; One life in dual effort for one prize,— We fight, and must; For soul with soul does battle evermore Till love be trust. Our distance is love’s severance; sense divides, Each is but each; Never the very hidden spirit of thee My life doth reach; Twain! Since love athwart the gulf that needs Kisses and speech. Ah! wrestle closelier! we draw nearer so Than any bliss Can bring twain souls who would be whole and one, Too near to kiss: To be one thought, one voice before we die,— Wrestle for this.

(she opens the door) (he is twelve inches away) her fingers still splayed across the battened-down brass latch of his sternum (she closes the door) (he is eight feet away) her palm skids down the banister clings to the fluted globe of the finial (he is twenty-eight feet away) (she opens the door) the black air is fast flowing and cold (she closes the door) she clutches her thin intimacy tight under her chin and trips down the steps (he is forty feet away) the stiff wind palpably stripping his scent from her hair from the numb fingers she raises to her mouth a cab pulls up (she opens the door) she bends the body hitherto upright (she closes the door) the cracked brown vinyl (he is ninety feet away) biting the backs of her thighs red blotches suffusing her cheeks I’m sorry please stop she says (he is four hundred feet away) please stop the cab (she opens the door) the cab stops she pushes a twenty through the slot (he is seven hundred feet away) (she closes the door) the husk of something dry and light falls to the sidewalk crumbles away (she opens the door) (he is two feet away) (she closes the door)

—for J.P.O. I have wished you dead and myself dead, How could it be otherwise. I have broken into you like a burglar And you've set your dogs on me. You have been a hurricane to me And a pile of broken sticks A child could kick. I have climbed you like a monument, gasping, For the exercise and the view, And leaned over the railing at the top– Strong and warm, that summer wind.

Sometimes in our sleep we touch The body of another woman And we wake up And we know the first nights With summer visitors In the three storied house of our childhood. Whatever we remember, The darkest hair being brushed In front of the darkest mirror In the darkest room.

Petrarch dreams of pebbles on the tongue, he loves me at a distance, black polished stone skipping the lake that swallows worn-down words, a kind of drown and drench and quench and very kind to what I would've said. Light marries water and what else (unfit for drinking purposes), light lavishes my skin on intermittent sun. (I am weather and unreasonable, out of all season.  Petrarch loves my lies of laurel leaves, ripped sprigs of deciduous evergreen.) A creek is lying in my cement-walled bed, slurring through the center of small town; the current's brown and turbid (muddy, turbulent with recent torrents), silt rushing toward the reservoir. A Sonata passes by too close (I have to jump) and yes I do hear music here. It's blue, or turquoise, aquamarine, some synonym on wheels, note down that note. It's Petrarch singing with his back to me (delivering himself to voice), his fingers filled with jonquil, daffodils, mistaken narcissus. (I surprised him between the pages of a book, looked up the flowers I misnamed.) Forsythia and magnolia bring me spring, when he walks into the house he has wings. Song is a temporary thing (attempt), he wants to own his music.

I want to spend a lot but not all of my years with you. We’ll talk about kids but make plans to travel. I will remember your eyes as green when they were gray. Our dogs will be named For Now and Mostly. Sex will be good but next door’s will sound better. There will be small things. I will pick up your damp towel from the bed, and then I won’t. I won’t be as hot as I was when I wasn’t yours and your hairline now so untrustworthy. When we pull up alongside a cattle car and hear the frightened lows, I will silently judge you for not immediately renouncing meat. You will bring me wine and notice how much I drink. The garden you plant and I plant is tunneled through by voles, the vowels we speak aren’t vows, but there’s something holding me here, for now, like your eyes, which I suppose are brown, after all.