1247 Love poems

When I saw one of those men touch your hair, I heard for the first time in many a year the ancient battle trumpets and I saw the banners of an army winding off to war and felt that blind power urging me to knock him out with one punch, send him tumbling to the floor. If nobody had held me back, stopped me, I would—God help me—have killed him on the spot, stomped out his blood, and spit in it. I'm sorry, but you must be aware your winding hair is different now, a hornets' nest, a snakes' lair! Yes, like a ball of snakes in a flower basket, dear.

It’s too cold to smoke outside, but if you come over, I’ll keep my hands to myself, or won’t I. I would like to tell you about the wall eaten up by the climbing plant—it was so beautiful. Various things have been happening to me, all of them sexual. The man on the bus took off his pants so I could see him better. Another man said, “Ignore him darlin’. Just sit on my lap.” But I’m not one of those who’s hungriest in the morning, unlike the man at the bakery who eats egg after egg after egg. Listen. Come over: the cold has already eaten the summer. I need another pair of ears: from the kitchen I can’t tell if I’m hearing wind chimes or some gray woman with failing arms dropping a pan full of onions and potatoes. This morning I need four hands— two to wash the greens, one to lift a teakettle, one to pour the milk. This morning, one little mouth will not do. We could play a game where we crouch on the tiles, two yellow dogs drinking coffee from bowls. We could play a game where we let the breakfast burn. Outside there’s a world where every love scene begins with a man in a doorway; he walks over to the woman and says “Open your mouth.”

Everything that was young went quickly, the way his eyes met mine as soon as we woke together in a room outside Nanjing, feeling as if all the things that were falling would fall and make their thunder, leave us with the challenge of being happy, all the things that felt given when gifts were not just surprises, but what we knew, what we hoped to take with us to heaven, unbound by faults and sins, not deceived the way we were when the end came to what we knew of China, landing me here. I am a wish in the skies spun out from celestial space to be poor, to be covered with black skin, a felt quilt of a map with only one way to China — through pain as big as hogs squealing at killing time on black farms in Alabama — the noise of death, the shrill needle that turns clouds over to rip the air above the cities where people are young and all that is given is never taken away.

They were sitting on the thin mattress He’d once rolled & carried up the four floors To his room only to find it covered nearly all Of the bare wood Leaving just a small path alongside the wall & between them was the sack Of oranges & pears she’d brought its neck Turned back to expose the colors of the fruit & as she opened a bottle of wine He reached over to a tall stack of books & pulled out The Tao& with a silly flourish Handed it across the bed to her   she looked up & simply poured the two squat water glasses Half-full with wine & then she Took the book   reading silently   not aloud As he’d assumed & suddenly he felt clearly She knew the way Two people must come upon such an understanding Together of course but separately As the moon & the wave remain individually one

My heart is a fancy place Where giant reddish-purple cauliflowers & white ones in French & English are outside Waiting to welcome you to a boat Over the low black river for a big dinner There's alot of choice among the foods Even a tortured lamb served in pieces En croute on a plate so hot as a rack Of clouds blown over the cold filthy river We are entitled to see anytime while we Use the tablecovers to love each other Publicly dishing out imitative luxuries To show off poetry's extreme generosity Then home in the heart of a big limousine

We have not long to love. Light does not stay. The tender things are those we fold away. Coarse fabrics are the ones for common wear. In silence I have watched you comb your hair. Intimate the silence, dim and warm. I could but did not, reach to touch your arm. I could, but do not, break that which is still. (Almost the faintest whisper would be shrill.) So moments pass as though they wished to stay. We have not long to love. A night. A day....

There was ance a may, and she lo’ed na men; She biggit her bonnie bow’r doun i’ yon glen; But now she cries, Dool and a well-a-day! Come doun the green gait and come here away! When bonnie young Johnnie cam’ owre the sea He said he saw naething sae lovely as me; He hecht me baith rings and monie braw things; And werena my heart licht, I wad dee. He had a wee tittie that lo’ed na me, Because I was twice as bonnie as she; She raised sic a pother ‘twixt him and his mother, That werena my heart licht, I wad dee. The day it was set, and the bridal to be The wife took a dwam and lay doun to dee; She maned, and she graned, out o’ dolour and pain, Till he vowed that he ne’er wad see me again. His kin was for ane o’ a higher degree, Said, what had he do wi’ the likes o’ me? Albeit I was bonnie, I wasna for Johnnie: And werena my heart licht, I wad dee. They said I had neither cow nor calf, Nor dribbles o’ drink rins through the draff, Nor pickles o’meal rins through the mill-e’e; An werena my heart licht, I wad dee. His tittie she was baith wily and slee, She spied me as I cam’ owre the lea, And then she ran in and made a loud din; Believe your ain een an ye trow na me. His bannet stood aye fu’ round on his brow His auld ane looked aye as weel as some’s new; But now he lets ’t wear ony gate it will hing, And casts himsel’ dowie upon the corn-bing. And now he gaes daund’ring about the dykes A a’ he dow do is to hund the tykes; The love-lang nicht he ne’er steeks his e’e; And werena my heart licht I wad dee. Were I but young for thee, as I ha’e been We should ha’e been gallopin’ doun in yon green, And linkin’ it on the lily-white lea; And wow, gin I were but young for thee.

What became of the dear strands of hair pressed against the perspiration of your lover's brow after lovemaking as you gazed into the world of those eyes, now only yours? What became of any afternoon that was so vivid you forgot the present was up to its old trick of pretending it would be there always? What became of the one who believed so deeply in this moment he memorized everything in it and left it for you?

Be the mistress of my choice, Clean in manners, clear in voice; Be she witty, more than wise, Pure enough, though not precise; Be she showing in her dress, Like a civil wilderness, That the curious may detect Order in a sweet neglect; Be she rolling in her eye, Tempting all the passers by; And each ringlet of her hair, An enchantment, or a snare, For to catch the lookers on; But herself held fast by none. Let her Lucrece all day be, Thais in the night, to me. Be she such, as neither will Famish me, nor overfill.

If the nose of the pig in the market of Firenze has lost its matte patina, and shines, brassy, even in the half light; if the mosaic saint on the tiles of the Basilica floor is half gone, worn by the gravity of solid soles, the passing of piety; if the arms of Venus have reentered the rubble, taken by time, her perennial lover, mutilating even the memory of beauty; and if the mother, hiding with her child from the death squads of brutality, if she, trying to keep the child quiet, to keep them from being found out, holds her hand over his mouth, holds him against her, tighter and tighter, until he stops breathing; if the restorer—trying to bring back to perfection the masterpiece scarred by its transit through time, wipes away by mistake, the mysterious smile. . . if what loves, and love is, takes away what it aims to preserve, then here is the place to fall silent, meaning well but in danger of marring what we would praise, unable to do more than wear down the marble steps to the altar, smother the fire we would keep from the wind’s extinction, or if, afraid of our fear, we lift the lid from the embers, and send abroad, into the parched night, a flight of sparks, incendiary, dying to catch somewhere, hungry for fuel, the past, its dry provision tinder for brilliance and heat, prelude to cold, and to ash. . .