1247 Love poems

When by thy scorn, O murd'ress, I am dead And that thou think'st thee free From all solicitation from me, Then shall my ghost come to thy bed, And thee, feign'd vestal, in worse arms shall see; Then thy sick taper will begin to wink, And he, whose thou art then, being tir'd before, Will, if thou stir, or pinch to wake him, think Thou call'st for more, And in false sleep will from thee shrink; And then, poor aspen wretch, neglected thou Bath'd in a cold quicksilver sweat wilt lie A verier ghost than I. What I will say, I will not tell thee now, Lest that preserve thee; and since my love is spent, I'had rather thou shouldst painfully repent, Than by my threat'nings rest still innocent.

1 But I was thinking today about our conversation earlier in the summer. Exhausted, you lay your head on the kitchen table and said: “But what’s the difference between a monster and a cyborg? I need something to eat. Do you have any chocolate?” Opening the fridge, I said quietly and perhaps too seriously, trying to impress you: “The monster is that being who refuses to adapt to her circumstances.” Her fate. Her body. Great Britain. You said: “So, is Laloo English or British?” I said: “She’s from London.” But the more I said London, the more it sounded like a joke. LondonLondonLondon. 2 I was thinking today about what happens when you keep going in a car. This is something you can only do here. Wish for something. Did you ever do it? Wish you weren’t there? I want that go on, go even though it is unclear to me what happens when you get to the Panama Canal or Idaho. Hitchhiking in Idaho as a veritable child, I was taken in by a farming couple, Fatty and Daddy, a hundred miles or so outside of Boise. Fatty was rail thin, about seventy-five, and Daddy was a big man who had a reclining chair in each room and looked younger than his wife. They picked me up in their truck—I was sitting by the side of the road brushing the knots out of my hair with my fingers—and I stayed with them for five days. They said it was not the right thing for me to be in the open like that, and they took me to eat every day at a restaurant called Country Buffet. In my innocence, I had been walking on a road that led to the country compound of a KKK leader/operative, Charles Reynold. What is an operative? It is someone who is always planning a way in, like the hen-house fox with his beautifully red, bushy tail. Daddy, Fatty, and I hunkered down until Daddy’s nephew, Robert, stopped by on his way through nowhere and gave me a ride to Boise proper, where there was a bus station. I waited until Robert had gone and then I walked out to the main drag to get a cup of coffee and interview murderers. “I can take you as far as the state line.” “That would be lovely.” Obsessed, far from home with its gooseberry patches and grim professions based upon openings at Heathrow Airport or Nestle, the main employers in the dingy part of northwest London that constituted my origins, I said yes. Soft yes to the color green, which is going. 3 That is a tree (going) but also an ocean: a way of being saturated with color that only happens here in your country for me; for you it might happen in another place. Mine. Like Laloo, I lived for many years on an island with congested traffic flows. Thus, a juniper tree flying by the window, intensely blue, or the Atlantic Ocean, to the left, if the car has a destination to the south, such as to The Keys, is magical to me. Improbable in light of my origins. Hers. The girl in the car. I don’t know. I am writing to you, in your special writing dress made from scraps of lace as if it (the dress, the morning of writing ahead of you) is a café; as if, writing, you are hypnotizing not only the biologies of strangers and friends but also yourself. For this reason, when I think of you reading, I think of you as writing blindly. You read but you are also writing. As if my own eyes were closed, I see your white books floating in the sky above my painting of the red girl. These books are separate from my own work, here in the salt-water notebook, but they communicate with it in a nonlocal sense. Like birds. 4 This is pre but the notebook is after. Soaked already at the edge and foamy. Past future. Writing on the warp when dry. Pages. Entries by hand. That is the morning I woke up and walked to the Pacific Ocean, after a night in a motel in Florence, Oregon, complete with a dodgy door and the reality of pillows. The woman at the front desk was wearing a very pretty apron with purple and yellow flowers on it. An expatriate, she said exaggeratedly, oblivious to our common origin: “About four miles. You’re not going to walk, are you? Do you have an umbrella? You can’t go out like that, ducky.” 5 I walked towards the sound of something roaring in a day, the kind of day that is like darkness but lit up, on its forested, proximal verge by gorse, which is a bright yellow flower. Citron-yellow and a kind of tin or silver roofing with holes in it. The day. Like walking in a dreamed landscape drenched with the wrong rain. Monsoon. What kind of rain is this? I recognized the immensity but not the temperature. This was monstrous: the inability to assimilate, on the level of the senses, an ordinary experience of weather. Here is the tongue, for example, constantly darting out to feel the air: what is it? Is it summer? Is it a different season? It’s a different day. That’s okay. Damaged from her travels, in some sense unsettled, enormously anxious, a girl does it anway: gets up and goes. It’s as if the day has a memory of her and not the other way around.

I spent a night turning in bed, my love was a feather, a flat sleeping thing. She was very white and quiet, and above us on the roof, there was another woman I also loved, had addressed myself to in a fit she returned. That encompasses it. But now I was lonely, I yelled, but what is that? Ugh, she said, beside me, she put her hand on my back, for which act I think to say this wrongly.

you gave me a white rose put the lamp on the stove it caught fire the I Ching said thunder above the lake lightning in Baker Street switched on the cooker and blew a fuse blue flash you see the whole experience is electric

Yes, the heart aches, but you know or think you know it could be indigestion after all, the stomach uttering its after-lunch cantata for clarinet and strings, while blank panic can be just a two-o'clock shot of the fantods, before the afternoon comes on in toe-shoes and black leotard, her back a pale gleaming board-game where all is not lost though the hour is late and you've got light pockets. There is a port-hole of light at the end of the hemlock tunnel: birds cross it, flashing their voices at you, and you feel— from the way they tilt their heads and their throats swell— the beat of their brief song, another sign the world is what it is: a shade-tree heavy with households, its fruit for meat, its leaf for medicine. But that business of the first kiss is hard to fathom: knees quaking, white water over broken rock, and the coracle you trusted your life to in a bit of a spin, head swimming with the smell of flesh so close you feel it breathing, spilling secrets— its inmost name, for one, and what the near future feels like, time wobbling to a tribal thing without tenses, and that tenacious "I" a thing of the past, only a particle of the action now, nothing separate, a luminous tumult, an affair of air and palate, air and larynx, tongue, throat, teeth, whatever brings the words out in their summer dresses—and you can hear the crow's black scavenger guffawing, egg- and offal-scoffer, comedian of windspin, so all of a sudden you rush your kingdom-come, the two of you, insects shedding your dry, chitinous skins. And although what's left is raw for a while, the slightest breath burns it, in time it comes to become you, you can live into it, intoning the Sebastian koan— whose who in pain, who's who?— and know, or close-to-know, the here it is: two clean rooms in the next parish to wholeness.

Whoso list to hunt, I know where is an hind, But as for me, hélas , I may no more. The vain travail hath wearied me so sore, I am of them that farthest cometh behind. Yet may I by no means my wearied mind Draw from the deer, but as she fleeth afore Fainting I follow. I leave off therefore, Sithens in a net I seek to hold the wind. Who list her hunt, I put him out of doubt, As well as I may spend his time in vain. And graven with diamonds in letters plain There is written, her fair neck round about: Noli me tangere , for Caesar's I am, And wild for to hold, though I seem tame.

I would have come. When you called. But. I had the most beautiful pale pink rose. Its healthy stem was clenched between my teeth. And. Its thorns bit sharply into my tender wet flesh. So. I couldn't answer you. Still. My lips moved at you silently. They offered words you never heard. They screamed inside my crazed brain. Only. It could do nothing for you. In time the petals wilted. They blew away. And. They became compost in someone else's garden. The tough, fibrous stem withered. I bit down hard to snap its grip on me. Then. My teeth fell out. Its thorns had burrowed into my cheeks. They had implanted themselves permanently. They were suckling on my softest tissues. And. Not long after they sprouted tiny shoots. They coiled their way down. I still held the memory of your call. And. The long stemmed beauty lodged next to it. They cleaved unto the long roots curling down my neck. My body held tight and listened. Hard.

(excerpt) From Book II With this he took his leve, and hom he wente; And lord, so he was glad and wel bygon! Criseyde aroos, no lenger she ne stente, But streght in-to hire closet wente anon, And set hire doun as stylle as any ston, And every word gan up and doun to wynde, That he hadde seyd, as it com hire to mynde; And wex somdel aston ed in hire thought, Right for the newe cas; but whan that she Was ful avysed, tho fond she right nought Of peril, why she ought afered be, For man may love, of possibilite, A womman so, his herte may to-breste, And she naught love ayein, but-if hire leste. But as she sat allone and thought e thus, Ascry aroos at scarmuch al with-oute, And men cryde in the strete, "Se, Troilus Hath right now put to flighte the Grekes route!" With that gan al hire meynee for to shoute, "A! go we see; caste up the latis wyde; For thorugh this strete he moot to paleys ryde; "For other wey is fro the yat e noon Of Dardanus, ther opyn is the cheyne." With that com he and al his folk anoon An esy pas rydynge, in routes tweyne, Right as his happy day was, sooth to seyne, For which, men seyn, may nought distourbed be That shal bityden of necessitee. This Troilus sat on his bay e steede, Al armed, save his hed, ful richely, And wownded was his hors, and gan to blede, On whiche he rood a pas, ful softely, But swych a knyghtly sighte, trewely, As was on hym was nought, withouten faille, To loke on Mars, that god is of bataille. So lik a man of arm es and a knyght He was to seen, fulfilled of heigh prowesse; For bothe he hadde a body and a myght To doon that thing, as wel as hardynesse; And eek to seen hym in his gere hym dresse, So fressh, so yong, so weldy semed he, It was an heven up-on hym for to see. His helm to-hewen was in twenty places, That by a tyssew heng, his bak byhynde; His sheld to-dasshed was with swerdes and maces, In which men myghte many an arwe fynde That thirl ed hadde horn and nerf and rynde; And ay the peple cryde, "Here cometh oure joye, And, next his brother, holder up of Troye!" For which he wex a litel reed for shame, Whan he the peple up-on hym herde cryen, That to byholde it was a noble game, How sobreliche he caste doun his ÿen. Cryseÿda gan al his chere aspien, And leet it so softe yn hir herte synke, That to hireself she seyde, "Who yaf me drynke?" For of hire owen thought she wex al reed, Remembryng hire right thus, "Lo, this is he Which that myn uncle swerith he moot be deed, But I on hym have mercy and pitee." And with that thought, for pure ashamed, she Gan in hir hed to pulle, and that as faste, Whil he and all the peple forby paste. And gan to caste and rollen up and doun With-inne hir thought his excellent prowesse, And his estat, and also his renown, His wit, his shap, and eek his gentillesse; But moost hir favour was, for his distresse Was al for hire, and thoughte it was a routhe To sleen swich oon, if that he mente trouthe. Now myghte som envious jangle thus: "This was a sodeyn love; how myght it be That she so lightly loved Troilus Right for the firste syghte; ye, pardee?" Now who-so seith so, mote he never thee! For everything, a gynnyng hath it nede Er al be wrought, with-outen any drede. For I sey nought that she so sodeynly Yaf hym hire love, but that she gan enclyne To like him first, and I have told yow whi; And after that, his manhod and his pyne Made love with-inne hire herte for to myne, For which, by proces and by good servyse, He gat hire love, and in no sodeyn wyse.

I I wonder do you feel to-day As I have felt since, hand in hand, We sat down on the grass, to stray In spirit better through the land, This morn of Rome and May? II For me, I touched a thought, I know, Has tantalized me many times, (Like turns of thread the spiders throw Mocking across our path) for rhymes To catch at and let go. III Help me to hold it! First it left The yellowing fennel, run to seed There, branching from the brickwork's cleft, Some old tomb's ruin: yonder weed Took up the floating weft, IV Where one small orange cup amassed Five beetles,—blind and green they grope Among the honey-meal: and last, Everywhere on the grassy slope I traced it. Hold it fast! V The champaign with its endless fleece Of feathery grasses everywhere! Silence and passion, joy and peace, An everlasting wash of air— Rome's ghost since her decease. VI Such life here, through such lengths of hours, Such miracles performed in play, Such primal naked forms of flowers, Such letting nature have her way While heaven looks from its towers! VII How say you? Let us, O my dove, Let us be unashamed of soul, As earth lies bare to heaven above! How is it under our control To love or not to love? VIII I would that you were all to me, You that are just so much, no more. Nor yours nor mine, nor slave nor free! Where does the fault lie? What the core O' the wound, since wound must be? IX I would I could adopt your will, See with your eyes, and set my heart Beating by yours, and drink my fill At your soul's springs,—your part my part In life, for good and ill. X No. I yearn upward, touch you close, Then stand away. I kiss your cheek, Catch your soul's warmth,—I pluck the rose And love it more than tongue can speak— Then the good minute goes. XI Already how am I so far Out of that minute? Must I go Still like the thistle-ball, no bar, Onward, whenever light winds blow, Fixed by no friendly star? XII Just when I seemed about to learn! Where is the thread now? Off again! The old trick! Only I discern— Infinite passion, and the pain Of finite hearts that yearn.

Heartworn happiness, fine line that winds among the tapestry’s old blacks and blues, bright hair blazing in the theater, red hair raving in the bar—as now the little leaves shoot veils of gold across the trees’ bones, shroud of spring, ghost of summer, shadblow snow, blood- russet spoor spilled prodigal on last year’s leaves . . . When your yellows, greens, and yellow-greens, your ochres and your umbers have evolved nearly to hemlock blackness, cypress blackness, when the woods are rife with soddenness (unfolded ferns, skunk cabbage by the stream, barberry by the trunks, and bitter watercress inside the druid pool) will your thin, still-glinting thread insist to catch the eye in filigreed titrations stitched along among beneath the branches, in the branches where it lives all winter, occulted fire, brief constant fleeting gold . . .