1247 Love poems

I am two fools, I know, For loving, and for saying so In whining poetry; But where's that wiseman, that would not be I, If she would not deny? Then as th' earth's inward narrow crooked lanes Do purge sea water's fretful salt away, I thought, if I could draw my pains Through rhyme's vexation, I should them allay. Grief brought to numbers cannot be so fierce, For he tames it, that fetters it in verse. But when I have done so, Some man, his art and voice to show, Doth set and sing my pain; And, by delighting many, frees again Grief, which verse did restrain. To love and grief tribute of verse belongs, But not of such as pleases when 'tis read. Both are increased by such songs, For both their triumphs so are published, And I, which was two fools, do so grow three; Who are a little wise, the best fools be.

it befalls us. an exchanged glance, reflective spasm. Is it a fantastically unlaminated question set in flesh or valentine that wears the air as its apparel? If you cut a heart from parchment, is it still a heart? A nontrivial knot, where turns of every gradient may kiss and tell. Does the vessel have edges? Or is it all connectedness, an embedding to be stretched or bent. Imagine being simultaneously alive, bound in both directions with a bow! Is it diachronic, a phenomenon that changes over time? Without ardor theory suffers. That’s why I’m stuck on you with wanton glue, per- severing, styling something blobbish and macabre into something pointed, neat. Love is a gift that springs from an unlit spot. Resin and rue. Even when I’m in the dark I’m in the dark with you. say it quivers rather than contracts, fluttery with ruptions. Doctors call it holiday heart. Valentine’s Day — named for a saint whose head is venerated in Rome — is also National Organ Donor Day, okay? Give anatomical dark chocolates infused with true invariance. With smoked salt pepper and beau- jolais in a plain brown box embellished with praises in a romance language in your hand. Please none cosseted in plush like the stuff inside a coffin. I’m just praying. Can you find a pulse or dry needle trigger point? Just saying this fudge has tears in it. Someone’s been sweating over this. Listen, Mr. Stethoscope, I’m at the end of my hope. Still, I’ll grow another blossom for that blossom-crowned skull. some give vinegar valentines. no pillow words. Just floppy organ thistleburr. Froot Loops and craft wire fashioned on a snarky jig: “To My Pocket Prince.” “By Bitch Possessed.” Tough tits, isn’t it? Some call it a day marked by commodified flowers, obligation chocolate. Some live on clinical sprinkles, asking where’s the feast. The carnelian pin with openwork components that let you see its self-pleasuring mechanism, storm hormones, and single pulsing vein. What even is it? Here’s the thing. A gift cannot be cynical unless the giver is. I will pay you to test this for me. Its closets vast with steadfastness at best at least for me surpass all other closets in the flesh. I’m sending this from my memory foam head. Valentines intensify the surface, heart the depths.

I Sun-blazed, over Romsley, a livid rain-scarp. XIII Whose lives are hidden in God? Whose? Who can now tell what was taken, or where, or how, or whether it was received: how ditched, divested, clamped, sifted, over- laid, raked over, grassed over, spread around, rotted down with leafmould, accepted as civic concrete, reinforceable base cinderblocks: tipped into Danube, Rhine, Vistula, dredged up with the Baltic and the Pontic sludge: committed in absentia to solemn elevation, Trauermusik, musique funèbre, funeral music, for male and female voices ringingly a cappella, made for double string choirs, congregated brass, choice performers on baroque trumpets hefting, like glassblowers, inventions of supreme order? XIV As to bad faith, Malebranche might argue it rests with inattention. Stupidity is not admissible. However, the status of apprehension remains at issue. Some qualities are best left unrecognized. Needless to say, unrecognized is not unacknowledged. Unnamed is not nameless. XVII If the gospel is heard, all else follows: the scattering, the diaspora, the shtetlach, ash pits, pits of indigo dye. Penitence can be spoken of, it is said, but is itself beyond words; even broken speech presumes. Those Christian Jews of the first Church, huddled sabbath-survivors, keepers of the word; silent, inside twenty years, doubly outcast: even so I would remember— the scattering, the diaspora. We do not know the saints. His mercy is greater even than his wisdom. If the gospel is heard, all else follows. We shall rise again, clutching our wounds. XXXV Even now, I tell myself, there is a language to which I might speak and which would rightly hear me; responding with eloquence; in its turn, negotiating sense without insult given or injury taken. Familiar to those who already know it elsewhere as justice, it is met also in the form of silence. XXIX Rancorous, narcissistic old sod—what makes him go on? We thought, hoped rather, he might be dead. Too bad. So how much more does he have of injury time? XL For wordly, read worldly; for in equity, inequity; for religious read religiose; for distinction detestation. Take accessible to mean acceptable, accommodating, openly servile. Is that right, Missis, or is that right? I don’t care what I say, do I? XLI For iconic priesthood, read worldly pique and ambition. Change insightfully caring to pruriently intrusive. Delete chastened and humbled. Insert humiliated. Interpret slain in the spirit as browbeaten to exhaustion. For hardness of heart read costly dislike of cant. XLII Excuse me—excuse me—I did not say the pain is lifting. I said the pain is in the lifting. No—please—forget it. XLIII This is quite dreadful—he’s become obsessed. There you go, there you go—narrow it down to obsession! LI Whatever may be meant by moral landscape, it is for me increasingly a terrain seen in cross-section: igneous, sedimentary, conglomerate, metamorphic rock- strata, in which particular grace, individual love, decency, endurance, are traceable across the faults. LII Admittedly at times this moral landscape to my exasperated ear emits archaic burrings like a small, high-fenced electricity sub-station of uncertain age in a field corner where the flies gather and old horses shake their sides. LXVI Christ has risen yet again to their ritual supplication. It seems weird that the comedy never self-destructs. Actually it is strengthened—if attenuation is strength. (Donne said as much of gold. Come back, Donne, I forgive you; and lovely Herbert.) But what strange guild is this that practises daily synchronized genuflection and takes pride in hazing my Jewish wife? If Christ be not risen, Christians are petty temple-schismatics, justly cast out of the law. Worse things have befallen Israel. But since he is risen, he is risen even for these high-handed underlings of self- worship: who, as by obedience, proclaim him risen indeed. LXVII Instruct me further in your travail, blind interpreter. Suppose I cannot unearth what it was they buried: research is not anamnesis. Nor is this a primer of innocence exactly. Did the centurion see nothing irregular before the abnormal light seared his eyeballs? Why do I take as my gift a wounded and wounding introspection? The rule is clear enough: last alleluias forte, followed by indifferent coffee and fellowship. LXIX What choice do you have? These are false questions. Fear is your absolute, yet in each feature infinitely variable, Manichean beyond dispute, for you alone, the skeletal maple, a loose wire tapping the wind. LXX Active virtue: that which shall contain its own passion in the public weal— do you follow?—or can you at least take the drift of the thing? The struggle for a noble vernacular: this did not end with Petrarch. But where is it? Where has it got us? Does it stop, in our case, with Dryden, or, perhaps, Milton’s political sonnets?—the cherished stock hacked into ransom and ruin; the voices of distinction, far back, indistinct. Still, I’m convinced that shaping, voicing, are types of civic action. Or, slightly to refashion this, that Wordsworth’s two Prefaces stand with his great tract on the Convention of Cintra, witnessing to the praesidium in the sacred name of things betrayed.Intrinsic value I am somewhat less sure of. It seems implicate with active virtue but I cannot say how, precisely. Partaking of both fact and recognition, it must be, therefore, in effect, at once agent and predicate: imponderables brought home to the brute mass and detail of the world; there, by some, to be pondered. XCVI Ignorant, assured, there comes to us a voice— Unchallengeable—of the foundations, distinct authority devoted to indistinction. With what proximity to justice stands the record of mischance, heroic hit-or-miss, the air so full of flak and tracer, legend says, you pray to live unnoticed. M r Ives took Emersonian self-reliance the whole way on that. Melville, half-immolated, rebuilt the pyre. Holst, some time later, stumbled on dharma. What can I say?— At worst and best a blind ennoblement, flood-water, hunched, shouldering at the weir, the hatred that is in the nature of love. CXVIII By default, as it so happens, here we have good and bad angels caught burning themselves characteristic antiphons; and here the true and the false shepherds discovered already deep into their hollow debate. Is that all? No, add spinners of fine calumny, confectioners of sugared malice; add those who find sincerity in heartless weeping. Add the pained, painful clowns, brinksmen of perdition. Sidney: best realizer and arguer of music, that ‘divine striker upon the senses’, steady my music to your Augustinian grace-notes, with your high craft of fret. I am glad to have learned how it goes with you and with Italianate- Hebraic Milton: your voices pitched exactly— somewhere—between Laus Deo and defiance. CXIX And yes—bugger you, MacSikker et al.,—I do mourn and resent your desolation of learning: Scientia that enabled, if it did not secure, forms of understanding, far from despicable, and furthest now, as they are most despised. By understanding I understand diligence and attention, appropriately understood as actuated self-knowledge, a daily acknowledgement of what is owed the dead. CXX As with the Gospels, which it is allowed to resemble, in Measure for Measure moral uplift is not the issue. Scrupulosity, diffidence, shrill spirituality, conviction, free expression, come off as poorly as deceit or lust. The ethical motiv is—so we may hazard— opportunism, redemptive and redeemed; case-hardened on case-law, casuistry’s own redemption; the general temper a caustic equity. CXXI So what is faith if it is not inescapable endurance? Unrevisited, the ferns are breast-high, head-high, the days lustrous, with their hinterlands of thunder. Light is this instant, far-seeing into itself, its own signature on things that recognize salvation. I am an old man, a child, the horizon is Traherne’s country. CXLVII To go so far with the elaborately- vested Angel of Naked Truth: and where are we, finally? Don’t say that—we are nowhere finally. And nowhere are you— nowhere are you—any more—more cryptic than a schoolyard truce. Cry Kings, Cross, or Crosses, cry Pax, cry Pax, but to be healed. But to be healed, and die! CXLVIII Obnoxious means, far back within itself, easily wounded. But vulnerable, proud anger is, I find, a related self of covetousness. I came late to seeing that. Actually, I had to be shown it. What I saw was rough, and still pains me. Perhaps it should pain me more. Pride is our crux: be angry, but not proud where that means vainglorious. Take Leopardi’s words or—to be accurate—BV’s English cast of them: when he found Tasso’s poor scratch of a memorial barely showing among the cold slabs of defunct pomp. It seemed a sad and angry consolation. So—Croker, MacSikker, O’Shem—I ask you: what are poems for? They are to console us with their own gift, which is like perfect pitch. Let us commit that to our dust. What ought a poem to be? Answer,a sad and angry consolation.

Before our lives divide for ever, While time is with us and hands are free, (Time, swift to fasten and swift to sever Hand from hand, as we stand by the sea) I will say no word that a man might say Whose whole life's love goes down in a day; For this could never have been; and never, Though the gods and the years relent, shall be. Is it worth a tear, is it worth an hour, To think of things that are well outworn? Of fruitless husk and fugitive flower, The dream foregone and the deed forborne? Though joy be done with and grief be vain, Time shall not sever us wholly in twain; Earth is not spoilt for a single shower; But the rain has ruined the ungrown corn. It will grow not again, this fruit of my heart, Smitten with sunbeams, ruined with rain. The singing seasons divide and depart, Winter and summer depart in twain. It will grow not again, it is ruined at root, The bloodlike blossom, the dull red fruit; Though the heart yet sickens, the lips yet smart, With sullen savour of poisonous pain. I have given no man of my fruit to eat; I trod the grapes, I have drunken the wine. Had you eaten and drunken and found it sweet, This wild new growth of the corn and vine, This wine and bread without lees or leaven, We had grown as gods, as the gods in heaven, Souls fair to look upon, goodly to greet, One splendid spirit, your soul and mine. In the change of years, in the coil of things, In the clamour and rumour of life to be, We, drinking love at the furthest springs, Covered with love as a covering tree, We had grown as gods, as the gods above, Filled from the heart to the lips with love, Held fast in his hands, clothed warm with his wings, O love, my love, had you loved but me! We had stood as the sure stars stand, and moved As the moon moves, loving the world; and seen Grief collapse as a thing disproved, Death consume as a thing unclean. Twain halves of a perfect heart, made fast Soul to soul while the years fell past; Had you loved me once, as you have not loved; Had the chance been with us that has not been. I have put my days and dreams out of mind, Days that are over, dreams that are done. Though we seek life through, we shall surely find There is none of them clear to us now, not one. But clear are these things; the grass and the sand, Where, sure as the eyes reach, ever at hand, With lips wide open and face burnt blind, The strong sea-daisies feast on the sun. The low downs lean to the sea; the stream, One loose thin pulseless tremulous vein, Rapid and vivid and dumb as a dream, Works downward, sick of the sun and the rain; No wind is rough with the rank rare flowers; The sweet sea, mother of loves and hours, Shudders and shines as the grey winds gleam, Turning her smile to a fugitive pain. Mother of loves that are swift to fade, Mother of mutable winds and hours. A barren mother, a mother-maid, Cold and clean as her faint salt flowers. I would we twain were even as she, Lost in the night and the light of the sea, Where faint sounds falter and wan beams wade, Break, and are broken, and shed into showers. The loves and hours of the life of a man, They are swift and sad, being born of the sea. Hours that rejoice and regret for a span, Born with a man's breath, mortal as he; Loves that are lost ere they come to birth, Weeds of the wave, without fruit upon earth. I lose what I long for, save what I can, My love, my love, and no love for me! It is not much that a man can save On the sands of life, in the straits of time, Who swims in sight of the great third wave That never a swimmer shall cross or climb. Some waif washed up with the strays and spars That ebb-tide shows to the shore and the stars; Weed from the water, grass from a grave, A broken blossom, a ruined rhyme. There will no man do for your sake, I think, What I would have done for the least word said. I had wrung life dry for your lips to drink, Broken it up for your daily bread: Body for body and blood for blood, As the flow of the full sea risen to flood That yearns and trembles before it sink, I had given, and lain down for you, glad and dead. Yea, hope at highest and all her fruit, And time at fullest and all his dower, I had given you surely, and life to boot, Were we once made one for a single hour. But now, you are twain, you are cloven apart, Flesh of his flesh, but heart of my heart; And deep in one is the bitter root, And sweet for one is the lifelong flower. To have died if you cared I should die for you, clung To my life if you bade me, played my part As it pleased you — these were the thoughts that stung, The dreams that smote with a keener dart Than shafts of love or arrows of death; These were but as fire is, dust, or breath, Or poisonous foam on the tender tongue Of the little snakes that eat my heart. I wish we were dead together to-day, Lost sight of, hidden away out of sight, Clasped and clothed in the cloven clay, Out of the world's way, out of the light, Out of the ages of worldly weather, Forgotten of all men altogether, As the world's first dead, taken wholly away, Made one with death, filled full of the night. How we should slumber, how we should sleep, Far in the dark with the dreams and the dews! And dreaming, grow to each other, and weep, Laugh low, live softly, murmur and muse; Yea, and it may be, struck through by the dream, Feel the dust quicken and quiver, and seem Alive as of old to the lips, and leap Spirit to spirit as lovers use. Sick dreams and sad of a dull delight; For what shall it profit when men are dead To have dreamed, to have loved with the whole soul's might, To have looked for day when the day was fled? Let come what will, there is one thing worth, To have had fair love in the life upon earth: To have held love safe till the day grew night, While skies had colour and lips were red. Would I lose you now? would I take you then, If I lose you now that my heart has need? And come what may after death to men, What thing worth this will the dead years breed? Lose life, lose all; but at least I know, O sweet life's love, having loved you so, Had I reached you on earth, I should lose not again, In death nor life, nor in dream or deed. Yea, I know this well: were you once sealed mine, Mine in the blood's beat, mine in the breath, Mixed into me as honey in wine, Not time, that sayeth and gainsayeth, Nor all strong things had severed us then; Not wrath of gods, nor wisdom of men, Nor all things earthly, nor all divine, Nor joy nor sorrow, nor life nor death. I had grown pure as the dawn and the dew, You had grown strong as the sun or the sea. But none shall triumph a whole life through: For death is one, and the fates are three. At the door of life, by the gate of breath, There are worse things waiting for men than death; Death could not sever my soul and you, As these have severed your soul from me. You have chosen and clung to the chance they sent you, Life sweet as perfume and pure as prayer. But will it not one day in heaven repent you? Will they solace you wholly, the days that were? Will you lift up your eyes between sadness and bliss, Meet mine, and see where the great love is, And tremble and turn and be changed? Content you; The gate is strait; I shall not be there. But you, had you chosen, had you stretched hand, Had you seen good such a thing were done, I too might have stood with the souls that stand In the sun's sight, clothed with the light of the sun; But who now on earth need care how I live? Have the high gods anything left to give, Save dust and laurels and gold and sand? Which gifts are goodly; but I will none. O all fair lovers about the world, There is none of you, none, that shall comfort me. My thoughts are as dead things, wrecked and whirled Round and round in a gulf of the sea; And still, through the sound and the straining stream, Through the coil and chafe, they gleam in a dream, The bright fine lips so cruelly curled, And strange swift eyes where the soul sits free. Free, without pity, withheld from woe, Ignorant; fair as the eyes are fair. Would I have you change now, change at a blow, Startled and stricken, awake and aware? Yea, if I could, would I have you see My very love of you filling me, And know my soul to the quick, as I know The likeness and look of your throat and hair? I shall not change you. Nay, though I might, Would I change my sweet one love with a word? I had rather your hair should change in a night, Clear now as the plume of a black bright bird; Your face fail suddenly, cease, turn grey, Die as a leaf that dies in a day. I will keep my soul in a place out of sight, Far off, where the pulse of it is not heard. Far off it walks, in a bleak blown space, Full of the sound of the sorrow of years. I have woven a veil for the weeping face, Whose lips have drunken the wine of tears; I have found a way for the failing feet, A place for slumber and sorrow to meet; There is no rumour about the place, Nor light, nor any that sees or hears. I have hidden my soul out of sight, and said "Let none take pity upon thee, none Comfort thy crying: for lo, thou art dead, Lie still now, safe out of sight of the sun. Have I not built thee a grave, and wrought Thy grave-clothes on thee of grievous thought, With soft spun verses and tears unshed, And sweet light visions of things undone? "I have given thee garments and balm and myrrh, And gold, and beautiful burial things. But thou, be at peace now, make no stir; Is not thy grave as a royal king's? Fret not thyself though the end were sore; Sleep, be patient, vex me no more. Sleep; what hast thou to do with her? The eyes that weep, with the mouth that sings?" Where the dead red leaves of the years lie rotten, The cold old crimes and the deeds thrown by, The misconceived and the misbegotten, I would find a sin to do ere I die, Sure to dissolve and destroy me all through, That would set you higher in heaven, serve you And leave you happy, when clean forgotten, As a dead man out of mind, am I. Your lithe hands draw me, your face burns through me, I am swift to follow you, keen to see; But love lacks might to redeem or undo me; As I have been, I know I shall surely be; "What should such fellows as I do?" Nay, My part were worse if I chose to play; For the worst is this after all; if they knew me, Not a soul upon earth would pity me. And I play not for pity of these; but you, If you saw with your soul what man am I, You would praise me at least that my soul all through Clove to you, loathing the lives that lie; The souls and lips that are bought and sold, The smiles of silver and kisses of gold, The lapdog loves that whine as they chew, The little lovers that curse and cry. There are fairer women, I hear; that may be; But I, that I love you and find you fair, Who are more than fair in my eyes if they be, Do the high gods know or the great gods care? Though the swords in my heart for one were seven, Should the iron hollow of doubtful heaven, That knows not itself whether night-time or day be, Reverberate words and a foolish prayer? I will go back to the great sweet mother, Mother and lover of men, the sea. I will go down to her, I and none other, Close with her, kiss her and mix her with me; Cling to her, strive with her, hold her fast: O fair white mother, in days long past Born without sister, born without brother, Set free my soul as thy soul is free. O fair green-girdled mother of mine, Sea, that art clothed with the sun and the rain, Thy sweet hard kisses are strong like wine, Thy large embraces are keen like pain. Save me and hide me with all thy waves, Find me one grave of thy thousand graves, Those pure cold populous graves of thine Wrought without hand in a world without stain. I shall sleep, and move with the moving ships, Change as the winds change, veer in the tide; My lips will feast on the foam of thy lips, I shall rise with thy rising, with thee subside; Sleep, and not know if she be, if she were, Filled full with life to the eyes and hair, As a rose is fulfilled to the roseleaf tips With splendid summer and perfume and pride. This woven raiment of nights and days, Were it once cast off and unwound from me, Naked and glad would I walk in thy ways, Alive and aware of thy ways and thee; Clear of the whole world, hidden at home, Clothed with the green and crowned with the foam, A pulse of the life of thy straits and bays, A vein in the heart of the streams of the sea. Fair mother, fed with the lives of men, Thou art subtle and cruel of heart, men say. Thou hast taken, and shalt not render again; Thou art full of thy dead, and cold as they. But death is the worst that comes of thee; Thou art fed with our dead, O mother, O sea, But when hast thou fed on our hearts? or when, Having given us love, hast thou taken away? O tender-hearted, O perfect lover, Thy lips are bitter, and sweet thine heart. The hopes that hurt and the dreams that hover, Shall they not vanish away and apart? But thou, thou art sure, thou art older than earth; Thou art strong for death and fruitful of birth; Thy depths conceal and thy gulfs discover; From the first thou wert; in the end thou art. And grief shall endure not for ever, I know. As things that are not shall these things be; We shall live through seasons of sun and of snow, And none be grievous as this to me. We shall hear, as one in a trance that hears, The sound of time, the rhyme of the years; Wrecked hope and passionate pain will grow As tender things of a spring-tide sea. Sea-fruit that swings in the waves that hiss, Drowned gold and purple and royal rings. And all time past, was it all for this? Times unforgotten, and treasures of things? Swift years of liking and sweet long laughter, That wist not well of the years thereafter Till love woke, smitten at heart by a kiss, With lips that trembled and trailing wings? There lived a singer in France of old By the tideless dolorous midland sea. In a land of sand and ruin and gold There shone one woman, and none but she. And finding life for her love's sake fail, Being fain to see her, he bade set sail, Touched land, and saw her as life grew cold, And praised God, seeing; and so died he. Died, praising God for his gift and grace: For she bowed down to him weeping, and said "Live;" and her tears were shed on his face Or ever the life in his face was shed. The sharp tears fell through her hair, and stung Once, and her close lips touched him and clung Once, and grew one with his lips for a space; And so drew back, and the man was dead. O brother, the gods were good to you. Sleep, and be glad while the world endures. Be well content as the years wear through; Give thanks for life, and the loves and lures; Give thanks for life, O brother, and death, For the sweet last sound of her feet, her breath, For gifts she gave you, gracious and few, Tears and kisses, that lady of yours. Rest, and be glad of the gods; but I, How shall I praise them, or how take rest? There is not room under all the sky For me that know not of worst or best, Dream or desire of the days before, Sweet things or bitterness, any more. Love will not come to me now though I die, As love came close to you, breast to breast. I shall never be friends again with roses; I shall loathe sweet tunes, where a note grown strong Relents and recoils, and climbs and closes, As a wave of the sea turned back by song. There are sounds where the soul's delight takes fire, Face to face with its own desire; A delight that rebels, a desire that reposes; I shall hate sweet music my whole life long. The pulse of war and passion of wonder, The heavens that murmur, the sounds that shine, The stars that sing and the loves that thunder, The music burning at heart like wine, An armed archangel whose hands raise up All senses mixed in the spirit's cup Till flesh and spirit are molten in sunder — These things are over, and no more mine. These were a part of the playing I heard Once, ere my love and my heart were at strife; Love that sings and hath wings as a bird, Balm of the wound and heft of the knife. Fairer than earth is the sea, and sleep Than overwatching of eyes that weep, Now time has done with his one sweet word, The wine and leaven of lovely life. I shall go my ways, tread out my measure, Fill the days of my daily breath With fugitive things not good to treasure, Do as the world doth, say as it saith; But if we had loved each other — O sweet, Had you felt, lying under the palms of your feet, The heart of my heart, beating harder with pleasure To feel you tread it to dust and death — Ah, had I not taken my life up and given All that life gives and the years let go, The wine and honey, the balm and leaven, The dreams reared high and the hopes brought low? Come life, come death, not a word be said; Should I lose you living, and vex you dead? I never shall tell you on earth; and in heaven, If I cry to you then, will you hear or know?

Can life be a blessing, Or worth the possessing, Can life be a blessing if love were away? Ah no! though our love all night keep us waking, And though he torment us with cares all the day, Yet he sweetens, he sweetens our pains in the taking, There's an hour at the last, there's an hour to repay. In ev'ry possessing, The ravishing blessing, In ev'ry possessing the fruit of our pain, Poor lovers forget long ages of anguish, Whate'er they have suffer'd and done to obtain; 'Tis a pleasure, a pleasure to sigh and to languish, When we hope, when we hope to be happy again.

(excerpt) From Book I And so bifel, whan comen was the tym e Of Aperil, whan clothed is the med e With new e grene, of lusty Veer the prym e , And swot e smellen flour e s white and red e , In sondry wises shew e d, as I red e , The folk of Troie hir observaunces old e , Palladion e s fest e for to hold e . And to the temple, in al hir best e wys e , In general ther went e many a wight, To herknen of Palladion the servys e ; And nam e ly, so many a lusty knyght, So many a lady fressh and mayden bright, Ful wel aray e d, both mest e , mene, and lest e , Ye, both e for the seson and the fest e . Among thise other e folk was Criseyda, In widew e s habit blak; but nath e les, Right as our first e lettre is now an A, In beautee first so stood she, mak e les; Hire goodly lokyng glad e d al the prees. Nas nevere yet seyn thing to ben preys e d derr e , Nor under cloud e blak so bright a sterr e As was Criseyde, as folk seyde everichon e That hir bihelden in hir blak e wed e ; And yet she stood ful lowe and stille allon e , Byhynden other folk, in litel bred e , And neigh the dore, ay under sham e s dred e , Simple of atir and debonaire of cher e , With ful assur e d lokyng and maner e . This Troilus, as he was wont to gid e His yong e knyght e s, lad hem up and doun In thilk e larg e temple on every sid e , Byholding ay the ladies of the town, Now here, now there; for no devoc{.i}oun Hadde he to non, to reven hym his rest e , But gan to preise and lakken whom hym lest e . And in his walk ful faste he gan to wayten If knyght or squyer of his compaigni e Gan for to syke, or lete his eighen baiten On any womman that he koude espy e ; He wold e smyle, and holden it foly e , And seye him thus, "God woot, she slepeth soft e For love of the, whan thou turnest ful oft e ! "I have herd told, pardieux, of your lyvyng e , Ye loveres, and youre lew e d observaunces, And which a labour folk han in wynnyng e Of love, and in the kepyng which doutaunces; And whan your preye is lost, woo and penaunces. O veray fool e s! nyce and blynde be ye! Ther nys nat oon kan war by other be." And with that word he gan cast up the brow e , Ascaunc e s, "Loo! is this naught wisely spoken?" At which the god of love gan loken row e Right for despit, and shop for to ben wroken. He kidde anoon his bow e nas naught broken; For sodeynly he hitte him att e full e ; And yet as proud a pekok kan he pull e ! O blynd e world, O blynde entenc{.i}oun! How often falleth al the effect contrair e Of surquidrie and foul presumpc{.i}oun; For kaught is proud, and kaught is debonair e . This Troilus is clomben on the stair e , And litel weneth that he moot descenden; But al-day faileth thing that fool e s wenden. As proud e Bayard gynneth for to skipp e Out of the wey, so pryketh hym his corn, Til he a lasshe have of the long e whipp e ; Than thynketh he, "Though I praunce al byforn First in the trays, ful fat and new e shorn, Yet am I but an hors, and horses law e I moot endure, and with my fer e s draw e ."

(excerpt) From Book V The morwen com, and gostly for to speke, This Diomede is come un-to Criseyde; And shortly, lest that ye my tale breke, So wel he for hym-selven spak and seyde, That alle hire sikes soore adown he leyde. And finaly, the sothe for to seyne, He refte hir of the grete of al hire peyne. And after this the storie telleth us That she hym yaf the fair e baye stede, The which he ones wan of Troilus; And ek a broche (and that was litel nede) That Troilus was, she yaf this Diomede. And ek, the bet from sorwe him to releve, She made hym were a pencel of hire sleve. I fynde ek in the stories ell es-where, Whan thorugh the body hurt was Diomede Of Troilus, tho wepte she many a teer e, Whan that she saugh his wyde wowndes blede; And that she took, to kepen hym, good hede; And for to hele hym of his sorwes smerte, Men seyn, I not, that she yaf hym hire herte. But trew ely, the storie telleth us, Ther made nevere woman moore wo Than she, whan that she falsed Troilus. She seyde, "Allas! for now is clene a-go My name of trouthe in love, for evere-mo! For I have falsed oon the gentileste That ever e was, and oon the worthieste! "Allas, of me, un-to the world es ende, Shal neyther been y-writen nor y-songe No good word, for thise bok es wol me shende. O, rolled shal I ben on many a tonge! Thorugh-out the world my belle shal be ronge; And wommen moost wol haten me of alle. Allas, that swich a cas me sholde falle! "Thei wol seyn, in as muche as in me is, I have hem don dishonour, weylawey! Al be I nat the firste that dide amys, What helpeth that to don my blame awey? But syn I see ther is no bettr e way, And that to late is now for me to rewe, To Diomede algate I wol be trewe. "But, Troilus, syn I no bettr e may, And syn that thus departen ye and I, Yet prey I God, so yeve yow right good day, As for the gentileste, trewely, That evere I say, to serven feythfully, And best kan ay his lady honour kepe;"— And with that word she brast anon to wepe. "And certes, yow ne haten shal I never e; And frendes love, that shal ye han of me, And my good word, al sholde I lyven evere. And, trewely, I wolde sory be For to seen yow in adversitee. And giltelees, I woot wel, I yow leve; But al shal passe; and thus take I my leve." But trew ely, how longe it was bytwene, That she forsok him for this Diomede, Ther is non auctor telleth it, I wene. Take every man now to his bokes heede; He shal no terme fynden, out of drede. For though that he bigan to wowe hire sone, Er he hire wan, yet was ther more to doone. Ne me ne list this sely womman chyd e Forther than the story e wol devyse. Hire name, allas! is publisshed so wyde That for hire gilt it oughte ynough suffis e. And if I myghte excuse hire any wyse, For she so sory was for hire untrouthe, I-wis, I wolde excuse hire yet for routhe. Go, litel book, go, litel myn trageedy e, Ther God thi makere yet, er that he dye, So sende myght to make in som com�dye! But litel book, no makyng thou nenvie, But subgit be to alle poesye; And kis the steppes, whereas thou seest pace Virgile, Ovide, Omer, Lucan, and Stac e. And for ther is so gret diversitee In Englissh and in writyng of oure tong e, So prey I God that noon myswrite thee, Ne thee mysmetre for defaute of tonge. And red wher-so thou be, or elles songe, That thow be understonde God I beseche! But yet to purpos of my rather speche.— The wrath, as I bigan yow for to sey e, Of Troilus, the Grekis boughten deere; For thousandes his hondes maden deye, As he that was with-outen any peere, Save Ector, in his tyme, as I kan heere. But weilaway, save only Goddes wille! Despitously hym slough the fierse Achille. And whan that he was slayn in this maner e, His lighte goost ful blisfully is went Up to the holownesse of the eighthe spere, In convers letynge everich element; And ther he saugh, with ful avysement, The erratik sterres, herkenyng armonye With sown es fulle of hevenyssh melodie. And doun from thenn es faste he gan avyse This litel spot of erthe, that with the se Embrac ed is, and fully gan despise This wrecched world, and held al vanitee To respect of the pleyn felicitee That is in hevene above; and at the last e, Ther he was slayn, his lokyng doun he caste; And in hym-self he lough right at the wo Of hem that wepten for his deth so fast e; And dampned al oure werk that foloweth so The blynde lust, the which that may not laste, And sholden al our herte on heven caste. And forth he wente, shortly for to telle, Ther as Mercúrye sorted hym to dwelle.— Swich fyn hath, lo, this Troilus for lov e, Swich fyn hath al his grete worthynesse; Swich fyn hath his estat reál above, Swich fyn his lust, swich fyn hath his noblesse: Swich fyn hath false worldes brotelnesse! And thus bigan his lovyng of Criseyde, As I have told, and in this wise he deyde. O yong e fresshe folkes, he or she, In which that love up groweth with your age, Repeyreth hoom fro worldly vanytee, And of youre herte up-casteth the visage To thilk e God that after his ymage Yow made, and thynketh al nys but a fair e This world, that passeth soone as flour es faire. And loveth hym, the which that right for lov e Upon a crois, oure soul es for to beye, First starf, and roos, and sit in hevene above; For he nyl falsen no wight, dar I seye, That wol his herte al holly on him leye. And sin he best to love is, and most meke, What nedeth feynede loves for to seke? Lo here, of payens cors ed olde rites, Lo here, what alle hir goddes may availle; Lo here, thise wrecched worldes appetites; Lo here, the fyn and guerdoun for travaille Of Jove, Appollo, of Mars, of swich rascaill e! Lo here, the forme of olde clerkis speche In poetrie, if ye hir bok es seche.— O moral Gower, this book I direct e To the, and to the, philosophical Strod e, To vouchen sauf, ther nede is, to correcte, Of youre benignitees and zeles goode. And to that sothfast Crist, that starf on rode, With al myn herte of mercy evere I preye; And to the Lord right thus I speke and seye: Thou oon, and two, and three, eterne on lyv e, That regnest ay in three, and two, and oon, Uncircumscript, and al maist circumscrive, Us from visible and invisible foon Defende; and to thy mercy, everichon, So make us, Jesus, for thi mercy digne, For love of mayde and moder thyn benigne! Amen.

In the still morning when you move toward me in sleep for love, I dream of an island where long-stemmed cranes, serious weather vanes, turn slowly on one foot. There the dragonfly folds his mica wings and rides the tall reed close as a handle. The hippo yawns, nods to thick pythons, slack and drowsy, who droop down like untied sashes from the trees. The brash hyenas do not cackle and run but lie with their paws on their heads like dogs. The lazy crow’s caw falls like a sigh. In the field below, the fat moles build their dull passage with an old instinct that needs no light or waking; its slow beat turns the hand in sleep as we turn toward each other in the ripe air of summer, before the change of weather, before the heavy drop of the apples.

Someone enters: That alone makes me speak. When you lived, I spoke to you. We are transitive. I never dream of speech: I either speak or don’t. And now that I know where you will not be— I do not go there.

(The Homemaker of the Month) Ysidro calls me at night,meeya carra. his big blonde bean, and slides his moustache across my neck. he’s dark, and like I imagine his country, flat and arid, face a painted clay pot drying on the windowsill, on his lip, trails a snake with black twisted rattles. he asks me about my youth, and I tell him like the others, that they said I would never amount to anything. be cause of my size mostly, that I was a big American girl. raw and wide I sent away from catalogues, for plastic barrettes shaped like musical notes, and Cuban heeled shoes. I was dreamy too, and once painted my naked body like a guitar, with metal frets and silver strings. he caught lizards and tamed them, and saw an orange blister ripped sun. its aurora looked liked yellow music, and his eyes narrow as he plucks it from my stomach. I had Matthew from the first marriage, when I was sixteen. we would huddle in a striped mattress that was split in the seams, and I thought of my husband as a cowboy, when his leather face creased and stretched. in college I later learned about kings, and ancient gods who sent their love in showers of coins, golden, manna from heaven. and I never talk about my first man, except to say that he laid my head open and the scar-line is his illegible signature. my son is more like an immaculate conception, like my adopted girls whose teeth and pupils are shaped like a stranger. we ride to the lake and crush bread for the birds. I like the geese with their masks and giraffe necks. sometimes they hiss and you’d swear they had a row of devil fangs under their poniard tongues. but especially the swans, I can’t help but think of them plucked and fleshy turning white and velvet, like my husband pulling his hands through my henna hair. Ysidro is a groundskeeper and gravedigger. sometimes we joke about dead business or a certain shift, and we laughed about the recipe I have included; Mexican Chicken Bake, we said: cremate a handful of skinny bones, and sprinkle lightly over the dinner table. but it’s peaceful work, and he rests by the tombs, and weeds the paupers’ wooden crosses. and tells them about the weather, and here in Oskaloosa it couldn’t be finer. I am alone most nights when he walks with sleeping Iowa, and my imagination can turn black. I think of sewing him a pole-bag, with cobra skin and vegetable powder. with fathers and half shells. so he can speak melodic incantations and command a blood- less multitude. scary corpses turn to me, their eye sockets contracting in the light. we feed the birds and cook a chicken. in a taco shell it’s perfect, spicy and delicious, like my sweet Spanish lover’s touch.