1247 Love poems

I can feel she has got out of bed. That means it is seven a.m. I have been lying with eyes shut, thinking, or possibly dreaming, of how she might look if, at breakfast, I spoke about the hidden place in her which, to me, is like a soprano’s tremolo, and right then, over toast and bramble jelly, if such things are possible, she came. I imagine she would show it while trying to conceal it. I imagine her hair would fall about her face and she would become apparently downcast, as she does at a concert when she is moved. The hypnopompic play passes, and I open my eyes and there she is, next to the bed, bending to a low drawer, picking over various small smooth black, white, and pink items of underwear. She bends so low her back runs parallel to the earth, but there is no sway in it, there is little burden, the day has hardly begun. The two mounds of muscles for walking, leaping, lovemaking, lift toward the east—what can I say? Simile is useless; there is nothing like them on earth. Her breasts fall full; the nipples are deep pink in the glare shining up through the iron bars of the gate under the earth where those who could not love press, wanting to be born again. I reach out and take her wrist and she falls back into bed and at once starts unbuttoning my pajamas. Later, when I open my eyes, there she is again, rummaging in the same low drawer. The clock shows eight. Hmmm. With huge, silent effort of great, mounded muscles the earth has been turning. She takes a piece of silken cloth from the drawer and stands up. Under the falls of hair her face has become quiet and downcast, as if she will be, all day among strangers, looking down inside herself at our rapture.

Some may have blamed you that you took away The verses that could move them on the day When, the ears being deafened, the sight of the eyes blind With lightning, you went from me, and I could find Nothing to make a song about but kings, Helmets, and swords, and half-forgotten things That were like memories of you—but now We'll out, for the world lives as long ago; And while we're in our laughing, weeping fit, Hurl helmets, crowns, and swords into the pit. But, dear, cling close to me; since you were gone, My barren thoughts have chilled me to the bone.

I’ve noticed after a few sips of tea, the tip of her tongue, thin and red with heat, quickens when she describes her cuts and bruises—deep violets and red. The little girl I baby-sit, hair orange and wild, sits splayed and upside down on a couch, insists her giant book of dinosaurs is the only one she’ll ever read. The night before I left him, I could not sleep, my eyes fixed on the freckles of his shoulder, the glow of the clock, my chest heavy with dread. Scientists say they’ll force a rabbit to a bird, a jellyfish with a snake, even though the pairs clearly do not mix. Some things are not meant to be bred. I almost forgot the weight of a man sitting beside me in bed sheets crumpled around our waists, both of us with magazines, laughing at the thing he just read. He was so charming—pointed out planets, ghost galaxies, an ellipsis of ants on the wall. And when he kissed me goodnight, my neck reddened. I’m terrible at cards. Friends huddle in for Euchre, Hearts—beg me to play with them. When it’s obvious I can clearly win with a black card, I select a red. I throw away my half-finished letters to him in my tiny pink wastebasket, but my aim is no good. The floor is scattered with fire hazards, declarations unread.

In a pyloned desert where the scorpion reigns My love and I plucked poppies breathing tales Of crimes now long asleep, whose once–red stains Dyed stabbing men, at sea with bloody sails. The golden sand drowsed. There a dog yelped loud; And in his cry rattled a hollow note Of deep uncanny knowledge of that crowd That loved and bled in winy times remote. The poppies fainted when the moon came wide; The cur lay still. Our passionate review Of red wise folly dreamed on . . . She by my side Stared at the Moon; and then I knew he knew. And then he smiled at her; to him ’twas funny— Her calm steel eyes, her earth–old throat of honey!

When my grave is broke up again Some second guest to entertain, (For graves have learn'd that woman head, To be to more than one a bed) And he that digs it, spies A bracelet of bright hair about the bone, Will he not let'us alone, And think that there a loving couple lies, Who thought that this device might be some way To make their souls, at the last busy day, Meet at this grave, and make a little stay? If this fall in a time, or land, Where mis-devotion doth command, Then he, that digs us up, will bring Us to the bishop, and the king, To make us relics; then Thou shalt be a Mary Magdalen, and I A something else thereby; All women shall adore us, and some men; And since at such time miracles are sought, I would have that age by this paper taught What miracles we harmless lovers wrought. First, we lov'd well and faithfully, Yet knew not what we lov'd, nor why; Difference of sex no more we knew Than our guardian angels do; Coming and going, we Perchance might kiss, but not between those meals; Our hands ne'er touch'd the seals Which nature, injur'd by late law, sets free; These miracles we did, but now alas, All measure, and all language, I should pass, Should I tell what a miracle she was.

Remembering you and reviewing our structural love the past re-arises alive from its smothering dust. For memory, which is only decadent in hands like a miser’s loving the thing for its thingness, or in the eyes of collectors who assess the size, the incredible size, of their collection, can, in the living head, create and make new the sometimes appallingly ancient present and sting the sleeping thing to a sudden seeing. And as a tree with all its leaves relaxed can shiver at the memory of wind or the still waters of a pool recall their springing origin and rise and fall suddenly over the encircling basin’s lip— so I, remembering from now to then, can know and see and feel again, as jewels must when held in a brilliant branch of sun.

She pronounces Chama the name of the milky green river with a richness in the ch I cannot muster, puts a hard d on the end of her and s. anD. anD. anD. Like the river she is asking to be endless anD shifting. To stream. I’d scouted the knoll of oaks for rattlers, being beyond the bounds of Coverage having no means to learn their habits. So I lay down with her on the ground. Their ground. AnD I willed to forget the cares of my later-in-life job search. Job. Which is also Job, a man in the Bible. Which is a book. The oaks of the knoll were leaning into the Chama like girls washing their hair in basins. I thought of EB shampooing Lota, of Frost’s birches, of Plath’s Wych elms which I’d like to have googled. Did snakes favor oak knolls? Did Georgia O’Keeffe worry about health insurance costs in Abiquiú? AnD beside me my love streaming, her poodles distantly nosing the chamisa. Standards. I thought I had them. Put art at the front of the queue wych is different from quiú. AnD now this. Biblical the proportions of this breaking-back-into-a-country-I’d- locked-myself-out-of phase. Was it scenic? I liked the pachysandra, branches of oak taking all that space from the sky. But then everybody disappeared to their offices. Three times I wrote work work work when woke was what I wanted to write. Miniature is the acorn I fingered in the soft flour-sack pocket of my jeans. Acorn smaller than East Coast or indeed Irish Oak varieties wych she handed me anD how hungrily I pocketed its little body.

In your arms was still delight, Quiet as a street at night; And thoughts of you, I do remember, Were green leaves in a darkened chamber, Were dark clouds in a moonless sky. Love, in you, went passing by, Penetrative, remote, and rare, Like a bird in the wide air, And, as the bird, it left no trace In the heaven of your face. In your stupidity I found The sweet hush after a sweet sound. All about you was the light That dims the greying end of night; Desire was the unrisen sun, Joy the day not yet begun, With tree whispering to tree, Without wind, quietly. Wisdom slept within your hair, And Long-Suffering was there, And, in the flowing of your dress, Undiscerning Tenderness. And when you thought, it seemed to me, Infinitely, and like a sea, About the slight world you had known Your vast unsconsciousness was thrown . . . O haven without wave or tide! Silence, in which all songs have died! Holy book, where hearts are still! And home at length under the hill! O mother quiet, breasts of peace, Where love itself would faint and cease! O infinite deep I never knew, I would come back, come back to you, Find you, as a pool unstirred, Kneel down by you, and never a word, Lay my head, and nothing said, In your hands, ungarlanded; And a long watch you would keep; And I should sleep, and I should sleep!

Again we meet—a flashing glance, And then, to scabbard, goes the lance, While thoughts troop on in cavalcade Adown the wide aisles time has made. Back in the glow of yesterday, With tender troth you rode away, The sheen of rainbows in our eyes, That swept the rim of other skies. And now a writhing worm am I, Beneath a doomed love’s lensing eye, Let me but stagger, far from sight, To hide my anguish, in the night.

Jenny kissed me when we met, Jumping from the chair she sat in; Time, you thief, who love to get Sweets into your list, put that in: Say I'm weary, say I'm sad, Say that health and wealth have missed me, Say I'm growing old, but add, Jenny kissed me.