1247 Love poems

My sweetest Lesbia, let us live and love, And though the sager sort our deeds reprove, Let us not weigh them. Heaven’s great lamps do dive Into their west, and straight again revive, But soon as once set is our little light, Then must we sleep one ever-during night. If all would lead their lives in love like me, Then bloody swords and armor should not be; No drum nor trumpet peaceful sleeps should move, Unless alarm came from the camp of love. But fools do live, and waste their little light, And seek with pain their ever-during night. When timely death my life and fortune ends, Let not my hearse be vexed with mourning friends, But let all lovers, rich in triumph, come And with sweet pastimes grace my happy tomb; And Lesbia, close up thou my little light, And crown with love my ever-during night.

That Lucia broke the machine twice in one week was evidence enough. He also offered this—she’s no longer automatic, her stitches are crooked and once another seamstress found Lucia’s “lost” sewing patterns in the trash. The security guard half listened as Lucia gathered her things. Then the manager turned directly to her—what is it with you? We give you work, put money in your pocket. She put on her best disappointed face as they escorted her past rows of itchy throats, bowed heads, the refrain of needle through fabric. Every day Elena counts pig. A pageant of molded plastic rolling down the conveyor belt. The task: grab Miss Piggy, pull gown over snout, fasten two tiny buttons, grab another. With each doll Elena’s hands grow stiffer. Her feet grow heavy as the concrete below. Dolls spit at her, or maybe this is imagined, but the ache in her legs might be real. The supervisor brushes against her back when he patrols the floor. After standing for hours, the room begins to blur. Her mouth opens like an empty wallet as naked dolls march on. What will settle in, what will rise from the lungs of girls who still burn weeks after detox treatment at a local clinic. Speak of headaches, blurred vision, diarrhea. How they suck air thick with sulfuric acid. Acetone working past unfiltered exhaust systems and through their livers. Most return to work despite doctors’ orders. Back inside, the tin roof and their steady perspiration remind them they’re still alive—together one breathing, burning machine. Like Celia’s pockets, there’s nothing but lint here. Lint & dead machines. The sound of layoffs & profit margins. Yesterday this department droned an unsynchronized rhythm of coughing girls tethered to well-lubed motors. Row after row of pre-asthmatic lungs. Black hair buried under perpetual white. The decision was made across the border, he tells them. Nothing I can do about it. Sometimes Celia would imagine the whole place caught inside a tiny globe. Something she could pick up. Shake. A perpetual conveyor, he patrols her mouth. The sound of unfiltered white. Breathing margins. The task: grab Elena’s hands. Pull. Fasten. He also offered crooked patterns. Put money in her hair. That Lucia broke. Was evidence enough? Molded vision as a refrain. An empty wallet will rise. Speak. How they exhaust systems. Despite the blurred other, the ache might be real. Something she could pick up. Across the border, nothing I can imagine.

I've become the person who says Darling, who says Sugarpie, Honeybunch, Snugglebear—and that’s just for my children. What I call my husband is unprintable. You’re welcome. I am his sweetheart, and finally, finally—I answer to his call and his alone. Animals are named for people, places, or perhaps a little Latin. Plants invite names for colors or plant-parts. When you get a group of heartbeats together you get names that call out into the evening’s first radiance of planets: a quiver of cobras, a maelstrom of salamanders, an audience of squid, or an ostentation of peacocks. But what is it called when creatures on this earth curl and sleep, when shadows of moons we don’t yet know brush across our faces? And what is the name for the movement we make when we wake, swiping hand or claw or wing across our face, like trying to remember a path or a river we’ve only visited in our dreams.

Nature, that washed her hands in milk, And had forgot to dry them, Instead of earth took snow and silk, At love’s request to try them, If she a mistress could compose To please love’s fancy out of those. Her eyes he would should be of light, A violet breath, and lips of jelly; Her hair not black, nor overbright, And of the softest down her belly; As for her inside he’d have it Only of wantonness and wit. At love’s entreaty such a one Nature made, but with her beauty She hath framed a heart of stone; So as love, by ill destiny, Must die for her whom nature gave him, Because her darling would not save him. But time (which nature doth despise, And rudely gives her love the lie, Makes hope a fool, and sorrow wise) His hands do neither wash nor dry; But being made of steel and rust, Turns snow and silk and milk to dust. The light, the belly, lips, and breath, He dims, discolors, and destroys; With those he feeds but fills not death, Which sometimes were the food of joys. Yea, time doth dull each lively wit, And dries all wantonness with it. Oh, cruel time! which takes in trust Our youth, our joys, and all we have, And pays us but with age and dust; Who in the dark and silent grave When we have wandered all our ways Shuts up the story of our days.

We stood by a pond that winter day, And the sun was white, as though chidden of God, And a few leaves lay on the starving sod; – They had fallen from an ash, and were gray. Your eyes on me were as eyes that rove Over tedious riddles of years ago; And some words played between us to and fro On which lost the more by our love. The smile on your mouth was the deadest thing Alive enough to have strength to die; And a grin of bitterness swept thereby Like an ominous bird a-wing…. Since then, keen lessons that love deceives, And wrings with wrong, have shaped to me Your face, and the God curst sun, and a tree, And a pond edged with grayish leaves.

Never love unless you can Bear with all the faults of man: Men sometimes will jealous be Though but little cause they see; And hang the head, as discontent, And speak what straight they will repent. Men that but one saint adore Make a show of love to more. Beauty must be scorned in none, Though but truly served in one: For what is courtship but disguise? True hearts may have dissembling eyes. Men, when their affairs require, Must awhile themselves retire; Sometimes hunt, and sometimes hawk, And not ever sit and talk. If these and such-like you can bear, Then like, and love, and never fear!

Never seek to tell thy love Love that never told can be For the gentle wind does move Silently invisibly I told my love I told my love I told her all my heart Trembling cold in ghastly fears Ah she doth depart Soon as she was gone from me A traveller came by Silently invisibly O was no deny

Never the time and the place And the loved one all together! This path—how soft to pace! This May—what magic weather! Where is the loved one's face? In a dream that loved one's face meets mine, But the house is narrow, the place is bleak Where, outside, rain and wind combine With a furtive ear, if I strive to speak, With a hostile eye at my flushing cheek, With a malice that marks each word, each sign! O enemy sly and serpentine, Uncoil thee from the waking man! Do I hold the Past Thus firm and fast Yet doubt if the Future hold I can? This path so soft to pace shall lead Thro' the magic of May to herself indeed! Or narrow if needs the house must be, Outside are the storms and strangers: we Oh, close, safe, warm sleep I and she,— I and she!

It's not about the sex, really, it's not the ache of the bruised nipple or the burn left by his two-day-old beard in the crook of my neck where the pulse is taken, it's his breathing when asleep that draws me near. When I was seventeen, I'd check beside me, hope I hadn't rolled and squashed flat my one-year-old brother. His sigh on my ear, the rise and fall of air beneath his ribs, was a miracle to me. The nightly surprise of what I saw under the bulb's dim glow: I saw the small heart beating like wings unfolding in the body. Here, with this man, ideas of flight return.

The moon has left the sky, love, The stars are hiding now, And frowning on the world, love, Night bares her sable brow. The snow is on the ground, love, And cold and keen the air is. I’m singing here to you, love; You’re dreaming there in Paris. But this is Nature’s law, love, Though just it may not seem, That men should wake to sing, love; While maidens sleep and dream. Them care may not molest, love, Nor stir them from their slumbers, Though midnight find the swain, love. Still halting o’er his numbers. I watch the rosy dawn, love, Come stealing up the east, While all things round rejoice, love, That Night her reign has ceased. The lark will soon be heard, love, And on his way be winging; When Nature’s poets, wake, love, Why should a man be singing?