1247 Love poems

Many months have passed since the diagnosis, and you’re still grieving for her. She’s not dead yet. But she’s lost, like a child is lost— her mind the ocean floor, where she kicks up sand and churns in the water. Al, we call it, or AD— never by its real name as if mentioning the word would bring bad luck— the need to cross one’s self across the heart, throw back to the ocean half of one’s catch, turn three times and pray to the East. Papa’s and her letters, written during their courtship, are tied with a faded, red ribbon and sunk in a safe deposit box at Bishop Trust. Long ago, she gave them to you for safekeeping. At the time she exacted a promise from you, that you would not read them until she was dead. We twist down the spiral staircase curled like a strand of seaweed into the cold room of vaults, the heavy thud of door distinct as your sadness following us everywhere. There, you turn over the bundle of letters in your hand like unbelievable money. “I’m so tempted to read them,” you say. You want her back, the feisty and independent one, the one who could, at eighty, do ten knee bends in aerobics class, dance a smooth jitterbug and shuttle like the tide to and from the house about her business. Not this Elizabeth you mourn, the one who can no longer reason, who points and giggles at fat people and smells, sometimes, like the ocean. Time slides like Dali’s clock. Elizabeth is surprised that she once was married and had a husband, that she once gave birth to sons.

Dear Letters, Fond Letters, Must I with you part? You are such a source of joy To my lonely heart. Sweet Letters, Dear Letters, What a tell you tell; O, no power on earth can break This strange mystic spell! Dear Letters, Fond Letters, You my secret know— Don’t you tell it, any one— Let it live and grow.

I would give my husband drawings for grocery lists, with smiling faces on the eggs, and spider feet dangling everywhere. I could draw letters too. fat senseless alphabets, lexical landscapes of pointed trees and bloated clouds. that is how I wished words were, with changing colours and feathers in their spines. on road signs in my dreams, they shimmied, their Rockette heels a variegated sunburst. unlike the stiff black knots and stakes that glared at me from envelopes and books. an unchanging and cruel exotica, like smelling Cuban cigars wherever you go or the same screaming opera. he said that I did not need to learn with him there, reading slowly aloud, but sometimes in silence. that drove me insane, he would laugh or frown at something on the page, and look as if he were a creeping vine on a tombstone, a coffee stain on a piece of clean manilla. I practice learning on a stack of mail he kept in his sock drawer, and I finally learned dear. Dear Hank, it felt like having a perfume sample fall from a magazine in a sweet sudden breath. it made me think of velvet antlers, of his rumpled cardigan sweater and my love for him, a word which slayed me, with its clean lines and quick exhalation, the swelling heart in its middle. I began to scream things all day long, and I felt the first affection for poetry through the ringing sounds of advertisements, soapbox labels and advice to the lovelorn columns. words were heroic, huge killing things, and they beat in my head and bled from my eyes and fingers. I would be ironing, and a giant phrase or comma would barrel into the room, its veins bulging, its arms around my waist. Dear Hank, I miss you especially your sexy hands, mine clenched when I got that far and then some. then I knew for sure that reading was magic, it conjured up these long eyelashes and white Harlow hair, and the guilty baldspot and shaking dewlap of my faithless husband, adrift on the libretto of his private life. he would still read to me in his annoying way while I squirmed on my novels and texts, that lay under the couch cushions like misplaced scissors. I drew him an elaborate list one day, of pink champagne bottles and support girdles, and wrote my first words. I left them with his letters, on the back of our marriage certificate, I think they were my finest, I said, Dear Hank, the end. and right away began working on a longer book.

It lies in our hands in crystals too intricate to decipher It goes into the skillet without being given a second thought It spills on the floor so fine we step all over it We carry a pinch behind each eyeball It breaks out on our foreheads We store it inside our bodies in secret wineskins At supper, we pass it around the table talking of holidays and the sea.

Between the hands, between the brows, Between the lips of Love-Lily, A spirit is born whose birth endows My blood with fire to burn through me; Who breathes upon my gazing eyes, Who laughs and murmurs in mine ear, At whose least touch my colour flies, And whom my life grows faint to hear. Within the voice, within the heart, Within the mind of Love-Lily, A spirit is born who lifts apart His tremulous wings and looks at me; Who on my mouth his finger lays, And shows, while whispering lutes confer, That Eden of Love's watered ways Whose winds and spirits worship her. Brows, hands, and lips, heart, mind, and voice, Kisses and words of Love-Lily,— Oh! bid me with your joy rejoice Till riotous longing rest in me! Ah! let not hope be still distraught, But find in her its gracious goal, Whose speech Truth knows not from her thought Nor Love her body from her soul.

Love lives beyond The tomb, the earth, which fades like dew— I love the fond, The faithful, and the true Love lives in sleep, 'Tis happiness of healthy dreams Eve’s dews may weep, But love delightful seems. 'Tis seen in flowers, And in the even's pearly dew On earth's green hours, And in the heaven's eternal blue. ‘Tis heard in spring When light and sunbeams, warm and kind, On angels’ wing Bring love and music to the wind. And where is voice, So young, so beautiful and sweet As nature’s choice, Where Spring and lovers meet? Love lives beyond The tomb, the earth, the flowers, and dew. I love the fond, The faithful, young and true.

Love me little, love me long, Is the burden of my song. Love that is too hot and strong Burneth soon to waste: Still, I would not have thee cold, Not too backward, nor too bold; Love that lasteth till ’tis old Fadeth not in haste. Love me little, love me long, Is the burden of my song. If thou lovest me too much It will not prove as true as touch; Love me little, more than such, For I fear the end: I am with little well content, And a little from thee sent Is enough, with true intent To be steadfast friend. Love me little, love me long, Is the burden of my song. Say thou lov’st me while thou live; I to thee my love will give, never dreaming to deceive Whiles that life endures: Nay, and after death, in sooth, I too thee will keep my truth, As now, when in my May of youth: This my love assures. Love me little, love me long, Is the burden on my song. Constant love is moderate ever, And it will through life persèver: Give me that, with true endeavour I will it restore. A suit of durance let it be For all weathers that for me, For the land or for the sea, Lasting evermore. Love me little, love me long, Is the burden of my song. Winter’s cold, or summer’s heat, Autumn’s tempests, on it beat, It can never know defeat, Never can rebel: Such the love that I would gain, Such the love, I tell thee plain, Thou must give, or woo in vain: So to thee, farewell Love me little, love me long, Is the burden of my song.

Oh, we fear our enemy’s mind, the shape in his thought that resembles the cripple in our own, for it’s not just his fear we fear, but his love and his paradise. We fear he will deprive us of our peace of mind, and, fearing this, are thus deprived, so we must go to war, to be free of this terror, this unremitting fear, that he might he might, he might. Oh it’s hard to say what he might do or feel or think. Except all that we cannot bear of feeling or thinking—so his might must be met with might of armor and of intent—informed by all the hunker down within the bunker of ourselves. How does he love? and eat? and drink? He must be all strategy or some sick lie. How can reason unlock such a door, for we bar it too with friends and lovers, in waking hours, on ordinary days? Finding the other so senseless and unknown, we go to war to feel free of the fear of our own minds, and so come to ruin in our hearts of ordinary days.

An orange did love The man who ate it. A feast for the eyes Is a fine repast; Its heart held fast His greedy gaze. A citron did scold: I am wiser than thou. A cedar condoled: Indeed thou shalt die! And who can revive A withered bough? The citron did urge: O fool, be wise. The cedar did rage: Slander and sin! Repent of thy ways For a fool I despise. An orange did love With life and limb The man who ate it, The man who flayed it. An orange did love The man who ate it, To its flayer it brought Flesh for the teeth. An orange, consumed By the man who ate it, Invaded his skin To the flesh beneath.

after García Lorca Once I wasn’t always so plain. I was strewn feathers on a cross of dune, an expanse of ocean at my feet, garlands of gulls. Sirens and gulls. They couldn’t tame you. You know as well as they: to be a dove is to bear the falcon at your breast, your nights, your seas. My fear is simple, heart-faced above a flare of etchings, a lineage in letters, my sudden stare. It’s you. It’s you! sang the heart upon its mantel pelvis. Blush of my breath, catch of my see—beautiful bird—It’s you.