1247 Love poems

There were distinctive dips and shivers in the various foliage, syncopated, almost cadenced in the way that once made him invent “understanding.” * Now the boss could say “parameters” and mean something like “I’ll pinch.” By repeating the gesture exactly the woman awakened an excited suspicion in the infant. When he awakened she was just returning from one of her little trips. It’s common to confuse the distance with flirtation: that expectant solemnity which seems to invite a kiss. * He stroked her carapace with his claw. They had developed a code in which each word appeared to refer to some abdicated function. Thus, in a department store, Petite Impressions might neighbor Town Square. But he exaggerated it by mincing words like “micturition,” setting scenes in which the dainty lover would pretend to leave. * Was it sadness or fear? He still wasn’t back. The act of identification, she recognized, was always a pleasure, but this lasting difference between sense and recognition made her unhappy or afraid. Once she was rewarded by the beams of headlights flitting in play.

Last May a braw wooer cam down the lang glen, And sair wi' his love he did deave me; I said there was naething I hated like men: The deuce gae wi 'm to believe me, believe me, The deuce gae wi 'm to believe me. He spak o' the darts in my bonie black een, And vow'd for my love he was diein; I said he might die when he liked for Jean: The Lord forgie me for liein, for liein, The Lord forgie me for liein! A weel-stocked mailen, himsel for the laird, And marriage aff-hand, were his proffers: I never loot on that I ken'd it, or car'd, But thought I might hae waur offers, waur offers, But thought I might hae waur offers. But what wad ye think? in a fortnight or less, (The deil tak his taste to gae near her!) He up the lang loan to my black cousin Bess, Guess ye how, the jad! I could bear her, could bear her Guess ye how, the jad! I could bear her. But a' the niest week I fretted wi' care, I gaed to the tryste o' Dalgarnock, And wha but my fine fickle lover was there, I glowr'd as I'd seen a warlock, a warlock. I glowr'd as I'd seen a warlock. But owre my left shoulder I gae him a blink, Lest neibors might say I was saucy; My wooer he caper'd as he'd been in drink, And vow'd I was his dear lassie, dear lassie, And vow'd I was his dear lassie. I spier'd for my cousin fu' couthy and sweet, Gin she had recover'd her hearin, And how her new shoon fit her auld shachl't feet— But, heavens! how he fell a swearin, a swearin, But, heavens! how he fell a swearin. He begg'd, for gudesake, I wad be his wife, Or else I wad kill him wi' sorrow: So e'en to preserve the poor body in life, I think I maun wed him to-morrow, to-morrow, I think I maun wed him to-morrow.

Furthermore, Mr. Tuttle used to have to run in the streets. Now, each time friendship happens, they’re fully booked. Sporting with amaryllis in the shade is all fine and good, but when your sparring partner gets there first you wonder if it was all worth it. “Yes, why do it?” I’m on hold. It will take quite a lot for this music to grow on me. I meant no harm. I’ve helped him from getting stuck before. Dumb thing. All my appetites are friendly. Children too are free to go and come as they please. I ask you only to choose between us, then shut down this election. But don’t reveal too much of your hand at any given time. Then up and pipes the major, leave the hand in, or change the vows. The bold, enduring menace of courtship is upon us like the plague, and none of us can say what trouble will be precipitated once it has had its way with us. Our home is marshland. After dinner was wraparound. You got a tender little look at it. Outside, it never did turn golden.

The shadows of birds fading on a fighter’s back The undressing of words on an unstamped postcard The wet swings in the distant park The jealousy of raindrops on the umbrella of lovers The laughter of a boy before a bird The song of two flutes, two swords, two bracelets, two fingers The stare of a wave before a pearl The yearning between the legs of a farmer’s wife The opening of doors             closing midday The sudden howling of our muse—and les éventails—disturbing the guest inside of us

The skyscrapers of New York will never know the coolness that comes down on Kifisia but when I see the two cypress trees above your familiar church with the paintings of the damned being tortured in fire and brimstone then I recall the two chimneys behind the cedars I used to like so much when I was abroad. All through March rheumatism wracked your lovely loins and in summer you went to Aidipsos. God! what a struggle it is for life to keep going, as though it were a swollen river passing through the eye of a needle. Heavy heat till nightfall, the stars discharging midges, I myself drinking bitter lemonades and still remaining thirsty; Moon and movies, phantoms and the suffocating pestiferous harbour. Verina, life has ruined us, along with the Attic skies and the intellectuals clambering up their own heads and the landscapes reduced by drought and hunger to posing like young men selling their souls in order to wear a monocle like young girls — sunflowers swallowing their heads so as to become lilies. The days go by slowly; my own days circulate among the clocks dragging the second hand in tow. Remember how we used to twist breathless through the alleys so as not to be gutted by the headlights of cars. The idea of the world abroad enveloped us and closed us in like a net and we left with a sharp knife hidden within us and you said ‘Harmodios and Aristogeiton’. Verina, lower your head so that I can see you, though even if I were to see you I’d want to look beyond. What’s a man’s value? What does he want and how will he justify his existence at the Second Coming? Ah, to find myself on a derelict ship lost in the Pacific Ocean alone with the sea and the wind alone and without a wireless or strength to fight the elements. Kokkinaras, 5 August 1928

Zeus always introduces himself As one who needs stitching Back together with kisses. Like a rock star in leather & sapphires—conflagration & a trick of silk falling Between lost chances & never Again. His disguises are almost Mathematical, as Io & Europa Pass from their dreams into his. This lord of storm clouds Is also a sun god crooning desire & dalliance in a garden of nymphs. Some days, he loves gloxinia, & others, craves garlic blooms— Hera, Aegina, & Callisto in the same song.

It is not so much that I miss you as the remembering which I suppose is a form of missing except more positive, like the time of the blackout when fear was my first response followed by love of the dark.

Apart disclaimed wicked pea, split soft skin of the principle princess, who writhes, a little blood passes her perineum every night, grey linen sheets flax talisman plot luxe to strip and scrub all gore a plain bar of secret white soap it is a pine tree, it is an orange blossom, is it a rose hip under a baby tongue, blood cuts punisher, swear it closed, closes it

I strolled upon the Brooklyn Bridge one day, Beneath the storm; None but a lad in rags upon the way I saw;—there on a bench he lay Heedless of form. He seemingly was reading what the Shower Was publishing upon the Bridge and down the Bay; Yet he was writing, writing at this hour,— Writing in a careless sort of way. Upon a pad he scribbled and as fast the rain Retouched, effaced, corrected and revised. Was he recording Nature’s solemn strain, Or sketching choristers therein disguised? Whatever it be, I found myself quite by his side: My nod and smile he pocketed and wrote again; “Read me your drizzling stuff,” I said, and he replied: “I’ve written a check in payment for this shower of rain.”

The startling pleasures all broke down, It was her first arthritic spring. Inside her furs, her bones, secure, Suddenly became a source of pain And froze on a Saturday afternoon While she was listening to “La Boheme.” Strength had been her weakness, and Because it was, she got to like The exhilaration of catastrophes That prove our lives as stupid as we think, But pain, more stupid than stupidity, Is an accident of animals in which, once caught, The distances are never again the same. Yet there was another Jane in Jane: She smelled the inside of a logarithm, And felt a Gothic arch rise in her chest, Her clavicle widening to bear the weight Of the two smooth plumb lines of her breasts, The blueprints forming an enormous skirt Around her body. Arch and star and cross Swung like little lights inside her head, A church and temple rising from the floor, Nave and transept and an altar where, Unbidden, she saw a kind of sacrifice; The knife was in her hand, the stick, the whip; She cried at her cruelty and cried to be Outside of her defenses. And just then, The windows buckled in, the paintings cracked, The furniture went walking by itself, All out of her control. And it was pain That let her know she was herself again: She wore a cloak of fire on her skin, And power, power floated up to her.