1247 Love poems

In the very night of movement where I sought a sequential self – The sea as blood, thought as Earth that changes the sea Changes the fishes in it for the fortunes of landscapes are in the fantasies of architecture H —        taught to sing siren scales by ear by rote or immersion abroad In the discrepancy of double exposure Casts of light crack time’s microscope

Whenever I see two women crowned, constellated friends it is as if three birch trees wept together in a field by a constant spring. The third woman isn’t there exactly, but just before them a flame bursts out, then disappears in a blurred, electric shining that lifts my hair like an animal’s. In an aura of charged air I remember my poor mother turned into royalty, my sister and me in bobby socks endlessly, all summer long calling each other Margaret Rose and Lillibet, Lillibet, Lillibet, pretending to be princesses... Now, swollen into these tall blooms like paper cutouts in water, in each new neighborhood garden always, two women talking nod their three curly heads together: with bits of dirt on their foreheads, speckled iris, flaming poppy in the backyard dynasties of the multiflora it is the famous funeral photograph of the Dowager Queen, Queen Mother, stunned Young Queen, three stepping stones in marble that haunt me forever, clear and mysterious as well water, the weight of it in a bronze bucket swinging powerfully from my hand. As the plumcolored shadow rises, full as a first child in the orchard, the lost gardening glove on the path, the single earring tucked in an odd corner of the purse and then found here double themselves, then triple: in these soft trinities the lives that begin in us are born and born again like wings. Secret as doves scuffling in the wide envelope of wombs like loose, comfortable aprons flung over the heads of friends leaning together in the hum of earth’s plainsong like a three part round, like a single voice murmuring the dream never leaves us, of the self like a three masted vessel still voyaging: out of the long matrix of memory, the royal bulbs in the hold, the ballast that keeps us upright, loyal to the dark, deep-bedded throne of the old country each new soul claims as its own.

You go from me In June for months on end To study equanimity Among high trees alone; I go out with a new boyfriend And stay all summer in the city where Home mostly on my own I watch the sunflowers flare. You travel East To help your relatives. The rainy season's start, at least, Brings you from banishment: And from the hall a doorway gives A glimpse of you, writing I don't know what, Through winter, with head bent In the lamp's yellow spot. To some fresh task Some improvising skill Your face is turned, of which I ask Nothing except the presence: Beneath white hair your clear eyes still Are candid as the cat's fixed narrowing gaze —Its pale-blue incandescence In your room nowadays. Sociable cat: Without much noise or fuss We left the kitchen where he sat, And suddenly we find He happens still to be with us, In this room now, though firmly faced away, Not to be left behind, Though all the night he'll stray. As you began You'll end the year with me. We'll hug each other while we can, Work or stray while we must. Nothing is, or will ever be, Mine, I suppose. No one can hold a heart, But what we hold in trust We do hold, even apart.

Not yet summer, but unseasonable heat pries open the cherry tree. It stands there stupefied, in its sham, pink frills, dense with early blooming. Then, as afternoon cools into more furtive winds, I look up to see a blizzard of petals rushing the sky. It is only April. I can’t stop my own life from hurrying by. The moon, already pacing.

I arise from dreams of thee In the first sweet sleep of night, When the winds are breathing low, And the stars are shining bright: I arise from dreams of thee, And a spirit in my feet Hath led me—who knows how? To thy chamber window, Sweet! The wandering airs they faint On the dark, the silent stream— The Champak odours fail Like sweet thoughts in a dream; The Nightingale's complaint, It dies upon her heart;— As I must on thine, Oh, belovèd as thou art! Oh lift me from the grass! I die! I faint! I fail! Let thy love in kisses rain On my lips and eyelids pale. My cheek is cold and white, alas! My heart beats loud and fast;— Oh! press it to thine own again, Where it will break at last.

Colin, why this mistake? Why plead thy foolish love? My heart shall sooner break Than I a minion prove; Nor care I half a rush, No snare I spread for thee: Go home, my friend, and blush For love and liberty. Remembrance is my own — Dominion bright and clear, Truth there was ever known To combat every care: One image there impressed Through life shall ever be Whilst my innocuous breast Owns love of liberty. I ever taught thee how To prize the soul entire, When on the mountain’s brow I turned my rural lyre: Thou servile art and vain, Thy love unworthy me! Away! nor hear my strain, Of love or liberty. What arts need I display To woo a soul like thine? Thou ne’re canst know the way My memory to confine; For my eternal plan Is to be calm and free. Estranged from tyrant man I’ll keep my liberty. Yon woods their foliage wear, Be thou away or nigh; The warblers of the year Instruct me not to sigh: My tears ne’er roll the steep, Nor swell the restless sea, Except for those who sleep Bereft of liberty. Slave to commanding eyes! Those eyes thou wouldst commend My judgment must despise — My pity is thy friend: If eyes alone can move A swain so dull as thee, They mean but to reprove Thy loss of liberty. I stray o’er rocks and fields Where native beauties shine: All fettered fancy yields Be, Colin, ever thine. Complain no more! but rove — My cheek from crimson free, Within my native grove I’ll guard my liberty.

I can love both fair and brown, Her whom abundance melts, and her whom want betrays, Her who loves loneness best, and her who masks and plays, Her whom the country formed, and whom the town, Her who believes, and her who tries, Her who still weeps with spongy eyes, And her who is dry cork, and never cries; I can love her, and her, and you, and you, I can love any, so she be not true. Will no other vice content you? Will it not serve your turn to do as did your mothers? Or have you all old vices spent, and now would find out others? Or doth a fear that men are true torment you? O we are not, be not you so; Let me, and do you, twenty know. Rob me, but bind me not, and let me go. Must I, who came to travail thorough you, Grow your fixed subject, because you are true? Venus heard me sigh this song, And by love's sweetest part, variety, she swore, She heard not this till now; and that it should be so no more. She went, examined, and returned ere long, And said, Alas! some two or three Poor heretics in love there be, Which think to ’stablish dangerous constancy. But I have told them, Since you will be true, You shall be true to them who are false to you.

Foreplay of obscene graffiti carved into trees—foot-long boners gouge the bark. Beaks and snouts on a restroom mirror. Slick lips. Succulent lips. I go out among them sometimes. So sweet how they pucker up out of pity. A practiced pathos in a saloon of woodsmen whose axes wait in trucks out back. Lips full of yawn or yes. Lips thick with God-spit and God-suck. Chapped lips, bloody lips. Pierced or tattooed, they pout into view—here to give, willy-nilly, what's been too long held in the body. Something passes across tongues. It sayeth not a name; it taketh everyone's turn. Mute lips of a swift unbuttoner. Mouths fording frothy streams, vaporous bogs. I stumble forth in their midst. Maybe I am out of bread or in a bad place with a book. The streets have an attendant caress. Moon lapping rumor. Fat lip approaches hare lip. There go pasty lips. All are readied as if for a race or to be plucked like rare moths by bright wings from the air. Betty's lips and Bobby's and Bucky's just before the collision and the siren's red wail. Laddy, keep a light on. I may have to come ashore some distance from where I set in.

Swimming the English Channel, struggling to make it to Calais, I swam into Laura halfway across. My body oiled for warmth, black rubber cap on my head, eyes hidden behind goggles, I was exhausted, ready to drown, when I saw her coming toward me, bobbing up and down between waves, effortlessly doing a breaststroke, headed for Dover. Treading water, I asked in French if she spoke English, and she said, “Yes, I’m an American.” I said, “Hey, me too,” then asked her out for coffee.

How much do you love me, a million bushels? Oh, a lot more than that, Oh, a lot more. And tomorrow maybe only half a bushel? Tomorrow maybe not even a half a bushel. And is this your heart arithmetic? This is the way the wind measures the weather.