1247 Love poems

When they were together she thought it God’s punishment. When he left she thought it God’s punishment. When vermin overrun the city’s boardinghouses and highrises it’s God sticking a hose into the Devil’s hole to flood him out. And when the floodwaters rose, where was everyone? When fog risen from the lake assimilates varietals of exhaust, evolves through the financial district, renders toxic the neighbourhoods, swells over suburbs, the Devil has forsaken another project, saying sometimes I can’t fucking concentrate on anything. He says he does what he does sometimes because the Devil gets in like water through his weak places. When it rains like now the Devil yells at God I’ve told you not to call me that. When it rains like now. And every time God laughs at this roofs lift off along the Eastern Seaboard. The Eastern Seaboard will never understand. When we are broken, to whom are we opened? God’s taken all the fish home to live with him, honey. And when the earth shakes that’s God rearranging furniture not a bomb in the subway like we thought. If you feel the Devil with you, he is there. If you think God has abandoned you, you are abandoned, his attention on the World Series, more important than any one man, smiting the hell out of the Rangers’ big bats as the Giants lift fingers to the sky in praise and the ordnance deployed in his name, in making straight the way, would fill the oceans. And each foreclosure is a failure of belief, each immortal jellyfish a failure of belief. When those who will ruin us are elected, where is everyone? And when I return from the desert it’s with the Devil cast out. With God cast out. Because it wasn’t really me who did those things before, that wasn’t me.

Our embrace lasted too long. We loved right down to the bone. I hear the bones grind, I see our two skeletons. Now I am waiting till you leave, till the clatter of your shoes is heard no more. Now, silence. Tonight I am going to sleep alone on the bedclothes of purity. Aloneness is the first hygienic measure. Aloneness will enlarge the walls of the room, I will open the window and the large, frosty air will enter, healthy as tragedy. Human thoughts will enter and human concerns, misfortune of others, saintliness of others. They will converse softly and sternly. Do not come anymore. I am an animal very rarely.

I love your lips when they’re wet with wine And red with a wild desire; I love your eyes when the lovelight lies Lit with a passionate fire. I love your arms when the warm white flesh Touches mine in a fond embrace; I love your hair when the strands enmesh Your kisses against my face. Not for me the cold, calm kiss Of a virgin’s bloodless love; Not for me the saint’s white bliss, Nor the heart of a spotless dove. But give me the love that so freely gives And laughs at the whole world’s blame, With your body so young and warm in my arms, It sets my poor heart aflame. So kiss me sweet with your warm wet mouth, Still fragrant with ruby wine, And say with a fervor born of the South That your body and soul are mine. Clasp me close in your warm young arms, While the pale stars shine above, And we’ll live our whole young lives away In the joys of a living love.

Even your odds and ends. I love your teeth, crazy bones, Madcap knees and elbows. Forearm and backhand Hair makes you animal. Rare among things. The small of your back could pool rain Into water a main might drink. Perfect, From the whirlpools your fingers print On everything you touch To the moons on the nails of all ten toes Rising and setting inside your shoes Wherever you go.

Poca favilla gran fiamma seconda. – Dante Ogni altra cosa, ogni pensier va fore, E sol ivi con voi rimansi amore. – Petrarca I loved you first: but afterwards your love Outsoaring mine, sang such a loftier song As drowned the friendly cooings of my dove. Which owes the other most? my love was long, And yours one moment seemed to wax more strong; I loved and guessed at you, you construed me And loved me for what might or might not be – Nay, weights and measures do us both a wrong. For verily love knows not ‘mine’ or ‘thine;’ With separate ‘I’ and ‘thou’ free love has done, For one is both and both are one in love: Rich love knows nought of ‘thine that is not mine;’ Both have the strength and both the length thereof, Both of us, of the love which makes us one.

I’m gently rowing and the birds look sewn to the surface of the water as it undulates to the sound of Sean talking beautifully about something I don’t really understand. But all I’m picturing are brown paper bags with little grease spots near the bottom seams that have recorded the way sausage rolls have touched them, or the thin waists of dogs as depicted in medieval hunting frescos, or a cherub’s fat little hand gesturing to a vista where smiling families are meeting to picnic with the animals that God has also saved, or I’m thinking about the mechanics of bagpipes, the legs and arms and the fat belly and the long neck with its holes. This has been the best day ever. Sean smiles. He’s wearing shorts, and so am I. It’s sunny! Mine are so short they may as well be underpants, and I still don’t understand a word that he is saying.

I married in the world’s black night for warmth if not repose. At the close— someone. I hid with him from the long range guns. We lay leg in the cupboard, head in closet. A slit of light at no bird dawn— Untaught I thought he drank too much. I say I married and lived unburied. I thought—

there’s nothing in my face. There is nothing in yours. What we have are called heads. They are nothing unless we kiss. Lips are wonderful. They are full of mechanoreceptors. In the Old World we all used to kiss and kiss. It was then that we did have faces. We had noses and cheeks and foreheads and soft, downy hair. In the New World we stopped kissing. Those who were already here stopped. Those who came stopped. Now there are only four people who have heads that are also faces. They are an artist and three children for whom I have a face other than my hands.

I saw in Louisiana a live-oak growing, All alone stood it and the moss hung down from the branches, Without any companion it grew there uttering joyous leaves of dark green, And its look, rude, unbending, lusty, made me think of myself, But I wonder’d how it could utter joyous leaves standing alone there without its friend near, for I knew I could not, And I broke off a twig with a certain number of leaves upon it, and twined around it a little moss, And brought it away, and I have placed it in sight in my room, It is not needed to remind me as of my own dear friends, (For I believe lately I think of little else than of them,) Yet it remains to me a curious token, it makes me think of manly love; For all that, and though the live-oak glistens there in Louisiana solitary in a wide flat space, Uttering joyous leaves all its life without a friend a lover near, I know very well I could not.

I saw my Lady weep, And Sorrow proud to be advanced so In those fair eyes, where all perfections keep; Her face was full of woe, But such a woe (believe me) as wins more hearts Than mirth can do, with her enticing parts. Sorrow was there made fair, And Passion, wise; Tears, a delightful thing; Silence, beyond all speech, a wisdom rare; She made her sighs to sing, And all things with so sweet a sadness move; As made my heart both grieve and love. O Fairer than aught else The world can shew, leave off, in time, to grieve, Enough, enough! Your joyful look excels; Tears kill the heart, believe, O strive not to be excellent in woe, Which only breeds your beauty’s overthrow.