1247 Love poems

My dear, your eyes are weary; Rest them a little while. Assume the languid posture Of pleasure mixed with guile. Outside the talkative fountain Continues night and day Repeating my warm passion In whatever it has to say. The sheer luminous gown The fountain wears Where Phoebe’s very own Color appears Falls like a summer rain Or shawl of tears. Thus your soul ignited By pleasure’s lusts and needs Sprays into heaven’s reaches And dreams of fiery deeds. Then it brims over, dying, And languorous, apart, Drains down some slope and enters The dark well of my heart. The sheer luminous gown The fountain wears Where Phoebe’s very own Color appears Falls like a summer rain Or shawl of tears. O you, whom night enhances, How sweet here at your breasts To hear the eternal sadness Of water that never rests. O moon, o singing fountain, O leaf-thronged night above, You are the faultless mirrors Of my sweet, bitter love. The sheer luminous gown The fountain wears Where Phoebe’s very own Color appears Falls like a summer rain Or shawl of tears.

I Love, though for this you riddle me with darts, And drag me at your chariot till I die, — Oh, heavy prince! Oh, panderer of hearts! — Yet hear me tell how in their throats they lie Who shout you mighty: thick about my hair, Day in, day out, your ominous arrows purr, Who still am free, unto no querulous care A fool, and in no temple worshiper! I, that have bared me to your quiver's fire, Lifted my face into its puny rain, Do wreathe you Impotent to Evoke Desire As you are Powerless to Elicit Pain! (Now will the god, for blasphemy so brave, Punish me, surely, with the shaft I crave!) II I think I should have loved you presently, And given in earnest words I flung in jest; And lifted honest eyes for you to see, And caught your hand against my cheek and breast; And all my pretty follies flung aside That won you to me, and beneath your gaze, Naked of reticence and shorn of pride, Spread like a chart my little wicked ways. I, that had been to you, had you remained, But one more waking from a recurrent dream, Cherish no less the certain stakes I gained, And walk your memory's halls, austere, supreme, A ghost in marble of a girl you knew Who would have loved you in a day or two. III Oh, think not I am faithful to a vow! Faithless am I save to love's self alone. Were you not lovely I would leave you now: After the feet of beauty fly my own. Were you not still my hunger's rarest food, And water ever to my wildest thirst, I would desert you — think not but I would! — And seek another as I sought you first. But you are mobile as the veering air, And all your charms more changeful than the tide, Wherefore to be inconstant is no care: I have but to continue at your side. So wanton, light and false, my love, are you, I am most faithless when I most am true. IV I shall forget you presently, my dear, So make the most of this, your little day, Your little month, your little half a year, Ere I forget, or die, or move away, And we are done forever; by and by I shall forget you, as I said, but now, If you entreat me with your loveliest lie I will protest you with my favorite vow. I would indeed that love were longer-lived, And vows were not so brittle as they are, But so it is, and nature has contrived To struggle on without a break thus far, — Whether or not we find what we are seeking Is idle, biologically speaking.

Love While nothing satisfies, not morning’s Bleary mirror or the slick embrace at hand, Consider our mutual jewel an untouching, a pouring Into sweet emptied arms called worth and habit. Hey, you there, change of mind, eh? So, it is these comic-book poses that promise Softer years, quite bearable as amnesia or sex. Sex Tough talkers, their brain-pans fried black From a constant heat, turn out swell On the boulevard strolling in evening wear. Appearances being unavoidable As the urge to keep tuned, even stars Seems to itch for more, for a squeeze Of all our drizzling nothings, save time. Time Leaning out from this wayside planet, You witness another life blown like glass Without pattern or fatuous secret, Yet a limited edition of uncertain radius. Presume then to be home, a part dismantled By continuity; some guiding light Phasing on and off like an unoriginal religion. Religion Get far up and hard in the hole Between dead of winter skies and beyond Limits of ourselves documented by precinct, Greeted cordially by scandal. Too soon Allegiance becomes resistance and otherwise; Meanwhile, after a holy pinch in the ass You are often saved and, perhaps, in love.

Only joy, now here you are, Fit to hear and ease my care; Let my whispering voice obtain, Sweet reward for sharpest pain; Take me to thee, and thee to me. No, no, no, no, my dear, let be. Night hath closed all in her cloak, Twinkling stars love-thoughts provoke: Danger hence good care doth keep, Jealousy itself doth sleep; Take me to thee, and thee to me. No, no, no, no, my dear, let be. Better place no wit can find, Cupid’s yoke to loose or bind: These sweet flowers on fine bed too, Us in their best language woo; Take me to thee, and thee to me. No, no, no, no, my dear, let be. This small light the moon bestows, Serves thy beams but to disclose, So to raise my hap more high; Fear not else, none can us spy: Take me to thee, and thee to me. No, no, no, no, my dear, let be. That you heard was but a mouse, Dumb sleep holdeth all the house; Yet asleep, methinks they say, Young folks, take time while you may: Take me to thee, and thee to me. No, no, no, no, my dear, let be. Niggard Time threats, if we miss This large offer of our bliss, Long stay ere he grant the same; Sweet then, while each thing doth frame, Take me to thee, and thee to me. No, no, no, no, my dear, let be. Your fair mother is abed, Candles out, and curtains spread: She thinks you do letters write. Write, but first let me indite: Take me to thee, and thee to me. No, no, no, no, my dear, let be. Sweet, alas, why strive you thus? Concord better fitteth us: Leave to Mars the force of hands, Your power in your beauty stands; Take me to thee, and thee to me. No, no, no, no, my dear, let be. Woe to me, and do you swear Me to hate, but I forbear, Cursèd by my destines all That brought me so high to fall: Soon with my death I will please thee. No, no, no, no, my dear, let be.

The kiss is, strictly speaking, a passing of of twice: a bead from her mouth to his, then back, ad nauseam, and the boys who lived and died for it. The lovely girl amassing ninety-nine spirits, and in high spirits for consuming her highest amount. Once the hundredth boy arrived she starts her hunt in her haunt, a hill’s field filled with fitting Artemisia absinthium.

Most of the things you made for me—blanket- chest, lapdesk, the armless rocker—I gave away to friends who could use them and not be reminded of the hours lost there, not having been witness to those designs, the tedious finishes. But I did keep the mirror, perhaps because like all mirrors, most of these years it has been invisible, part of the wall, or defined by reflection— safe—because reflection, after all, does change. I hung it here in the front, dark hallway of this house you will never see, so that it might magnify the meager light, become a lesser, backward window. No one pauses long before it. But this morning, as I put on my overcoat, then straightened my hair, I saw outside my face its frame you made for me, admiring for the first time the way the cherry you cut and planed yourself had darkened, just as you said it would.

They caught them. They were sitting at a table in the kitchen. It was early. They had on bathrobes. They were drinking coffee and smiling. She had one of his cigarillos in her fingers. She had her legs tucked up under her in the chair. They saw them through the window. She thought of them stepping out of a bath And him wrapping cloth around her. He thought of her waking up in a small white building, He thought of stones settling into the ground. Then they were gone. Then they came in through the back. Her cat ran out. The house was near the road. She didn’t like the cat going out. They stayed at the table. The others were out of breath. The man and the woman reached across the table. They were afraid, they smiled. The others poured themselves the last of the coffee Burning their tongues. The man and the woman looked at them. They didn’t say anything. The man and the woman moved closer to each other, The round table between them. The stove was still on and burned the empty pot. She started to get up. One of them shot her. She leaned over the table like a schoolgirl doing her lessons. She thought about being beside him, being asleep. They took her long grey socks Put them over the barrel of a rifle And shot him. He went back in his chair, holding himself. She told him hers didn’t hurt much, Like in the fall when everything you touch Makes a spark. He thought about her getting up in the dark Wrapping a quilt around herself And standing in the doorway. She asked the men if they shot them again Not to hurt their faces. One of them lit him one of his cigarettes. He thought what it would be like Being children together. He was dead before he finished it. She asked them could she take it out of his mouth. So it wouldn’t burn his lips. She reached over and touched his hair. She thought about him walking through the dark singing. She died on the table like that, Smoke coming out of his mouth.

a commingling sky a semi-tropic night that cast the blackest shadow of the easily torn, untrembling banana leaf or Quebec! what a horrible city so Steubenville is better? the sinking sensation when someone drowns thinking, “This can’t be happening to me!” the profit of excavating the battlefield where Hannibal whomped the Romans the sinuous beauty of words like allergy the tonic resonance of pill when used as in “she is a pill” on the other hand I am not going to espouse any short stories in which lawn mowers clack. No, it is absolutely forbidden for words to echo the act described; or try to. Except very directly as in bong. And tickle. Oh it is inescapable kiss. Marriages of the atmosphere are worth celebrating where Tudor City catches the sky or the glass side of a building lit up at night in fog “What is that gold-green tetrahedron down the river?” “You are experiencing a new sensation.” if the touch-me-nots are not in bloom neither are the chrysanthemums

Eph. What Friendship is, Ardelia show. Ard. ’Tis to love, as I love you. Eph. This account, so short (tho’ kind) Suits not my inquiring mind. Therefore farther now repeat: What is Friendship when complete? Ard. ’Tis to share all joy and grief; ’Tis to lend all due relief From the tongue, the heart, the hand; ’Tis to mortgage house and land; For a friend be sold a slave; ’Tis to die upon a grave, If a friend therein do lie. Eph. This indeed, tho’ carried high, This, tho’ more than e’er was done Underneath the rolling sun, This has all been said before. Can Ardelia say no more? Ard. Words indeed no more can show: But ’tis to love, as I love you.

1 Come, my Lucasia , since we see That Miracles Mens faith do move, By wonder and by prodigy To the dull angry world let’s prove There’s a Religion in our Love. 2 For though we were design’d t’ agree, That Fate no liberty destroyes, But our Election is as free As Angels, who with greedy choice Are yet determin’d to their joyes. 3 Our hearts are doubled by the loss, Here Mixture is Addition grown ; We both diffuse, and both ingross : And we whose minds are so much one, Never, yet ever are alone. 4 We court our own Captivity Than Thrones more great and innocent : ’Twere banishment to be set free, Since we wear fetters whose intent Not Bondage is, but Ornament. 5 Divided joyes are tedious found, And griefs united easier grow : We are our selves but by rebound, And all our Titles shuffled so, Both Princes, and both Subjects too. 6 Our Hearts are mutual Victims laid, While they (such power in Friendship lies) Are Altars, Priests, and Off’rings made : And each Heart which thus kindly dies, Grows deathless by the Sacrifice.