69 Romantic poems

We were very tired, we were very merry— We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry. It was bare and bright, and smelled like a stable— But we looked into a fire, we leaned across a table, We lay on a hill-top underneath the moon; And the whistles kept blowing, and the dawn came soon. We were very tired, we were very merry— We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry; And you ate an apple, and I ate a pear, From a dozen of each we had bought somewhere; And the sky went wan, and the wind came cold, And the sun rose dripping, a bucketful of gold. We were very tired, we were very merry, We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry. We hailed, “Good morrow, mother!” to a shawl-covered head, And bought a morning paper, which neither of us read; And she wept, “God bless you!” for the apples and pears, And we gave her all our money but our subway fares.

O my Luve is like a red, red rose That’s newly sprung in June; O my Luve is like the melody That’s sweetly played in tune. So fair art thou, my bonnie lass, So deep in luve am I; And I will luve thee still, my dear, Till a’ the seas gang dry. Till a’ the seas gang dry, my dear, And the rocks melt wi’ the sun; I will love thee still, my dear, While the sands o’ life shall run. And fare thee weel, my only luve! And fare thee weel awhile! And I will come again, my luve, Though it were ten thousand mile.

Julia, I bring To thee this ring, Made for thy finger fit; To show by this That our love is (Or should be) like to it. Close though it be, The joint is free; So when Love’s yoke is on, It must not gall, Or fret at all With hard oppression. But it must play Still either way, And be, too, such a yoke As not too wide To overslide, Or be so strait to choke. So we who bear This beam must rear Ourselves to such a height As that the stay Of either may Create the burden light. And as this round Is nowhere found To flaw, or else to sever; So let our love As endless prove, And pure as gold for ever.

Running off with the boy at the gas station, yellow-haired, clear-eyed, with a pair of hands nothing, you understand, would prove too much for, is, it seems, a simple enough solution. Consequences never enter your thinking at the start. Whatever the implications of the act, of the speed with which you act, all one knows, and all one chooses to know, is summed in this: we are to be together. On River Road, the great elms overhead branch out to shape a tunnel which we race through as we make our escape, leaf-dappled, late, the avenue to what is possible, water on one side, deep woods on the other. The water’s depth goes down in feet and inches, but the depth of the woods is only guessed. Driving all night, deeper into the country, we pause at dawn, finding a roadside shack which serves us what we call a wedding breakfast, homemade raspberry tarts and lemon ices. I remember that first glimpse of him, sprawled over the body of a green coupé, feverish, rapt, all ardor, lean, committed, almost making love, it seemed, to the engine. The yellow hair hung down across his eyes, damp and limp with the sweat beading his forehead. Two arms lodged elbow-deep within the gearshaft, the hands, when you saw hands, the awesome gifts not of a boy who haunted the gas station but of a man for whom one understands nothing, in time, will be impossible, motor, transmission, fan-belt, valves, a life. Illumination from a single light bulb beat down across the muscles of his back. Beyond him, from the body shop, there leaked darkness to match those woods whose depth one guesses. Every night since then, since River Road and the tunnel through which, quite late, we fled, I find him sprawled over another chassis left to his care in a garage with one bulb by someone who knows what those hands can do, knows, or has heard, what can be worked with love, suspects (I am not able to say how) nothing will not be possible for him, passionate with attention, with concern, held by the task at hand as he is held by nothing in this life here, here, together, yellow hair in his eyes, light on his back. Knowing no longer what it is I want, flayed by the memory of what I wanted, the possible, the uses of the hands, the uses, later, deeper, of the body, I think of River Road turning to moonlight beneath the lyric hissing of the tires, moonlight becoming water, water woods, everything turning much too deep to guess, fragrance on all sides pinning us beneath it, sweet avenue to the nights stretched before us. It may come down to this: one’s choice of route. It may be that, at dusk, when the moon rises, when, for the thousandth time, the dark begins what it seems to know no end of beginning, the stars strung in the branches, River Road cut at an angle somehow penetrating the countryside of all we dream and long for, the heart of our location, of romance, two others, quite unknown to us, their crankcase worked to perfection, brakes fixed for endurance, their tires aligned to yield both speed and distance, bearings retooled to make good their escape, engine fitted to lead them down that route almost without their need to steer, to choose, set out this evening, late, on River Road, that avenue to what is possible, water on one side, deep woods on the other lovelier for the depths they would withhold, seeming to know precisely what the miles know, seeming to choose to go where the road goes. Knowing the risk involved now and the price of wild raspberry tarts and lemon ices, the sting, at dawn, of sour and sweet at once exotic to the tongues of two so young, two who have driven all night, running off, the spill of moonlight drenching River Road, the same fierce angle, the same penetration, I need to think again how deep the woods run (what lies beyond, of course, a myth, a guess), I need to weigh the cost of staying home.

Immersed we don’t ask who entered whose stream. Take my hand there is no line no bridge only fond foolishness— the bread crumbs I bring you in morning— they float on the surface water with two violins un- strung like the silent song on your lips soft as the same hands I crushed to keep you from death.

I will make you brooches and toys for your delight Of bird-song at morning and star-shine at night. I will make a palace fit for you and me Of green days in forests and blue days at sea. I will make my kitchen, and you shall keep your room, Where white flows the river and bright blows the broom, And you shall wash your linen and keep your body white In rainfall at morning and dewfall at night. And this shall be for music when no one else is near, The fine song for singing, the rare song to hear! That only I remember, that only you admire, Of the broad road that stretches and the roadside fire.

Romance, who loves to nod and sing, With drowsy head and folded wing, Among the green leaves as they shake Far down within some shadowy lake, To me a painted paroquet Hath been—a most familiar bird— Taught me my alphabet to say— To lisp my very earliest word While in the wild wood I did lie, A child—with a most knowing eye. Of late, eternal Condor years So shake the very Heaven on high With tumult as they thunder by, I have no time for idle cares Through gazing on the unquiet sky. And when an hour with calmer wings Its down upon my spirit flings— That little time with lyre and rhyme To while away—forbidden things! My heart would feel to be a crime Unless it trembled with the strings.

Johannes Brahms and Clara Schumann The modern biographers worry “how far it went,” their tender friendship. They wonder just what it means when he writes he thinks of her constantly, his guardian angel, beloved friend. The modern biographers ask the rude, irrelevant question of our age, as if the event of two bodies meshing together establishes the degree of love, forgetting how softly Eros walked in the nineteenth-century, how a hand held overlong or a gaze anchored in someone’s eyes could unseat a heart, and nuances of address not known in our egalitarian language could make the redolent air tremble and shimmer with the heat of possibility. Each time I hear the Intermezzi, sad and lavish in their tenderness, I imagine the two of them sitting in a garden among late-blooming roses and dark cascades of leaves, letting the landscape speak for them, leaving us nothing to overhear.

Love in my bosom like a bee Doth suck his sweet; Now with his wings he plays with me, Now with his feet. Within mine eyes he makes his nest, His bed amidst my tender breast; My kisses are his daily feast, And yet he robs me of my rest. Ah, wanton, will ye? And if I sleep, then percheth he With pretty flight, And makes his pillow of my knee The livelong night. Strike I my lute, he tunes the string; He music plays if so I sing; He lends me every lovely thing; Yet cruel he my heart doth sting. Whist, wanton, still ye! Else I with roses every day Will whip you hence, And bind you, when you long to play, For your offense. I’ll shut mine eyes to keep you in, I’ll make you fast it for your sin, I’ll count your power not worth a pin. Alas! what hereby shall I win If he gainsay me? What if I beat the wanton boy With many a rod? He will repay me with annoy, Because a god. Then sit thou safely on my knee, And let thy bower my bosom be; Lurk in mine eyes, I like of thee. O Cupid, so thou pity me, Spare not, but play thee!

Rose-cheek'd Laura, come, Sing thou smoothly with thy beauty's Silent music, either other Sweetly gracing. Lovely forms do flow From concent divinely framed; Heav'n is music, and thy beauty's Birth is heavenly. These dull notes we sing Discords need for helps to grace them; Only beauty purely loving Knows no discord, But still moves delight, Like clear springs renew'd by flowing, Ever perfect, ever in them- Selves eternal.