Who will go drive with Fergus now, And pierce the deep wood's woven shade, And dance upon the level shore? Young man, lift up your russet brow, And lift your tender eyelids, maid, And brood on hopes and fear no more. And no more turn aside and brood Upon love's bitter mystery; For Fergus rules the brazen cars, And rules the shadows of the wood, And the white breast of the dim sea And all dishevelled wandering stars.
From The Rose (1893). This poem is in the public domain.
They’re both convinced
that a sudden passion joined them.
Such certainty is beautiful,
but uncertainty is more beautiful still.
Since they’d never met before, they’re sure
that there’d been nothing between them.
But what’s the word from the streets, staircases, hallways—
perhaps they’ve passed by each other a million times?
I want to ask them
if they don’t remember—
a moment face to face
in some revolving door?
perhaps a “sorry” muttered in a crowd?
a curt “wrong number” caught in the receiver?—
but I know the answer.
No, they don’t remember.
They’d be amazed to hear
that Chance has been toying with them
now for years.
Not quite ready yet
to become their Destiny,
it pushed them close, drove them apart,
it barred their path,
stifling a laugh,
and then leaped aside.
There were signs and signals,
even if they couldn’t read them yet.
Perhaps three years ago
or just last Tuesday
a certain leaf fluttered
from one shoulder to another?
Something was dropped and then picked up.
Who knows, maybe the ball that vanished
into childhood’s thicket?
There were doorknobs and doorbells
where one touch had covered another
beforehand.
Suitcases checked and standing side by side.
One night, perhaps, the same dream,
grown hazy by morning.
Every beginning
is only a sequel, after all,
and the book of events
is always open halfway through.
"Love at First Sight" from MAP: Collected and Last Poems by Wislawa Szymborska, translated from Polish by Clare Cavanagh and Stanislaw Baranczak. Copyright © 2015 by The Wislawa Szymborska Foundation. English copyright © 2015 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Used by permission of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.
"Mother of heaven, regina of the clouds, O sceptre of the sun, crown of the moon, There is not nothing, no, no, never nothing, Like the clashed edges of two words that kill." And so I mocked her in magnificent measure. Or was it that I mocked myself alone? I wish that I might be a thinking stone. The sea of spuming thought foists up again The radiant bubble that she was. And then A deep up-pouring from some saltier well Within me, bursts its watery syllable. II. A red bird flies across the golden floor. It is a red bird that seeks out his choir Among the choirs of wind and wet and wing. A torrent will fall from him when he finds. Shall I uncrumple this much-crumpled thing? I am a man of fortune greeting heirs; For it has come that thus I greet the spring. These choirs of welcome choir for me farewell. No spring can follow past meridian. Yet you persist with anecdotal bliss To make believe a starry connaissance. III. Is it for nothing, then, that old Chinese Sat tittivating by their mountain pools Or in the Yangtse studied out their beards? I shall not play the flat historic scale. You know how Utamaro's beauties sought The end of love in their all-speaking braids. You know the mountainous coiffures of Bath. Alas! Have all the barbers lived in vain That not one curl in nature has survived? Why, without pity on these studious ghosts, Do you come dripping in your hair from sleep? IV. This luscious and impeccable fruit of life Falls, it appears, of its own weight to earth. When you were Eve, its acrid juice was sweet, Untasted, in its heavenly, orchard air. An apple serves as well as any skull To be the book in which to read a round, And is as excellent, in that it is composed Of what, like skulls, comes rotting back to ground. But it excels in this, that as the fruit Of love, it is a book too mad to read Before one merely reads to pass the time. V. In the high west there burns a furious star. It is for fiery boys that star was set And for sweet-smelling virgins close to them. The measure of the intensity of love Is measure, also, of the verve of earth. For me, the firefly's quick, electric stroke Ticks tediously the time of one more year. And you? Remember how the crickets came Out of their mother grass, like little kin, In the pale nights, when your first imagery Found inklings of your bond to all that dust. VI. If men at forty will be painting lakes The ephemeral blues must merge for them in one, The basic slate, the universal hue. There is a substance in us that prevails. But in our amours amorists discern Such fluctuations that their scrivening Is breathless to attend each quirky turn. When amorists grow bald, then amours shrink Into the compass and curriculum Of introspective exiles, lecturing. It is a theme for Hyacinth alone. VII. The mules that angels ride come slowly down The blazing passes, from beyond the sun. Descensions of their tinkling bells arrive. These muleteers are dainty of their way. Meantime, centurions guffaw and beat Their shrilling tankards on the table-boards. This parable, in sense, amounts to this: The honey of heaven may or may not come, But that of earth both comes and goes at once. Suppose these couriers brought amid their train A damsel heightened by eternal bloom. VIII. Like a dull scholar, I behold, in love, An ancient aspect touching a new mind. It comes, it blooms, it bears its fruit and dies. This trivial trope reveals a way of truth. Our bloom is gone. We are the fruit thereof. Two golden gourds distended on our vines, Into the autumn weather, splashed with frost, Distorted by hale fatness, turned grotesque. We hang like warty squashes, streaked and rayed, The laughing sky will see the two of us Washed into rinds by rotting winter rains. IX. In verses wild with motion, full of din, Loudened by cries, by clashes, quick and sure As the deadly thought of men accomplishing Their curious fates in war, come, celebrate The faith of forty, ward of Cupido. Most venerable heart, the lustiest conceit Is not too lusty for your broadening. I quiz all sounds, all thoughts, all everything For the music and manner of the paladins To make oblation fit. Where shall I find Bravura adequate to this great hymn? X. The fops of fancy in their poems leave Memorabilia of the mystic spouts, Spontaneously watering their gritty soils. I am a yeoman, as such fellows go. I know no magic trees, no balmy boughs, No silver-ruddy, gold-vermilion fruits. But, after all, I know a tree that bears A semblance to the thing I have in mind. It stands gigantic, with a certain tip To which all birds come sometime in their time. But when they go that tip still tips the tree. XI. If sex were all, then every trembling hand Could make us squeak, like dolls, the wished-for words. But note the unconscionable treachery of fate, That makes us weep, laugh, grunt and groan, and shout Doleful heroics, pinching gestures forth From madness or delight, without regard To that first, foremost law. Anguishing hour! Last night, we sat beside a pool of pink, Clippered with lilies scudding the bright chromes, Keen to the point of starlight, while a frog Boomed from his very belly odious chords. XII. A blue pigeon it is, that circles the blue sky, On sidelong wing, around and round and round. A white pigeon it is, that flutters to the ground, Grown tired of flight. Like a dark rabbi, I Observed, when young, the nature of mankind, In lordly study. Every day, I found Man proved a gobbet in my mincing world. Like a rose rabbi, later, I pursued, And still pursue, the origin and course Of love, but until now I never knew That fluttering things have so distinct a shade.
First published in 1918. This poem is in the public domain.
What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why,
I have forgotten, and what arms have lain
Under my head till morning; but the rain
Is full of ghosts tonight, that tap and sigh
Upon the glass and listen for reply,
And in my heart there stirs a quiet pain
For unremembered lads that not again
Will turn to me at midnight with a cry.
Thus in winter stands the lonely tree,
Nor knows what birds have vanished one by one,
Yet knows its boughs more silent than before:
I cannot say what loves have come and gone,
I only know that summer sang in me
A little while, that in me sings no more.
From Collected Poems by Edna St. Vincent Millay, published by Harper & Brothers Publishers. Copyright © 1956 by Norma Millay Ellis.
She is neither pink nor pale, And she never will be all mine; She learned her hands in a fairy-tale, And her mouth on a valentine. She has more hair than she needs; In the sun 'tis a woe to me! And her voice is a string of colored beads, Or steps leading into the sea. She loves me all that she can, And her ways to my ways resign; But she was not made for any man, And she never will be all mine.
From Collected Poems by Edna St. Vincent Millay, published by Harper & Brothers Publishers. Copyright © 1956 by Norma Millay Ellis.
I, being born a woman and distressed
By all the needs and notions of my kind,
Am urged by your propinquity to find
Your person fair, and feel a certain zest
To bear your body's weight upon my breast:
So subtly is the fume of life designed,
To clarify the pulse and cloud the mind,
And leave me once again undone, possessed.
Think not for this, however, the poor treason
Of my stout blood against my staggering brain,
I shall remember you with love, or season
My scorn with pity, —let me make it plain:
I find this frenzy insufficient reason
For conversation when we meet again.
Edna St. Vincent Millay, "I, Being born a Woman and Distressed [Sonnet XLI]," from Collected Poems. Copyright 1931, 1934, 1939, © 1958 by Edna St. Vincent Millay and Norma Millay Ellis. Reprinted with the permission of The Permissions Company, Inc., on behalf of Holly Peppe, Literary Executor, The Millay Society. www.millay.org.
I, having loved ever since I was a child a few things, never having wavered In these affections; never through shyness in the houses of the rich or in the presence of clergymen having denied these loves; Never when worked upon by cynics like chiropractors having grunted or clicked a vertebra to the discredit of these loves; Never when anxious to land a job having diminished them by a conniving smile; or when befuddled by drink Jeered at them through heartache or lazily fondled the fingers of their alert enemies; declare That I shall love you always. No matter what party is in power; No matter what temporarily expedient combination of allied interests wins the war; Shall love you always.
Edna St. Vincent Millay, "Modern Declaration," from Collected Poems. Copyright 1931, 1934, 1939, © 1958 by Edna St. Vincent Millay and Norma Millay Ellis. Reprinted with the permission of The Permissions Company, Inc., on behalf of Holly Peppe, Literary Executor, The Millay Society. www.millay.org.
Time does not bring relief; you all have lied Who told me time would ease me of my pain! I miss him in the weeping of the rain; I want him at the shrinking of the tide; The old snows melt from every mountain-side, And last year's leaves are smoke in every lane; But last year's bitter loving must remain Heaped on my heart, and my old thoughts abide. There are a hundred places where I fear To go,—so with his memory they brim. And entering with relief some quiet place Where never fell his foot or shone his face I say, "There is no memory of him here!" And so stand stricken, so remembering him.
This poem is in the public domain.