My Desire is round, It is a great globe. If my desire were no bigger than this world It were no bigger than a pin’s head. But this world is to the world I want As a cinder to Sirius.
This poem is in the public domain.
They mouth love’s language. Gnash
The thirteen teeth
Your lean jaws grin with. Lash
Your itch and quailing, nude greed of the flesh.
Love’s breath in you is stale, worded or sung,
As sour as cat’s breath,
Harsh of tongue.
This grey that stares
Lies not, stark skin and bone.
Leave greasy lips their kissing. None
Will choose her what you see to mouth upon.
Dire hunger holds his hour.
Pluck forth your heart, saltblood, a fruit of tears:
Pluck and devour!
This poem is in the public domain.
Today is that day, the day that carried a desperate light that since has died. Don't let the squatters know: let’s keep it all between us, day, between your bell and my secret. Today is dead winter in the forgotten land that comes to visit me, with a cross on the map and a volcano in the snow, to return to me, to return again the water fallen on the roof of my childhood. Today when the sun began with its shafts to tell the story, so clear, so old, the slanting rain fell like a sword, the rain my hard heart welcomes. You, my love, still asleep in August, my queen, my woman, my vastness, my geography kiss of mud, the carbon-coated zither, you, vestment of my persistent song, today you are reborn again and with the sky’s black water confuse me and compel me: I must renew my bones in your kingdom, I must still uncloud my earthly duties.
Reprinted by permission of Copper Canyon Press, www.coppercanyonpress.org.
Never give all the heart, for love
Will hardly seem worth thinking of
To passionate women if it seem
Certain, and they never dream
That it fades out from kiss to kiss;
For everything that's lovely is
But a brief, dreamy, kind delight.
O never give the heart outright,
For they, for all smooth lips can say,
Have given their hearts up to the play.
And who could play it well enough
If deaf and dumb and blind with love?
He that made this knows all the cost,
For he gave all his heart and lost.
This poem is in the public domain.
Though you are in your shining days,
Voices among the crowd
And new friends busy with your praise,
Be not unkind or proud,
But think about old friends the most:
Time’s bitter flood will rise,
Your beauty perish and be lost
For all eyes but these eyes.
This poem is in the public domain. Published in Poem-a-Day on September 20, 2015, by the Academy of American Poets.
I know what my heart is like Since your love died: It is like a hollow ledge Holding a little pool Left there by the tide, A little tepid pool, Drying inward from the edge.
This poem is in the public domain.
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.