After Duras
"We go back to our house. We are lovers. We cannot stop loving each other." I come to confiscate your love. What will you do? Small shrubs grow in the blackened yard. Sun, which is yellow, shines in through the windows, now barred. You were watching me eat. Put your tongue in my mouth then retract it. We were waiting for our recompense. But everyone knows love is bankrupt. On the billboard in front of us: breasts. The empty middles of the mannequins that peered out through the glass. Reprehensibly, I mouthed the words: I love you.
Copyright © 2011 by Katy Lederer. Used with permission of the author.
We cannot live, except thus mutually
We alternate, aware or unaware,
The reflex act of life: and when we bear
Our virtue onward most impulsively,
Most full of invocation, and to be
Most instantly compellant, certes, there
We live most life, whoever breathes most air
And counts his dying years by sun and sea.
But when a soul, by choice and conscience, doth
Throw out her full force on another soul,
The conscience and the concentration both make
mere life, Love. For Life in perfect whole
And aim consummated, is Love in sooth,
As nature's magnet-heat rounds pole with pole.
This poem is in the public domain.
All thoughts, all passions, all delights,
Whatever stirs this mortal frame,
All are but ministers of Love,
And feed his sacred flame.
Oft in my waking dreams do I
Live o’er again that happy hour,
When midway on the mount I lay,
Beside the ruin'd tower.
The moonshine, stealing o’er the scene,
Had blended with the lights of eve;
And she was there, my hope, my joy,
My own dear Genevieve!
She lean’d against the armèd man,
The statue of the armèd Knight;
She stood and listen’d to my lay,
Amid the lingering light.
Few sorrows hath she of her own,
My hope! my joy! my Genevieve!
She loves me best whene’er I sing
The songs that make her grieve.
I play’d a soft and doleful air;
I sang an old and moving story—
An old rude song, that suited well
That ruin wild and hoary.
She listen’d with a flitting blush,
With downcast eyes and modest grace;
For well she knew I could not choose
But gaze upon her face.
I told her of the Knight that wore
Upon his shield a burning brand;
And that for ten long years he woo’d
The Lady of the Land.
I told her how he pined: and ah!
The deep, the low, the pleading tone
With which I sang another’s love,
Interpreted my own.
She listen’d with a flitting blush,
With downcast eyes, and modest grace;
And she forgave me, that I gazed
Too fondly on her face!
But when I told the cruel scorn
That crazed that bold and lovely Knight,
And that he cross’d the mountain-woods,
Nor rested day nor night;
That sometimes from the savage den,
And sometimes from the darksome shade,
And sometimes starting up at once
In green and sunny glade—
There came and look’d him in the face
An angel beautiful and bright;
And that he knew it was a Fiend,
This miserable Knight!
And that, unknowing what he did,
He leap’d amid a murderous band,
And saved from outrage worse than death
The Lady of the Land;—
And how she wept and clasp’d his knees;
And how she tended him in vain—
And ever strove to expiate
The scorn that crazed his brain;—
And that she nursed him in a cave;
And how his madness went away,
When on the yellow forest leaves
A dying man he lay;—
His dying words—but when I reach’d
That tenderest strain of all the ditty,
My faltering voice and pausing harp
Disturb’d her soul with pity!
All impulses of soul and sense
Had thrill’d my guileless Genevieve;
The music and the doleful tale,
The rich and balmy eve;
And hopes, and fears that kindle hope,
An undistinguishable throng,
And gentle wishes long subdued,
Subdued and cherish’d long!
She wept with pity and delight,
She blush’d with love and virgin shame;
And like the murmur of a dream,
I heard her breathe my name.
Her bosom heaved—she stepp’d aside,
As conscious of my look she stept—
Then suddenly, with timorous eye
She fled to me and wept.
She half enclosed me with her arms,
She press’d me with a meek embrace;
And bending back her head, look’d up,
And gazed upon my face.
’Twas partly love, and partly fear,
And partly ’twas a bashful art,
That I might rather feel, than see,
The swelling of her heart.
I calm’d her fears, and she was calm,
And told her love with virgin pride;
And so I won my Genevieve,
My bright and beauteous Bride.
This poem is in the public domain.
Blond fireflies amid the summer hedges, how splendid your sunray darting through the darkness! You’ve reminded me of something that has never vanished from my childhood: infinite hope through the fields. I see myself as a child again, feel the unknown rhythm of times past: I a dream I am lying on a girl stuck in my heart: a musical bas-relief for vast infinity: I compare her to the moon, to the stars, to the splendorous night and everything attaches me to that love I lose myself in: of this I actually know nothing except a confusing clamor.
Un amore
Lucciole bionde per le siepi d’estate,
com’è splendido il vostro raggio
che per le tenebra appare! Voi mi ricordate
qualcosa che non si annulla
della mia fanciullezza: infinita
speranza pei prati. Mi rivedo
fanciullo, sento l’ignota
cadenza di tempi andati:
sono in sogno sopra una fanciulla
che mi s’è fitta in cuore:
un bassorilievo musicale
per estese infinità: la paragono
alla luna, alle stelle,
allo splendore della notte
e tutto mi affiso in quell’amore
e mi vi disperdo:
di qui non so nulla
Copyright © 2013 by John Taylor. Used by permission of the translator. All rights reserved.
I love to see the big white moon,
A-shining in the sky;
I love to see the little stars,
When the shadow clouds go by.
I love the rain drops falling
On my roof-top in the night;
I love the soft wind’s sighing,
Before the dawn’s gray light.
I love the deepness of the blue,
In my Lord’s heaven above;
But better than all these things I think,
I love my lady love.
This poem is in the public domain. Published in Poem-a-Day on February 27, 2021, by the Academy of American Poets.
Love is a breach in the walls, a broken gate,
Where that comes in that shall not go again;
Love sells the proud heart’s citadel to Fate.
They have known shame, who love unloved. Even then,
When two mouths, thirsty each for each, find slaking,
And agony’s forgot, and hushed the crying
Of credulous hearts, in heaven—such are but taking
Their own poor dreams within their arms, and lying
Each in his lonely night, each with a ghost.
Some share that night. But they know love grows colder,
Grows false and dull, that was sweet lies at most.
Astonishment is no more in hand or shoulder,
But darkens, and dies out from kiss to kiss.
All this is love; and all love is but this.
This poem is in the public domain.
Love is twain, it is not single,
Gold and silver mixed to one,
Passion ‘tis and pain which mingle
Glist’ring then for aye undone.
Pain it is not; wondering pity
Dies or e’er the pang is fled;
Passion ‘tis not, foul and gritty,
Born one instant, instant dead.
Love is twain, it is not single,
Gold and silver mixed to one,
Passion ‘tis and pain which mingle
Glist’ring then for aye undone.
This poem is in the public domain.
you leapt sometimes
you walked away sometimes
that time on the phone you
couldn’t get your breath
I leapt but couldn’t get to you
I caught the brow that bid the dead
I caught the bough that hid
I’m, you know, still here,
tulip, resin, temporary—
From Shirt in Heaven, published by Copper Canyon Press. Copyright © 2015 by Jean Valentine. Reprinted with permission of The Permissions Company on behalf of Copper Canyon Press.
A golden age of love songs and we still
can't get it right. Does your kiss really taste
like butter cream? To me, the moon's bright face
was neither like a pizza pie nor full;
the Beguine began, but my eyelid twitched.
"No more I love you's," someone else assured
us, pouring out her heart, in love (of course)—
what bothers me the most is that high-pitched,
undone whine of "Why am I so alone?"
Such rueful misery is closer to
the truth, but once you turn the lamp down low,
you must admit that he is still the one,
and baby, baby he makes you so dumb
you sing in the shower at the top of your lungs.
Copyright © 2012 by Rafael Campo. Used with permission of the author.
Love not, love not! ye hapless sons of clay! Hope's gayest wreaths are made of earthly flowers— Things that are made to fade and fall away Ere they have blossom'd for a few short hours. Love not! Love not! the thing ye love may change: The rosy lip may cease to smile on you, The kindly-beaming eye grow cold and strange, The heart still warmly beat, yet not be true. Love not! Love not! the thing you love may die, May perish from the gay and gladsome earth; The silent stars, the blue and smiling sky, Beam o'er its grave, as once upon its birth. Love not! Love not! oh warning vainly said In present hours as in the years gone by; Love flings a halo round the dear ones' head, Faultless, immortal, till they change or die, Love not!
This poem is in the public domain.
Love is a flame that burns with sacred fire,
And fills the being up with sweet desire;
Yet, once the altar feels love’s fiery breath,
The heart must be a crucible till death.
Say love is life; and say it not amiss,
That love is but a synonym for bliss.
Say what you will of love—in what refrain,
But knows the heart, ‘tis but a word for pain.
This poem is in the public domain. Published in Poem-a-Day on October 20, 2019, by the Academy of American Poets.
(Dante, Vita Nuova) To all those driven berserk or humanized by love this is offered, for I need help deciphering my dream. When we love our lord is LOVE. When I recall that at the fourth hour of the night, watched by shining stars, LOVE at last became incarnate, the memory is horror. In his hands smiling LOVE held my burning heart, and in his arms, the body whose greeting pierces my soul, now wrapped in bloodred, sleeping. He made him wake. He ordered him to eat my heart. He ate my burning heart. He ate it submissively, as if afraid, as LOVE wept.
From Desire, published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1997. Copyright © 1997 by Frank Bidart. All rights reserved. Used with permission.
Love gives all its reasons
as if they were terms for peace.
Love is this but not that
that but not this.
Love as it always was.
But there is no peace in the mountain
cleft where the fruit bats scatter
from the light.
There is no peace in the hollow when
the heat snuffs night’s blue candle.
The outline of brown leaves on
the beach is the wind’s body.
A crow is squawking at the sun
as if the screech itself is dawn.
Let me hear every perfect note.
How I loved that jasper morning.
Copyright © 2015 by Jonathan Wells. Used with permission of the author.
The boy beside me
is not you but he
is familiar in all
the important ways.
I pass through life
finding you over
and over again—
oppress you
with love. And every
surrogate?
Afflicted by my
kindness, they leave
me with my music.
I loved you before
I ever loved you.
Copyright © 2015 by Jennifer Franklin. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on June 9, 2015, by the Academy of American Poets.
Never seek to tell thy love,
Love that never told can be;
For the gentle wind doth move
Silently, invisibly.
I told my love, I told my love,
I told her all my heart,
Trembling, cold, in ghastly fears.
Ah! she did depart!
Soon after she was gone from me,
A traveller came by,
Silently, invisibly:
He took her with a sigh.
This poem is in the public domain.
If love of mine could witch you back to earth It would be when the bat is on the wing, The lawn dew-drenched, the first stars glimmering, The moon a golden slip of seven nights’ birth. If prayer of mine could bring you it would be To this wraith-flowered jasmine-scented place Where shadow trees their branches interlace; Phantoms we’d tread a land of fantasy. If love could hold you I would bid you wait Till the pearl sky is indigo and till The plough show silver lamps beyond the hill And Aldebaran burns above the gate. If love of mine could lure you back to me From the rose gardens of eternity.
This poem is in the public domain.
My mother wouldn’t stand up
to wave. My father made certain
the door locked behind me.
But when I went for your door
you came too. Your mouth
made a flute of my arm,
its music a glass on the past.
My love, my love, went its song.
Now there is no need to leave.
Copyright © 2016 by Susan Wheeler. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on December 6, 2016, by the Academy of American Poets.
when love floods a person
it cuts
a canyon
that deepens year after year
carrying silt
away leaving
the essential person
revealed
letting everyone see
the layers of yellow
sandstone, red basalt
grey granite
when love washes over a person
it washes
the person away
Copyright © 2021 by Alicia Ostriker. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on April 5, 2021, by the Academy of American Poets.
Come when the nights are bright with stars
Or when the moon is mellow;
Come when the sun his golden bars
Drops on the hay-field yellow.
Come in the twilight soft and gray,
Come in the night or come in the day,
Come, O love, whene’er you may,
And you are welcome, welcome.
You are sweet, O Love, dear Love,
You are soft as the nesting dove.
Come to my heart and bring it rest
As the bird flies home to its welcome nest.
Come when my heart is full of grief
Or when my heart is merry;
Come with the falling of the leaf
Or with the redd’ning cherry.
Come when the year’s first blossom blows,
Come when the summer gleams and glows,
Come with the winter’s drifting snows,
And you are welcome, welcome.
From The Collected Poetry of Paul Laurence Dunbar (Dodd, Mead and Company, 1913) by Paul Laurence Dunbar. This poem is in the public domain.
I lie here thinking of you:—
the stain of love
is upon the world!
Yellow, yellow, yellow
it eats into the leaves,
smears with saffron
the horned branches that lean
heavily
against a smooth purple sky!
There is no light
only a honey-thick stain
that drips from leaf to leaf
and limb to limb
spoiling the colors
of the whole world—
you far off there under
the wine-red selvage of the west!
From A Books of Poems: Al Que Quiere! (The Four Seas Company, 1917).