somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond
any experience, your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near

your slightest look easily will unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skillfully, mysteriously) her first rose

or if your wish be to close me, i and
my life will shut very beautifully, suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;

nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility: whose texture
compels me with the colour of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing

(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens; only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands

If ever two were one, then surely we.
If ever man were loved by wife, then thee;
If ever wife was happy in a man,
Compare with me ye women if you can.
I prize thy love more than whole mines of gold,
Or all the riches that the East doth hold.
My love is such that rivers cannot quench,
Nor ought but love from thee give recompense.
Thy love is such I can no way repay;
The heavens reward thee manifold, I pray.
Then while we live, in love let’s so persever,
That when we live no more we may live ever.

since feeling is first
who pays any attention 
to the syntax of things
will never wholly kiss you;

wholly to be a fool
while Spring is in the world

my blood approves,
and kisses are a better fate 
than wisdom
lady i swear by all flowers. Don’t cry
—the best gesture of my brain is less than
your eyelids’ flutter which says

we are for each other: then
laugh, leaning back in my arms
for life’s not a paragraph

And death i think is no parenthesis

Before you came,
things were as they should be:
the sky was the dead-end of sight,
the road was just a road, wine merely wine.

Now everything is like my heart,
a color at the edge of blood:
the grey of your absence, the color of poison, of thorns,
the gold when we meet, the season ablaze,
the yellow of autumn, the red of flowers, of flames,
and the black when you cover the earth
with the coal of dead fires.

And the sky, the road, the glass of wine?
The sky is a shirt wet with tears,
the road a vein about to break,
and the glass of wine a mirror in which
the sky, the road, the world keep changing.

Don't leave now that you're here—
Stay. So the world may become like itself again:
so the sky may be the sky,
the road a road,
and the glass of wine not a mirror, just a glass of wine.

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of being and ideal grace.
I love thee to the level of every day’s
Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.
I love thee freely, as men strive for right.
I love thee purely, as they turn from praise.
I love thee with the passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood’s faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints. I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life; and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.

As I walked out one evening,
   Walking down Bristol Street,
The crowds upon the pavement
   Were fields of harvest wheat.

And down by the brimming river
   I heard a lover sing
Under an arch of the railway:
   ‘Love has no ending.

‘I’ll love you, dear, I’ll love you
   Till China and Africa meet,
And the river jumps over the mountain
   And the salmon sing in the street,

‘I’ll love you till the ocean
   Is folded and hung up to dry
And the seven stars go squawking
   Like geese about the sky.

‘The years shall run like rabbits,
   For in my arms I hold
The Flower of the Ages,
   And the first love of the world.’

But all the clocks in the city
   Began to whirr and chime:
‘O let not Time deceive you,
   You cannot conquer Time.

‘In the burrows of the Nightmare
   Where Justice naked is,
Time watches from the shadow
   And coughs when you would kiss.

‘In headaches and in worry
   Vaguely life leaks away,
And Time will have his fancy
   To-morrow or to-day.

‘Into many a green valley
   Drifts the appalling snow;
Time breaks the threaded dances
   And the diver’s brilliant bow.

‘O plunge your hands in water,
   Plunge them in up to the wrist;
Stare, stare in the basin
   And wonder what you’ve missed.

‘The glacier knocks in the cupboard,
   The desert sighs in the bed,
And the crack in the tea-cup opens
   A lane to the land of the dead.

‘Where the beggars raffle the banknotes
   And the Giant is enchanting to Jack,
And the Lily-white Boy is a Roarer,
   And Jill goes down on her back.

‘O look, look in the mirror,
   O look in your distress:
Life remains a blessing
   Although you cannot bless.

‘O stand, stand at the window
   As the tears scald and start;
You shall love your crooked neighbour
   With your crooked heart.’

It was late, late in the evening,
   The lovers they were gone;
The clocks had ceased their chiming,
   And the deep river ran on.

^{translated from the Farsi by Haleh Liza Gafori}

Let’s love each other,
let’s cherish each other, my friend,
before we lose each other.

You’ll long for me when I’m gone.
You’ll make a truce with me.
So why put me on trial while I’m alive?

Why adore the dead but battle the living?

You’ll kiss the headstone of my grave.
Look, I’m lying here still as a corpse,
dead as a stone. Kiss my face instead!

I saw Love’s eyes, I saw Love’s crownèd hair;
   I heard Love’s voice, a song across the air;
   The glad-of-heart were of Love’s royal train;
   Sweet-throated heralds cried his endless reign,
And where his garment swept, the earth grew fair.

Along Love’s road one walked whose feet were bare
And bleeding; no complaint he made, nor prayer,
   Yet dim and wistful as a child’s in pain
                     I saw Love’s eyes.

I groped with Love where shadow lay, and snare;
I climbed with Love the icy mountain star;
   The wood was dark, the height was hard to gain;
   The birds were songless and the flowers were slain;
Yet brave alway above my heart’s despair
                      I saw Love’s eyes.

^{November 21, 1895}

A gang of turkeys has colonized the park.
Ugh! the big unbalanced
bodies and skinny necks. Wattles, caruncles, snoods.
Now a spurred-shank jenny
goes fancy-footing by, as if across parade grounds
where wonders may appear, in the majesty
of every ugly thing turning
beautiful, the way anything loved will be.
Which reminds me again
of L.—this morning in the mirror
a mote in my eye
I was trying to remove
and I thought: definitely, her faults
I grow painfully aware
amount to a speck compared
to those same mountains in me,
so I’ve lately grown obsessed
with physics: force and action, spooky action
at a distance, and love. Always
love. You can’t see it
but what it makes you do is real.

                                  I
Thou winged symbol of the quiet mind, 
Thou straying violet, flying flower of spring, 
Heaven-hued and heaven-hearted! Thou dost sing 
As thou some sweet remembered thought didst find, 
And, counseling with thyself in musing kind, 
Didst softly say it over. Thy swift wing 
Knows but a quiet rhythm; thou a thing 
Of peace, to passion innocently blind.

Thy russet breast means married love, long hope, 
Sheltered experience, small and sweet and sure. 
All of the brown earth’s natural purity; 
But something heavenly, beyond our scope, 
Steeped thy blue wing in color strange and pure, 
Intense and holy as the mirrored sky.

                                  II
Pulse of the gorgeous world, jubilant, strong,—
Thy song a whistled splendor, and thy coat 
A fiery song! From thy triumphant throat 
How I have heard it pouring, loud and long. 
Whipping the air as with a scarlet thong— 
The joyous lashing of thy triple note 
Which all the tamer noonday noises smote 
And clove a royal pathway through the throng!

Thou singest joy of battle, joy of fame. 
Glory, and love of woman; joy of strife
With life’s wild fates; and scorn’st, with jocund breath 
For prudence’ sake to dim thy feathered flame— 
Thou heart of fire, epitome of life, 
Full-throated flouter of vindictive death!

                                  III
And lo, among the leafy, hidden groves 
Within my heart, they both do flit and nest, 
Saintly blue wing and vaunting scarlet crest, 
Yea, all of life and all its myriad loves. 
Even as Nature holds them, sifts and proves 
And balances, so shall my soul find rest 
In Her large tolerance, which without rest 
Or lagging, toward some wide conclusion moves.

So, though I weary sometimes of the stress, 
Leave me not, little lovers of the air. 
Dearest of Nature’s fine antitheses! 
Thou of the musing voice and heavenly dress. 
Thou, royal firebrand,—neither could I spare. 
My scarlet Passion, nor my winged Peace!

I’ve told him that when I die,  
he may sleep with as many women as he likes,  
as long as he will vow to sob post-coitally.  

I tell him first as I double-u my legs  
over his torso, pull the blue duvet  
around the lump our bodies make, 
and I tell him straight-faced.  
We laugh about it occasionally, 
our little death joke. 

The Egyptians believed the heart  
is where the soul is –  
slit the bellies of the dead, remove the still organs,  
but leave the quiet heart between its ribs,  
wrapping the arms, torso, slick, clammy skin  
tight in white. They performed  
the Opening of the Mouth ceremony, touched  
the mummy on the lips, eyes and ears with a blade  
so he could speak and sense, live again in the hereafter. 

You wrap me, strip over strip of our linen bed sheets,  
listen to my voice, provide me with a blade.  
I plea for you to keep me inside  
so that when you stop breathing,  
your heart will weigh no more than a feather, 
and when what remains is only stillness, 
we can pull open our red centers,  
and watch a sacred ibis unfold itself into flight. 

Today the dragonflies return.
The courtyard bursts an insanity of roses.

Today is dense with love perfume.
Ardent sun. The proximity of birds.

Roses bloom just to be noticed. The blessed
blossoms know this is their only purpose.

I await my sojourner, again weary 
from his wandering, and putting to rest 

my witch’s ways. In love I pine
for him but it is air that sustains me.

My Father-light rises spinning, fueling
the world. Life is renewed.

An admirer could remark God is good to me. 
I pray to amplify the burgeoning. Sanctified

I summon a storm, track its thrust with slow eyes.
The lightning will be startling and insistent,

thunder’s belated warning full of bravado.
Mother Moon will kiss withered petals full again.

Fortified by dancing planets, my warrior
will be valiant against the humors of the day, 

I sing a lullaby. It will be a night of dreams.
He will wake refreshed.

His sleeping breath frees me
from the prison of my sorcery.