I am yours as the summer air at evening is
Possessed by the scent of linden blossoms,

As the snowcap gleams with light
Lent it by the brimming moon.

Without you I'd be an unleafed tree
Blasted in a bleakness with no Spring.

Your love is the weather of my being.
What is an island without the sea?

i read somewhere

that a group of ladybugs is called

          a loveliness. and i wonder

what the person who gave them

that name (surely someone of at least

              measurable humanity) knew,

or thought they did, about what love

—what kind, specifically—so embeds

            itself in a thing that the thing,

subsequently, becomes an embodiment

of that love: the way river breaks into current;

the way trees make forest, simply

             by standing closer to each other

than to anything else…

               …by which I mean: i need you

to tell me which of my black spots

             you find loveliest. which interruption

of my red feels most human

to the forest of your fingers; the current

            you river into touch

along my breaking skin.

I had a dream I left the other side
of myself in New York City,
I have to go back to get it
but I can’t move. I wonder
if I shut the windows, left flowers
to wilt, left food to decay, left my
heart on the Queensboro Bridge.
I feel my mind blow open.
I run to the Tiber, chasing chaos
the way a heart does after its broken,
seeing my favorite song sinking
the way the dying does for days.
I don’t know what it all means.
Maybe that’s how the world walks into us,
with worry. Or maybe that’s how it goes,
like a boat coming from the future
to take us away.

I lied, trusting you knew
I could not lie to you.
Beloved friend, I lied and am forgiven; but I
Cannot forgive that you believed my lie.

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.

To live without the one you love
an empty dream never known
true happiness except as such youth

watching snow at window
listening to old music through morning.
Riding down that deserted street

by evening in a lonely cab
     past a blighted theatre
oh god yes, I missed the chance of my life

     when I gasped, when I got up and
        rushed out the room
          away from you.

When in the morning’s misty hour,
When the sun beams gently o’er each flower;
When thou dost cease to smile benign,
And think each heart responds with thine,
When seeking rest among divine,
                                    Forget me not.

When the last rays of twilight fall,
And thou art pacing yonder hall;
When mists are gathering on the hill,
Nor sound is heard save mountain rill,
When all around bids peace be still,
                                    Forget me not.

When the first star with brilliance bright,
Gleams lonely o’er the arch of night;
When the bright moon dispels the gloom,
And various are the stars that bloom,
And brighten as the sun at noon,
                                    Forget me not.

When solemn sighs the hollow wind,
And deepen’d thought enraps the mind;
If e’er thou doest in mournful tone,
E’er sigh because thou feel alone,
Or wrapt in melancholy prone,
                                    Forget me not. 

When bird does wait thy absence long,
Nor tend unto its morning song;
While thou art searching stoic page,
Or listening to an ancient sage,
Whose spirit curbs a mournful rage,
                                    Forget me not.

Then when in silence thou doest walk,
Nor being round with whom to talk;
When thou art on the mighty deep,
And do in quiet action sleep;
If we no more on earth do meet,
                                    Forget me not.

When brightness round thee long shall bloom,
And knelt remembering those in gloom;
And when in deep oblivion's shade,
This breathless, mouldering form is laid,
And thy terrestrial body staid,
                                     Forget me not.

“Should sorrow cloud thy coming years,
And bathe thy happiness in tears,
Remember, though we’re doom’d to part,
There lives one fond and faithful heart,
                        That will forget thee not.”

SAY my love is easy had,
      Say I’m bitten raw with pride,
Say I am too often sad,––
   Still behold me at your side.

Say I’m neither brave nor young,
   Say I woo and coddle care,
Say the devil touched my tongue,––
   Still you have my heart to wear.

But say my verses do not scan,
   And I get me another man!

I met and then forgot her
With unremembered things,
And thought if love could utter
Once more its murmurings,
Another one and not her
Could pluck the muted strings.

The years had passed long after
That sweet romance and free––
Kind years that seemed to waft her
From painful memory,
For she brought tears and laughter
And sorrow, too, for me.

I thought the pain and yearning
Had gone away from mind,
And cold the bosom burning
With passion unresigned,
Till I saw her returning
With Love and Spring behind.

^{translated by Ursula K. Le Guin}

Give me your hand and give me your love,
give me your hand and dance with me.
A single flower, and nothing more,
a single flower is all we'll be.

Keeping time in the dance together,
singing the tune together with me, 
grass in the wind, and nothing more,
grass in the wind is all we'll be.

I'm called Hope and you're called Rose:
but losing our names we'll both go free,
a dance on the hills, and nothing more,
a dance on the hills is all we'll be.

Dame La Mano 

Dame la mano y danzaremos;
dame la mano y me amarás.
Como una sola flor seremos,
como una flor, y nada más.

El mismo verso cantaremos,
al mismo paso bailarás.
Como una espiga ondularemos,
como una espiga, y nada más.

Te llamas Rosa y yo Esperanza;
pero tu nombre olvidarás,
porque seremos una danza
en la colina y nada más.