Love comes quietly,
finally, drops
about me, on me,
in the old ways.
What did I know
thinking myself
able to go
alone all the way.
From For Love: Poems. Copyright © 1962 by Robert Creeley. Used with permission of the Estate of Robert Creeley and The Permissions Company.
Looking up at the stars, I know quite well
That, for all they care, I can go to hell,
But on earth indifference is the least
We have to dread from man or beast.
How should we like it were stars to burn
With a passion for us we could not return?
If equal affection cannot be,
Let the more loving one be me.
Admirer as I think I am
Of stars that do not give a damn,
I cannot, now I see them, say
I missed one terribly all day.
Were all stars to disappear or die,
I should learn to look at an empty sky
And feel its total dark sublime,
Though this might take me a little time.
From Homage to Clio by W. H. Auden, published by Random House. Copyright © 1960 W. H. Auden, renewed by the Estate of W. H. Auden. Used by permission of Curtis Brown, Ltd.
My Love is of a birth as rare As ’tis for object strange and high: It was begotten by despair Upon Impossibility. Magnanimous Despair alone Could show me so divine a thing, Where feeble Hope could ne'r have flown But vainly flapt its Tinsel Wing. And yet I quickly might arrive Where my extended Soul is fixt, But Fate does Iron wedges drive, And alwaies crowds it self betwixt. For Fate with jealous Eye does see Two perfect Loves; nor lets them close: Their union would her ruine be, And her Tyrannick pow'er depose. And therefore her Decrees of Steel Us as the distant Poles have plac'd, (Though Love's whole World on us doth wheel) Not by themselves to be embrac'd. Unless the giddy Heaven fall, And Earth some new Convulsion tear; And, us to joyn, the World should all Be cramp'd into a Planisphere. As Lines so Loves oblique may well Themselves in every Angle greet: But ours so truly Parallel, Though infinite can never meet. Therefore the Love which us doth bind, But Fate so enviously debarrs, Is the Conjunction of the Mind, And Opposition of the Stars.
This poem is in the public domain. Published in Poem-a-Day on March 31, 2018, by the Academy of American Poets.