Smart Bitches Trashy Books | All of the romance, none of the bullshit.

Kenneth Fearing:

Love 20 cents the First Quarter Mile

All right. I may have lied to you and about you, and made a
few pronouncements a bit too sweeping, perhaps, and
possibly forgotten to tag the bases here or there,
And damned your extravagance, and maligned your tastes,
and libeled your relatives, and slandered a few of your
friends, O. K. ,
Nevertheless, come back.

Come home. I will agree to forget the statements that you
issued so copiously to the neighbors and the press,
And you will forget that figment of your imagination, the
blonde from Detroit;
I will agree that your lady friend who lives above us is not
crazy, bats, nutty as they come, but on the contrary rather
bright,
And you will concede that poor old Steinberg is neither a
drunk, nor a swindler, but simply a guy, on the eccentric
side, trying to get along.
(Are you listening, you bitch, and have you got this straight?)

Because I forgive you, yes, for everything. I forgive you for
being beautiful and generous and wise,
I forgive you, to put it simply, for being alive, and pardon
you, in short, for being you.

Because tonight you are in my hair and eyes,
And every street light that our taxi passes shows me you
again, still you,
And because tonight all other nights are black, all other hours
are cold and far away, and now, this minute, the stars are
very near and bright.

Come back. We will have a celebration to end all celebrations.
We will invite the undertaker who lives beneath us, and a
couple of boys from the office, and some other friends.
And Steinberg, who is off the wagon, and that
insane woman who lives upstairs, and a few reporters, if
anything should break.

Uh, there once was a man from Nantucket? 8-/

This is one I like!:

To wake in the morning with you
by Bonnie Boutelle

To wake in the morning
and see you at my side
is the greatest blessing
I could hope for.

To spend more than a few hours
with you is normal
but to share your nearness
for a full evening
is like asking for the moon
and stars, combined.

To be granted a night,
a month of nights,
a year of nights,
even forever with you
would make my heart cry
with sweet angel-kissed tears.

I just can’t help myself with George Gordon, Lord Byron. Been my favorite since I was 14:

She walks in beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all that ‘s best of dark and bright
Meet in her aspect and her eyes: 
Thus mellow’d to that tender light
Which heaven to gaudy day denies. 
One shade the more, one ray the less,
Had half impair’d the nameless grace
Which waves in every raven tress,
Or softly lightens o’er her face;
Where thoughts serenely sweet express
How pure, how dear their dwelling-place. 

And on that cheek, and o’er that brow,
So soft, so calm, yet eloquent,
The smiles that win, the tints that glow,
But tell of days in goodness spent,
A mind at peace with all below,
A heart whose love is innocent!

*sigh*

I don’t know if there is a title or even an author, I think it is just an old poetry shard that my high school spanish teacher used when we were learning commands.  I think Sta. Teresa used it as a basis for a religious poem about love for god or jesus later, but I like the original fragment better.

Veante mis ojos
Y muerame yo luego
Dulce amor mio
Y lo que yo mas quiero.

Let my eyes see you
And then let me die
My sweet love
And what I most want.

Sounds way more romantic to me in Spanish, especially with a castilian lisp.  ::sighs::

Yeats:

When you are old and gray and full of sleep
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;

How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true;
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face.

And bending down beside the glowing bars,
Murmur, a little sadly, how love fled
And paced upon the mountains overhead,
And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.

*

And Neruda:

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.

Write, for example, ‘The night is starry
and the stars are blue and shiver in the distance.’

The night wind revolves in the sky and sings.

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.

Through nights like this one I held her in my arms.
I kissed her again and again under the endless sky.

She loved me, sometimes I loved her too.
How could one not have loved her great still eyes.

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
To think that I do not have her. To feel that I have lost her.

To hear the immense night, still more immense without her.
And the verse falls to the soul like dew to the pasture.

What does it matter that my love could not keep her.
The night is starry and she is not with me.

This is all. In the distance someone is singing. In the distance.
My soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.

My sight tries to find her as though to bring her closer.
My heart looks for her, and she is not with me.

The same night whitening the same trees.
We, of that time, are no longer the same.

I no longer love her, that’s certain, but how I loved her.
My voice tried to find the wind to touch her hearing.

Another’s. She will be another’s. As she was before my kisses.
Her voice, her bright body. Her infinite eyes.

I no longer love her, that’s certain, but maybe I love her.
Love is so short, forgetting is so long.

Because through nights like this one I held her in my arms
my soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.

Though this be the last pain that she makes me suffer
and these the last verses that I write for her.

*

Okay, I suck. I’m much better with keening over love lost. I dunno, I just like all that pining away, okay? So sue me.

Shakespeare’s Sonnet 57:

Being your slave, what should I do but tend
Upon the hours and times of your desire?
I have no precious time at all to spend,
Nor services to do, till you require.
Nor dare I chide the world-without-end hour
Whilst I, my sovereign, watch the clock for you,
Nor think the bitterness of absence sour
When you have bid your servant once adieu;
Nor dare I question with my jealous thought
Where you may be, or your affairs suppose,
But, like a sad slave, stay and think of nought
Save, where you are how happy you make those.
So true a fool is love that in your will,
Though you do any thing, he thinks no ill.

And then there’s Wentworth’s letter from Persuasion, but that’s not really a poem.

sarahf: Wentworth’s letter, another sigh-worthy declaration from the pen of JA.  “I can listen no longer in silence...I am half agony, half hope...” And the fact that Ciaran Hinds is the one doing the voice over in the movie version of Persuasion doesn’t hurt, either.

SBSarah—isn’t it strange, the stuff you remember.  That fragment struck my teenaged mind as incredibly romantic and is fixed in my memory, in spite of the fact that I’ve read and forgotten reams of other poetry since that time.  And the Castilian accent is totally responsible for my inclusion of Javier Bardem in my list of shaggable famous people.  :)

I have two:

“He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven”
by Yeats

Had I the heavens’ embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half-light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

***

And:

“Love Sonnet XVII”
by Pablo Neruda

I do not love you as if you were a salt rose, or topaz
or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off.
I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,
in secret, between the shadow and the soul.

I love you as the plant that never blooms
but carries in itself the light of hidden flowers;
thanks to your love a certain solid fragrance,
risen from the earth, lives darkly in my body.

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where.
I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride;
So I love you because I know no other way

than this: where I do not exist, nor you,
so close that your hand on my chest is my hand,
so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep.

(The last two stanzas are my favorite.)

Sadly, my favorite love poem is under copyright so I can’t reprint it here, but if you want to bother looking it up, it’s “Romantic Moment” by Tony Hoagland and was published in the Jan/Feb. 2005 Utne Reader, and in Speakeasy Magazine in Fall, 2004.

Beth: I’m that way about love songs. Most of my favorite love songs are fucked up. Actually, one of my favorite love songs serves as a decent poem, as well. It’s by Grandaddy, and it’s called “The Warming Sun”:

In a dream
You were sitting there waiting by the door for me
And I got the opportunity
To experience the experience once again

How it could have maybe been

But in real life
You’re in another world
You’re with another guy
Who doesn’t have to cheat
And never has to lie
And all that stuff I didn’t get
Comes so easy to him

He doesn’t even have to try

But do you ever ask yourself
How it could have maybe been

I haven’t been that bad
But I haven’t been that good
Overmisunderstood
Oh I wish I really could
Enjoy the warming sun
Enjoy a warm someone
And end the need to hide
Away alone inside

No I haven’t been that bad
But I haven’t been that good
Overmisunderstood
Oh I wish I really could
Enjoy the warming sun
Enjoy a warm someone
And end the need to hide
Away alone inside

In a dream
You were sitting there waiting by the door for me

I sometimes play this song obsessively, especially when I feel melancholy.

And all of y’all: I hope you’re proud of yourselves--I’ve been reduced to a pile of mush and snuffliness by these poems. Oh dear.

Here’s another E. E. Cummings love poem, because GOD I love that man and his love poetry:

my love is building a building
around you, a frail slippery
house, a strong fragile house
(beginning at the singular beginning

of your smile)a skilful uncouth
prison, a precise clumsy
prison(building thatandthis into Thus,
Around the reckless magic of your mouth)

my love is building a magic, a discrete
tower of magic and(as i guess)

when Farmer Death(whom fairies hate)shall

crumble the mouth-flower fleet
He’ll not my tower,
               laborious, casual

where the surrounded smile
                   hangs

                      breathless

This is from the Yueh-Fu, which is a style of chinese poetry that was derived from peasant songs from around the 120 BC period.  I used it at my wedding.

I want to be your friend
for ever and ever
When the hills are all flat
and the rivers are all dry
when the trees blossom in winter
and the snow falls in summer
when heaven and earth mix -
not til then will I part from you

I’m going to go with some of my favorite song lyrics, since I don’t read much poetry.

It’s never over, my kingdom for a kiss upon her shoulder
It’s never over, all my riches for her smiles when I slept so soft against her
It’s never over, all my blood for the sweetness of her laughter
It’s never over, she’s the tear that hangs inside my soul forever

Jeff Buckley, Lover You Should’ve Come Over

And this song of Ari Hest’s is really cute and up-beat and kind of reminds me of every romance novel I’ve ever read.

Caught Up In Your Love

After I said goodbye I promised myself I’d try
To get my mind off you and back to reality
But only lightning striking me, shaking me up could ever do that trick
Caught up in your love

I was halfway home on a jet airplane, halfway between joy and pain
Thinking about walking with you by the evergreens
The way that light struck your eye, captured your face, nestled in my memory
Caught up in your love

I’m looking out my window at blue skies above caught up in your love
And I’m having all these thoughts too wild to speak of
caught up in your love

I don’t care if its foolish to feel this way
I will take my chances with you despite what people say

People say, “Pay no mind, you don’t want to waste your time
Loving one when there’s so much more for you to see.”
But they don’t got what I’ve got, the jackpot, fits me like a glove
Caught up in your love

This is my kind of crowd e.e. cummings was such a romantic poet.  Here’s the one I’ve always loved:

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 skilfully,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 color 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

For those into love of the more unrequented (sp?) variety, there is always Maggie Estep’s “The Stupid Jerk I’m Obsessed With.”

The stupid jerk I’m obsessed with
stands so close to me
I can feel his breath
on my neck
and smell
the way he would smell
if we slept together
because he is the stupid jerk I’m obsessed with
and that is his primary function in life
to be a stupid jerk I can obsess over
and to talk to that dingy bimbette blonde
as if he really wanted to hear about her
manicures and
pedicures and
New Age ritualistic enema cures and
truth be known, he probably does wanna hear about it
because he is the stupid jerk I’m obsessed with
and he’s obsessed with doing anything he can
to lend fuel to my fire
he makes a point of standing
looking over my shoulder
when I’m talking to the guy who adores me
and would bark like a dog
and wave to strangers
if I asked him to bark like a dog
and wave to strangers
but I can’t ask him to bark like a dog
or impersonate any kind of animal at all
cause I’m too busy
looking at the way the stupid jerk I’m obsessed with
has pants on that perfectly define his well-shaped ass
to the point where I’m thoroughly frantic
I’m just gonna go home
and stick my head in the oven
overdose on nutmeg and aspirin
and sit in the bathtub reading The Executioner’s Song
and being completely confounded by the fact
that I can see
the stupid jerk I’m obsessed with’s face
defining itself in the peeling plaster of the wall
grinning and winking
and I start to yell,
Get the hell out of there
You’re just a figment of my imagination
Just get a life and get out of my plaster
and pass me the next painful situation please
but he just keeps on
grinning and winking
he’s the stupid jerk I’m obsessed with
and he’s mine
in my plaster
And frankly, I couldn’t be happier.

ooh...ooh..ah
Now I told you so you ought to know
ooh, it takes some time for a feelin’ to grow
ooh, you’re so close now I can’t let you go
ooh, and I can’t let you go

with you I’m not shy to show the way I feel
with you I might try my secrets to reveal
for you are a magnet and I am steel

I can’t hope that I’ll hold you for long
ooh, you’re a woman who’s lost to your song
ooh, but the love that I feel is so strong
ooh, and it can’t be wrong…

Walter Egan, Magnet and Steel

Come on, with all that orgasmic groaning?  Gotta love this song!

To His Coy Mistress
Andrew Marvell

HAD we but world enough, and time,
This coyness, Lady, were no crime
We would sit down and think which way
To walk and pass our long love’s day.
Thou by the Indian Ganges’ side
Shouldst rubies find: I by the tide
Of Humber would complain. I would
Love you ten years before the Flood,
And you should, if you please, refuse
Till the conversion of the Jews. 
My vegetable love should grow
Vaster than empires, and more slow;
An hundred years should go to praise
Thine eyes and on thy forehead gaze;
Two hundred to adore each breast,
But thirty thousand to the rest;
An age at least to every part,
And the last age should show your heart.
For, Lady, you deserve this state,
Nor would I love at lower rate. 
But at my back I always hear
Time’s wingèd chariot hurrying near;
And yonder all before us lie
Deserts of vast eternity.
Thy beauty shall no more be found,
Nor, in thy marble vault, shall sound
My echoing song: then worms shall try
That long preserved virginity,
And your quaint honour turn to dust,
And into ashes all my lust:
The grave ‘s a fine and private place,
But none, I think, do there embrace.
Now therefore, while the youthful hue
Sits on thy skin like morning dew,
And while thy willing soul transpires
At every pore with instant fires,
Now let us sport us while we may,
And now, like amorous birds of prey,
Rather at once our time devour
Than languish in his slow-chapt power. 
Let us roll all our strength and all
Our sweetness up into one ball,
And tear our pleasures with rough strifeThorough the iron gates of life:
Thus, though we cannot make our sun
Stand still, yet we will make him run.

Granted, the “vegetable love” is a little odd, but this still seems sexy to me.

BSC: you is brilliant and shit. I love that thing and can’t believe I never read it nowheres before.

And Candy: That ee cummings one slayed me. Dead. DEAD, you hear me? A puddle of goo in my office because the phrase “the reckless magic of your mouth” is too much for one girl to handle, okay?

I love all of Edna St. Vincent Millay’s work...but so much of the love poetry speaks of love dead or gone or forgotten. This one is one of my favourites, even if it’s a little sad…

Mariposa

Butterflies are white and blue
In this field we wander through.
Suffer me to take your hand.
Death comes in a day or two.

All the things we ever knew
Will be ashes in that hour,
Mark the transient butterfly,
How he hangs upon the flower.

Suffer me to take your hand.
Suffer me to cherish you
Till the dawn is in the sky.
Whether I be false or true,
Death comes in a day or two.

My all-time favourite love poem by Wendy Cope (far from sappy, and more than a little cynical though...I’m no cynical, myself, but the poem in itself is very sensible)
--
Two Cures for Love
1. Don’t see him. Don’t phone or write a letter.
2. The easy way: get to know him better.

Because I have no creativity…

The Dream, by John Donne

DEAR love, for nothing less than thee
Would I have broke this happy dream ;
It was a theme
For reason, much too strong for fantasy.
Therefore thou waked’st me wisely ; yet
My dream thou brokest not, but continued’st it.
Thou art so true that thoughts of thee suffice
To make dreams truths, and fables histories ;
Enter these arms, for since thou thought’st it best,
Not to dream all my dream, let’s act the rest.
As lightning, or a taper’s light,
Thine eyes, and not thy noise waked me ;
Yet I thought thee
—For thou lovest truth—an angel, at first sight ;
But when I saw thou saw’st my heart,
And knew’st my thoughts beyond an angel’s art,
When thou knew’st what I dreamt, when thou knew’st when
Excess of joy would wake me, and camest then,
I must confess, it could not choose but be
Profane, to think thee any thing but thee.

Coming and staying show’d thee, thee,
But rising makes me doubt, that now
Thou art not thou.
That love is weak where fear’s as strong as he ;
‘Tis not all spirit, pure and brave,
If mixture it of fear, shame, honour have ;
Perchance as torches, which must ready be,
Men light and put out, so thou deal’st with me ;
Thou camest to kindle, go’st to come ; then I
Will dream that hope again, but else would die.

*sighs*

Also, the following is my second favorite poem.  I’m surprised no one else has posted it, because it’s well known to the point of being cliche.  But so romantic.

Sonnet XLIII by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

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 everyday’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 a 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.

I looked this up after reading Smart Women, my favorite of Jenny Crusie’s books:

I knew a woman, lovely in her bones,
When small birds sighed, she would sigh back at them;
Ah, when she moved, she moved more ways than one:
The shapes a bright container can contain!
Of her choice virtues only gods should speak,
Or English poets who grew up on Greek
(I’d have them sing in chorus, cheek to cheek.)

How well her wishes went! She stroked my chin,
She taught me Turn, and Counter-turn, and stand;
She taught me Touch, that undulant white skin:
I nibbled meekly from her proffered hand;
She was the sickle; I, poor I, the rake,
Coming behind her for her pretty sake
(But what prodigious mowing did we make.)

Love likes a gander, and adores a goose:
Her full lips pursed, the errant note to seize;
She played it quick, she played it light and loose;
My eyes, they dazzled at her flowing knees;
Her several parts could keep a pure repose,
Or one hip quiver with a mobile nose
(She moved in circles, and those circles moved.)

Let seed be grass, and grass turn into hay:
I’m martyr to a motion not my own;
What’s freedom for? To know eternity.
I swear she cast a shadow white as stone.
But who would count eternity in days?
These old bones live to learn her wanton ways:
(I measure time by how a body sways.)

Theodore Roethke

Keeping the John Donne going-- this is from memory so it might not be a flawless rendition--

License my roving hands and let them go
Before, behind, between, above, below,
O my America! My newfound land!
My kingdom, safeliest when with one man manned,
My mine of precious stone, my empyrie,
How blest am I in this discovering thee.
To enter in these bonds is to be free,
Thus where my hand is set, my seal shall be.

Oops. Actually, that’s FAST Women.  But I’m currently reading Fast Talking Dames by Maria DiBattista, and I can’t help but equate the two…

These are my two favorites… an everyday type of love poem, and my favorite erotic poem by e.e. cummings.

SOMEWHERE ON THE WAY
I wanted to say a lot of things:
I wanted to say how often lately
Your bright image has wandered through
The dark rooms of my mind;
I wanted to say how good it is
To wake up every morning
Knowing that the day contains
Something that is you.

I wanted to say a lot of things:
I wanted to talk about
The changing colours of moments,
The silent secret language
Of bodies making love.
I wanted to say that you
Are always only as far from me
As thoughts are from thinking.

I wanted to say I love you
In fourteen foreign languages
But most of all (most
Difficult of all) in English.

I wanted to say a lot of things.
But they all seem to have lost themselves
Somewhere on the way.  And now I’m here
There’s nothing I can say except
Hello, and Yes I’d like some coffee, and
What shall we find to talk about
Before the night burns out?
~Peter Roche~

i like my body when it is with your

i like my body when it is with your
body. It is so quite a new thing.
Muscles better and nerves more.
i like your body. i like what it does,
i like its hows. i like to feel the spine
of your body and its bones, and the trembling
-firm-smooth ness and which i will
again and again and again
kiss, i like kissing this and that of you,
i like,, slowly stroking the, shocking fuzz
of your electric fur, and what-is-it comes
over parting flesh . . . . And eyes big Love-crumbs,

and possibly i like the thrill

of under me you quite so new

e.e. cummings

My favorite is from Rumi.

Come, come, wherever you are
Warrior, wanderer, lover of leaving
(it doesn’t matter)
Ours is not a caravan of despair.

Come, come yet again, come.

As for the poem that chokes me up, it’s the Auden recited in Four Weddings and a Funeral. Agh. Tears just thinking about it…

Lilith, that Auden poem is by far my favorite love poem, and I was just about to post it!

Funeral Blues
by WH Auden

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone.
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message He is Dead,
Put crépe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song,
I thought that love would last forever: ‘I was wrong’

The stars are not wanted now, put out every one;
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood.
For nothing now can ever come to any good.

Awww! Great minds, Samantha…

This is my newest favorite.

Resignation

I love you
because the earth turns round the sun
because the North wind blows north
sometimes
because the Pope is Catholic
and most Rabbis Jewish
because winters flow into springs
and the air clears after a storm
because only my love for you
despite the charms of gravity
keeps me from falling off this Earth
into another dimension
I love you
because it is the natural order of things

I love you
like the habit I picked up in college
of sleeping through lectures
or saying I’m sorry
when I get stopped for speeding
because I drink a glass of water
in the morning
and chain-smoke cigarettes
all through the day
because I take my coffee Black
and my milk with chocolate
because you keep my feet warm
though my life a mess
I love you
because I don’t want it
any other way.

I am helpless
in my love for you
It makes me so happy
to hear you call my name
I am amazed you can resist
locking me in an echo chamber
where your voice reverberates
through the four walls
sending me into spasmatic ecstasy
I love you
because it’s been so good
for so long
that if I didn’t love you
I’d have to be born again
and that is not a theological statement
I am pitiful in my love for you

The Dells tell me Love
is so simple
the thought though of you
sends indescribably delicious multitudinous
thrills throughout and through-in my body
I love you
because no two snowflakes are alike
and it is possible
if you stand tippy-toe
to walk between the raindrops
I love you
because I am afraid of the dark
and can’t sleep in the light
because I rub my eyes
when I wake up in the morning
and find you there
because you with all your magic powers were
determined that
I should love you
because there was nothing for you but that
I would love you

I love you
because you made me
want to love you
more than I love my privacy
my freedom my commitments
and responsibilities
I love you ‘cause I changed my life
to love you
because you saw me one friday
afternoon and decided that I would
love you
I love you I love you I love you

—Nikki Giovanni.

Gosh I almost forgot about this one:

Against Dieting by Blake Morrison

Please, darling, no more diets.
I’ve heard the talk on why it’s
good for one’s self esteem. I watched you
jogging lanes and pounding treadmills.
I’ve even shed two kilos of my own.
But enough. What are love handles
between friends? For half a stone
it isn’t worth the sweat.
I’ve had it up to here with crisp bread.
I doubt the premise too.
Try and see it from my point of view.
I want not less but more of you.

Wow. Sign me up. If a man wrote that to me and enclosed chocolates, I’d die of sheer pleasure.

My all-time favorite:

Sonnet: Love Is Not All

Love is not all: It is not meat nor drink
Nor slumber nor a roof against the rain,
Nor yet a floating spar to men that sink
and rise and sink and rise and sink again.
Love cannot fill the thickened lung with breath
Nor clean the blood, nor set the fractured bone;
Yet many a man is making friends with death
even as I speak, for lack of love alone.
It well may be that in a difficult hour,
pinned down by need and moaning for release
or nagged by want past resolution’s power,
I might be driven to sell your love for peace,
Or trade the memory of this night for food.
It may well be. I do not think I would.

-- Edna St. Vincent Millay

More Donne:

I WONDER by my troth, what thou and I
Did, till we loved? were we not wean’d till then?
But suck’d on country pleasures, childishly?
Or snorted we in the Seven Sleepers’ den?
‘Twas so; but this, all pleasures fancies be;
If ever any beauty I did see,
Which I desired, and got, ‘twas but a dream of thee.

And now good-morrow to our waking souls,
Which watch not one another out of fear;
For love all love of other sights controls,
And makes one little room an everywhere.
Let sea-discoverers to new worlds have gone;
Let maps to other, worlds on worlds have shown;
Let us possess one world; each hath one, and is one.

My face in thine eye, thine in mine appears,
And true plain hearts do in the faces rest;
Where can we find two better hemispheres
Without sharp north, without declining west?
Whatever dies, was not mix’d equally;
If our two loves be one, or thou and I
Love so alike that none can slacken, none can die.

This is, dorkily, from a chapter epigraph in _Gaudy Night_:

Love?  Do I love?  I walk
Within the brilliance of another’s thought,
As in a glory.  I was dark before,
As Venus’ chapel in the black of night.
But there was something holy in the darkness,
Softer and not so thick as any other where;
As as rich moonlight may be to the blind,
Unconsciously consoling.  Then love came,
Like the out-bursting of a trodden star.

Thomas Lovell Beddoes: _The Second Brother_

And from Tennyson, with even more than his usual intense erotic undertones camoflaged by Victorian romanticism:

She is coming, my own, my sweet;
Were it ever so airy a tread,
My heart would hear her and beat,
Were it earth in an earthy bed;
My dust would hear her and beat,
Had I lain for a century dead;
Would start and tremble under her feet,
And blossom in purple and red.

“Variations on the Word Sleep”
By Margaret Atwood

I would like to watch you sleeping,
which may not happen.
I would like to watch you,
sleeping. I would like to sleep
with you, to enter
your sleep as its smooth dark wave
slides over my head

and walk with you through that lucent
wavering forest of bluegreen leaves
with its watery sun & three moons
towards the cave where you must descend,
towards your worst fear

I would like to give you the silver
branch, the small white flower, the one
word that will protect you
from the grief at the center
of your dream, from the grief
at the center. I would like to follow
you up the long stairway
again & become
the boat that would row you back
carefully, a flame
in two cupped hands
to where your body lies
beside me, and you enter
it as easily as breathing in

I would like to be the air
that inhabits you for a moment
only. I would like to be that unnoticed
& that necessary.

it’s a tie between:

Having A Coke With You

is even more fun than going top San Sebastain, Irun, Hendaye, Biarritz, Bayonne
or being sick to my stomach on the Travesera de Gracia in Barcelona
partly because in your orange shirt you look like a better happier St. Sebastian
partly because of my love for you, partly because of your love for yoghurt
partly because of the fluoresent orange tulips around the birches
partly because of the secrecy our smiles take on before people and statuary
it is hard to believe when I’m with you that there can be anything as still
as solemn as unpleasently definitive as statuary when right in front of it
in the warm New York 4 o’clock light we are drifting back and forth
between each other like a tree breathing through its spectacles

and the portrait show seems to have no faces in it at all, just paint
you suddenly wonder why in the world anyone ever did them I look
at you and I would rather look at you than all the portraits in the world
except possibly for the “Polish Rider” occasionally and anyway it’s in the Frick
which thank heavens you haven’t gone to yet so we can go together the first time
and the fact that you move so beautifully more or less takes care of Futurism
just as at home I never think of the “Nude Descending a Staircase” or
at a rehearsal a single drawing of Leonardo or Michaelangleo that used to wow me
and what good does all the research of the impressionists do them
when they never got the right person to stand near the tree when the sun sank
or for that matter Marino Marini when he didn’t pick the rider as carefully
as the horse

it seems they were all cheated of some marvelous experience
which is not going to go wasted on me which is why I am telling you about it

-- Frank O’Hara

OR....

from romeo and juliet, act I, scene IV:

ROMEO: If I profane with my unworthiest hand
This holy shrine, the gentle fine is this:
My lips, two blushing pilgrims, ready stand
To smooth that rough touch with a tender kiss.

JULIET: Good pilgrim, you do wrong your hand too much,
Which mannerly devotion shows in this;
For saints have hands that pilgrims’ hands do touch,
And palm to palm is holy palmers’ kiss.

ROMEO: Have not saints lips, and holy palmers too?

JULIET: Ay, pilgrim, lips that they must use in prayer.

ROMEO: O, then, dear saint, let lips do what hands do;
They pray, grant thou, lest faith turn to despair.

JULIET: Saints do not move, though grant for prayers’ sake.

ROMEO: Then move not, while my prayer’s effect I take.
Thus from my lips, by yours, my sin is purged.

JULIET: Then have my lips the sin that they have took.

ROMEO: Sin from thy lips? O trespass sweetly urged!
Give me my sin again.

JULIET: You kiss by the book.

I could read this thread all day. So here are my non-traditional contributions.

It’s not a love poem at first glance, but I’ve heard it called the greatest love poem in the English language, and have never been able to completely disagree.

This Is Just to Say

I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold

--William Carlos Williams

And when I went to look that up, I noticed the following poem, by Witter Bynner.

More Lovely Than Antiquity

There comes a moment in her veins
Not of the earth, not of the rains,
Something not of stalks and stems
But of dim crowns and diadems,
Something commanding her to be
More ancient than antiquity
And to soothe her head on a pike above
The vacant circumstance of love.

***

Dark, but kind of awesome as poetry about love goes. :)

My favorite love poem is a song by French singer composer Francis Cabrel -
JE L’AIME À MOURIR
paroles et musique: copyright Francis Cabrel

Moi je n’étais rien
Mais voilà qu’aujourd’hui
Je suis le gardien
Du sommeil de ses nuits
Je l’aime à mourir
Vous pouvez détruire
Tout ce qu’il vous plaira
Elle n’aura qu’à ouvrir
L’espace de ses bras
Pour tout reconstruire (bis)
Je l’aime à mourir

Elle a gommé les chiffres
Des horloges du quartier
Elle a fait de ma vie
Des cocottes en papier
Des éclats de rires
Elle a bâti des ponts
Entre nous et le ciel
Et nous les traversons
À chaque fois qu’elle
Ne veut pas dormir (bis)
Je l’aime à mourir

Elle a dû faire toutes les guerres
Pour être si forte aujourd’hui
Elle a dû faire toutes les guerres
De la vie, et l’amour aussi

Elle vit de son mieux
Son rêve d’opaline
Elle danse au milieu
Des forêts qu’elle dessine
Je l’aime à mourir
Elle porte des rubans
Qu’elle laisse s’envoler
Elle me chante souvent
Que j’ai tort d’essayer
De les retenir (bis)
Je l’aime à mourir

Pour monter dans sa grotte
Cachée sous les toits
Je dois clouer des notes
À mes sabots de bois
Je l’aime à mourir
Je dois juste m’asseoir
Je ne dois pas parler
Je ne dois rien vouloir
Je dois juste essayer
De lui appartenir (bis)
Je l’aime à mourir

What a great thread!  I’m a bit of a poetry-hater, but I now feel inspired to run out and get me some e.e. cummings. Great Choices.  Nothing good to add, I was going to put down “When you are old” by Yeats, but someone beat me to it.

Even though my boyfriend, with whom I’ve been with for five years, is the love of my life and the man I’m planning on staying with forever, the person responsible for the most romantic moment of my life is my crappy college ex. And that’s because the night we got together, we were walking back to my house and he stopped in the street, took out the collected e.e.cummings and read me this poem:

being to timelessness as it’s to time,
love did no more begin than love will end:
where nothing is to breathe to stroll to swim
love is the air the ocean and the land

(do lovers suffer?all divinities
proudly descending put on deathful flesh:
are lovers glad?only their smallest joy’s
a universe emerging from a wish)

love is the voice under all silences,
the hope which has no opposite in fear:
the strength so strong mere force is feebleness:
the truth more first than sun more last than star

- -do lovers love?why then to heaven with hell.
whatever sages say and fools,all’s well

And then he tore the page of out the book and gave it to me. This was almost ten years ago today. We had a typically melodramatic college relationship, and aren’t really in touch any more, but I still have the poem .

First stanza of a poem I wrote back in med school:

Oh faithful collie at my feet
Do not wonder why I weep
For I might tell you, and you must sleep
Sometimes it hurts to feel so deep

Um. Love poem to a dog?