I
they say the sun shone now and again
but it was generally cloudy
with far too much rain
they say babies were born
married couples made love
(often with eachother)
and people died
(sometimes violently)
they say it was an average
ordinary
moderate
run of the mill
commonorgarden
summer
… but it wasn’t
for i locked a yellowdoor
and i threw away the key
and i spent summer with monika
and monika spent summer with me
unlike everybody else
we made friends with the weather…
mostdays the sun called
and sprawled
allover the place
or the wind blew in
as breezily as ever
and ran its fingers through our hair
but usually
it was the moon that kept us company
somedays we thought about the seaside
and built sandcastles on the blankets
and paddled in the pillows
or swam in the sink
and played with the shoals of dishes
otherdays we went for long walks
around the table
and picnicked on the banks
of the settee
or just sunbathed lazily
in front of the fire
until the shilling set on the horizon
we danced a lot that summer…
bosanovaed by the bookcase
or maddisoned instead
hulligullied by the oven
or twisted round the bed
at first we kept birds
in a transistor box
to sing for us
but sadly they died
we being too embraced in eachother
to feed them
but it didn’t really matter
because we made lovesongs with our bodies
i became the words
and she put me to music
they say it was just
like
anyother
summer
… but it wasn’t
for we had love and eachother
and the moon for company
when i spent summer with monika
and
monika
spent summer
with me
SIR PHILIP SIDNEY
When to my deadly pleasure,
When to my lively torment,
Lady mine eyes remained,
Joined alas to your beams,
With violence of heav’nly
Beauty tied to virtue,
Reason abashed retired,
Gladly my senses yielded.
Gladly my senses yielding,
Thus to betray my heart’s fort,
Left me devoid of all life;
They to the beamy Suns went,
Where by the death of all deaths,
Find to what harm they hastened,
Like to the silly Sylvan,
Burn’d by the light he best liked,
When with a fire he first met.
Yet, yet, a life to their death,
Lady you have reserved,
Lady the life of all love;
For though my sense be from me,
And I be dead who want sense,
Yet do we both live in you.
Turned anew by your means,
Unto the flower that ay turns,
As you, alas, my Sun bends;
Thus do I fall to rise thus,
Thus do I die to live thus,
Changed to a change, I change not.
Thus may I not be from you:
Thus be my senses on you:
Thus what I think is of you:
Thus what I seek is in you:
All what I am, it is you!
A. D. HOPE
A Blason
My foundling, my fondling, my frolic first-footer,
My circler, my sidler, shy-sayer yes-and-no,
Live-levin, light-looker, darter and doubter,
Pause of perhaps in my turvey of touch-and-go;
My music, my mandrake, merrythought to my marrow-bone,
Tropic to my true-pole and ripe to my rich,
Wonderer, wanderer, walker-in-wood-alone,
Eye-asker, acher, angel-with-an-itch;
My tittup, my tansy, tease-tuft in tumble-toil,
My frisker, my fettler, trickster and trier,
Knick-knacker, knee-knocker, cleaver in kindle-coil,
My handler, my honeysuckler, phoenix-on-fire;
My cunny, my cracker-jack, my cantrip, my kissing-crust,
Rock-rump and wring-rib in wrestle of randy-bout,
Lithe-lier, limber-leg, column of counter-thrust,
My heave-horn, my hyphener, dew-dealer in-and-out;
My, ah, my rough-rider now; my, oh, my deep-driver,
Burly-bags, bramble-ball, brace-belly, bruise-bud,
Shuttle-cock, slow-shagger, sweet-slugger, swift-swiver,
My, YES now and yes NOW – rip, river and flood!
My breacher, my broacher, my burst-boy, my bubblyjock,
My soberer, slacken-soon, numb-nub and narrower,
My wrinkler, my rumplet, prim-purse of poppycock,
Slither-slot, shrivel-shaft, shrinker and sorrower;
My soft-sigher, snuggle-snake, sleeper and slaker,
My dandler, my deft-dear, dreamer of double-deal,
And, oh, my wry-writher, my worker and waker,
Stirrer and stander now, fledge to my feel;
My prodigy, prodigal, palindrome of pleasure,
Rise-ripe and rive-rose, rod of replevin,
Now furrow my fallow, now trench to my treasure,
Harvester, harbinger, harrow my heaven.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
from A Midsummer Night’s Dream, V, i
HIPPOLYTA:
’Tis strange, my Theseus, that these lovers speak of.
THESEUS:
More strange than true. I never may believe
These antique fables, nor these fairy toys.
Lovers and madmen have such seething brains,
Such shaping fantasies, that apprehend
More than cool reason ever comprehends.
The lunatic, the lover, and the poet
Are of imagination all compact:
One sees more devils than vast hell can hold;
That is the madman: the lover, all as frantic,
Sees Helen’s beauty in a brow of Egypt:
The poet’s eye, in a fine frenzy rolling,
Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven;
And as imagination bodies forth
The forms of things unknown, the poet’s pen
Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing
A local habitation and a name.
Such tricks hath strong imagination,
That if it would but apprehend some joy,
It comprehends some bringer of that joy:
Or, in the night, imagining some fear,
How easy is a bush suppos’d a bear!
THOMAS MIDDLETON
Love is like a lamb, and love is like a lion;
Fly from love, he fights; fight, then does he fly on;
Love is all in fire, and yet is ever freezing;
Love is much in winning, yet is more in leezing;
Love is ever sick, and yet is never dying;
Love is ever true, and yet is ever lying;
Love does dote in liking, and is mad in loathing;
Love indeed is anything, yet indeed is nothing.
PIET HEIN
What Love Is Like
Love is like
a pineapple,
sweet and
undefinable.
From a distance
ROBERT BURNS
A Red, Red Rose
My luve is like a red, red rose,
That’s newly sprung in June:
My luve is like the melodie,
That’s sweetly play’d in tune.
As fair art thou, my bonie lass,
So deep in luve am I,
And I will luve thee still, my dear,
Till a’ the seas gang dry.
Till a’ the seas gang dry, my dear,
And the rocks melt wi’ the sun!
And I will luve thee still, my dear,
While the sands o’ life shall run.
And fare-thee-weel, my only luve,
And fare-thee-weel a while!
And I will come again, my luve,
Tho’ it were ten-thousand mile.
E. B. WHITE
Natural History
(A Letter to Katharine, from the King Edward Hotel, Toronto)
The spider, dropping down from twig,
Unwinds a thread of her devising:
A thin, premeditated rig
To use in rising.
And all the journey down through space,
In cool descent, and loyal-hearted,
She builds a ladder to the place
From which she started.
Thus I, gone forth, as spiders do,
In spider’s web a truth discerning,
Attach one silken strand to you
For my returning.
EDWIN MORGAN
One Cigarette
No smoke without you, my fire.
After you left,
your cigarette glowed on in my ashtray
and sent up a long thread of such quiet grey
I smiled to wonder who would believe its signal
of so much love. One cigarette
in the non-smoker’s tray.
As the last spire
trembles up, a sudden draught
blows it winding into my face.
Is it smell, is it taste?
You are here again, and I am drunk on your tobacco lips.
Out with the light.
Let the smoke lie back in the dark.
Till I hear the very ash
sigh down among the flowers of brass
I’ll breathe, and long past midnight, your last kiss.
JOHN CLARE
To Mary
I sleep with thee, and wake with thee,
And yet thou art not there;
I fill my arms with thoughts of thee,
And press the common air.
Thy eyes are gazing upon mine,
When thou art out of sight;
My lips are always touching thine,
At morning, noon, and night.
I think and speak of other things
To keep my mind at rest:
But still to thee my memory clings
Like love in woman’s breast.
I hide it from the world’s wide eye
And think and speak contrary;
But soft the wind comes from the sky,
And whispers tales of Mary.
The night wind whispers in my ear,
The moon shines in my face;
A burden still of chilling fear
I find in every place.
The breeze is whispering in the bush,
And the dews fall from the tree,
All, sighing on, and will not hush
Some pleasant tales of thee.
ANONYMOUS
My love is faren in a land;
Alas why is she so?
And I am so sore bound
I may not come her to.
She hath my heart in hold
Wherever she ride or go,
With true love a thousandfold.
ANONYMOUS
Westron wind, when will thou blow,
The small rain down can rain?
Christ if my love were in my arms,
And I in my bed again.
EDMUND SPENSER
from Amoretti
LXXVIII
Lacking my love I go from place to place,
like a young fawn that late hath lost the hind;
and seek each where, where last I saw her face,
whose image yet I carry fresh in mind.
I seek the fields with her late footing signed,
I seek her bower with her late presence decked.
yet nor in field nor bower I her can find;
yet field and bower are full of her aspect.
But when my eyes I thereunto direct,
then idly back return to me again,
and when I hope to see there true object,
I find my self but fed with fancies vain.
and let my thoughts behold her self in me.
MATTHEW ARNOLD
To Marguerite – Continued
Yes! in the sea of life enisled,
With echoing straits between us thrown,
Dotting the shoreless watery wild,
We mortal millions live alone.
The islands feel the enclasping flow,
And then their endless bounds they know.
But when the moon their hollows lights,
And they are swept by balms of spring,
And in their glens, on starry nights,
The nightingales divinely sing;
And lovely notes, from shore to shore,
Across the sounds and channels pour –
Oh! then a longing like despair
Is to their farthest caverns sent;
For surely once, they feel, we were
Parts of a single continent!
Now round us spreads the watery plain –
Oh might our marges meet again!
Who order’d, that their longing’s fire
Should be, as soon as kindled, cool’d?
Who renders vain their deep desire? –
A God, a God their severance ruled!
And bade betwixt their shores to be
The unplumb’d, salt, estranging sea.
ANDREW MARVELL
The Definition of Love
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’er have flown,
But vainly flapped its tinsel wing.
And yet I quickly might arrive
Where my extended soul is fixed,
But Fate does iron wedges drive,
And always crowds itself betwixt.
For Fate with jealous eye does see
Two perfect loves, nor lets them close:
Their union would her ruin be,
And her tyrannic pow’r depose.
And therefore her decrees of steel
Us as the distant poles have placed,
(Though Love’s whole world on us doth wheel)
Not by themselves to be embraced,
Unless the giddy heaven fall,
And earth some new convulsion tear;
And, us to join, the world should all
Be cramped 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 debars,
Is the conjunction of the mind,
And opposition of the stars.
MICHEAL O’SIADHAIL
Between
As we fall into step I ask a penny for your thoughts.
‘Oh, nothing,’ you say, ‘well, nothing so easily bought.’
Sliding into the rhythm of your silence, I almost forget
how lonely I’d been until that autumn morning we met.
At bedtime up along my childhood’s stairway, tongues
of fire cast shadows. Too earnest, too highstrung.
My desire is endless: others ended when I’d only started.
Then, there was you: so whole-hog, so wholehearted.
Think of the thousands of nights and the shadows fought.
And the mornings of light. I try to read your thought.
In the strange openness of your face, I’m powerless.
Always this love. Always this infinity between us.
JOHN DONNE
Air and Angels
Twice or thrice had I loved thee,
Before I knew thy face or name;
So in a voice, so in a shapeless flame,
Angels affect us oft, and worshipped be.
Still when, to where thou wert, I came
Some lovely glorious nothing I did see,
But since my soul, whose child love is,
Takes limbs of flesh, and else could nothing do,
More subtle than the parent is,
Love must not be, but take a body too,
And therefore what thou wert, and who,
I bid love ask; and now
That it assume thy body I allow,
And fix itself in thy lip, eye, and brow.
Whilst thus to ballast love I thought,
And so more steadily to have gone,