My mother said to me not to be talking with you today,
or tomorrow, or on the Sunday;
it was a bad time she took for telling me that;
it was shutting the door after the house was robbed.
My heart is as black as the blackness of the sloe,
or as the black coal that is on the smith’s forge;
or as the sole of a shoe left in white halls;
it was you put that darkness over my life.
You have taken the east from me; you have taken the west from me;
you have taken what is before me and what is behind me;
you have taken the moon, you have taken the sun from me;
and my fear is great that you have taken God from me!
SIR WALTER RALEGH
As you came from the holy land
Of Walsingham,
Met you not with my true love
By the way as you came?
How shall I know your true love,
That have met many one
As I went to the holy land,
That have come, that have gone?
She is neither white nor brown
But as the heavens fair,
There is none hath a form so divine
In the earth or the air.
Such an one did I meet, good sir,
Such an angelic face,
Who like a queen, like a nymph, did appear
By her gait, by her grace.
She hath left me here all alone,
All alone as unknown,
Who sometimes did me lead with herself,
And me loved as her own.
What’s the cause that she leaves you alone
And a new way doth take,
Who loved you once as her own
And her joy did you make?
I have loved her all my youth,
But now old, as you see,
Love likes not the falling fruit
From the withered tree.
Know that love is a careless child
And forgets promise past,
He is blind, he is deaf when he list,
And in faith never fast.
His desire is a dureless content
And a trustless joy,
He is won with a world of despair
And is lost with a toy.
Of women kind such indeed is the love,
Or the word Love abused,
Under which many childish desires
And conceits are excused.
But true love is a durable fire
In the mind ever burning;
Never sick, never old, never dead,
From itself never turning.
WILLIAM SOUTAR
The Tryst
O luely, luely cam she in
And luely she lay doun:
I kent her by her caller lips
And her breists sae sma’ and roun’.
A’ thru the nicht we spak nae word
Nor sinder’d bane frae bane:
A’ thru the nicht I heard her hert
Gang soundin’ wi’ my ain.
It was about the waukrife hour
Whan cocks begin to craw
That she smool’d saftly thru the mirk
Afore the day wud daw.
Sae luely, luely, cam she in
Sae luely was she gaen
And wi’ her a’ my simmer days
Like they had never been.
FLEUR ADCOCK
Incident
When you were lying on the white sand,
a rock under your head, and smiling,
(circled by dead shells), I came to you
and you said, reaching to take my hand,
‘Lie down.’ So for a time we lay
warm on the sand, talking and smoking,
easy; while the grovelling sea behind
sucked at the rocks and measured the day.
Lightly I fell asleep then, and fell
into a cavernous dream of falling.
It was all the cave-myths, it was all
the myths of tunnel or tower or well –
Alice’s rabbit-hole into the ground,
or the path of Orpheus: a spiral staircase
to hell, furnished with danger and doubt.
Stumbling, I suddenly woke; and found
water about me. My hair was wet,
and you were lying on the grey sand
waiting for the lapping tide to take me:
watching, and lighting a cigarette.
ANONYMOUS
The Water is Wide
The water is wide, I can’t swim o’er
Nor do I have wings to fly
Give me a boat that can carry two
And both shall row, my love and I
A ship there is and she sails the sea
She’s loaded deep as deep can be
But not so deep as the love I’m in
I know not if I sink or swim
I leaned my back against an oak
Thinking it was a trusty tree
But first it swayed and then it broke
So did my love prove false to me
Oh love is handsome and love is kind
Sweet as flower when first it is new
But love grows old and waxes cold
And fades away like the morning dew
Must I go bound while you go free
Must I love a man who doesn’t love me
Must I be born with so little art
As to love a man who’ll break my heart
A. E. HOUSMAN
He would not stay for me; and who can wonder?
He would not stay for me to stand and gaze.
I shook his hand and tore my heart in sunder
And went with half my life about my ways.
JACKIE KAY
Her
I had been told about her.
How she would always, always.
How she would never, never.
I’d watched and listened
but I still fell for her,
how she always, always.
How she never, never.
In the small brave night,
her lips, butterfly moments.
I tried to catch her and she laughed
a loud laugh that cracked me in two,
but then I had been told about her,
how she would always, always.
How she would never, never.
We two listened to the wind.
We two galloped a pace.
We two, up and away, away, away.
And now she’s gone,
like she said she would go.
But then I had been told about her –
how she would always, always.
Regretfully
EDNA ST VINCENT MILLAY
When I too long have looked upon your face,
Wherein for me a brightness unobscured
Save by the mists of brightness has its place,
And terrible beauty not to be endured,
I turn away reluctant from your light,
And stand irresolute, a mind undone,
A silly, dazzled thing deprived of sight
From having looked too long upon the sun.
Then is my daily life a narrow room
In which a little while, uncertainly,
Surrounded by impenetrable gloom,
Among familiar things grown strange to me
Making my way, I pause, and feel, and hark,
Till I become accustomed to the dark.
MATTHEW SWEENEY
Cacti
After she left he bought another cactus
just like the one she’d bought him
in the airport in Marrakesh. He had to hunt
through London, and then, in Camden,
among hordes of hand-holding kids
who clog the market, he found it,
bought it, and brought it home to hers.
Next week he was back for another,
&n
bsp; then another. He was coaxed into trying
different breeds, bright ones flashing red –
like the smile of the shop-girl
he hadn’t noticed. He bought a rug, too,
sand-coloured, for the living-room,
and spent a weekend repainting
the walls beige, the ceiling pale blue.
He had the worn, black suite re-upholstered
in tan, and took to lying on the sofa
in a brown djellaba, with the cacti all around,
and Arab music on. If she should come back,
he thought, she might feel at home.
DORA SIGERSON SHORTER
I want to talk to thee of many things
Or sit in silence when the robin sings
His little song, when comes the winter bleak
I want to sit beside thee, cheek to cheek.
I want to hear thy voice my name repeat,
To fill my heart with echoes ever sweet;
I want to hear thy love come calling me
I want to seek and find but thee, but thee.
I want to talk to thee of little things
So fond, so frail, so foolish that one clings
To keep them ours – who could but understand
A joy in speaking them, thus hand in hand
Beside the fire; our joys, our hopes, our fears,
Our secret laughter, or unchidden tears;
Each day old dreams come back with beating wings,
I want to speak of these forgotten things.
I want to feel thy arms around me pressed,
To hide my weeping eyes upon thy breast;
I want thy strength to hold and comfort me
For all the grief I had in losing thee.
JOHN CLARE
How Can I Forget
That farewell voice of love is never heard again,
Yet I remember it and think on it with pain:
I see the place she spoke when passing by,
The flowers were blooming as her form drew nigh,
That voice is gone, with every pleasing tone –
Loved but one moment and the next alone.
‘Farewell’ the winds repeated as she went
Walking in silence through the grassy bent;
The wild flowers – they ne’er looked so sweet before –
Bowed in farewells to her they’ll see no more.
In this same spot the wild flowers bloom the same
In scent and hue and shape, ay, even name.
’Twas here she said farewell and no one yet
Has so sweet spoken – How can I forget?
LINTON KWESI JOHNSON
Hurricane Blues
langtime lovah
mi mine run pan yu all di while
an mi membah how fus time
di two a wi come een – it did seem
like two shallow likkle snakin stream
mawchin mapless hapless a galang
tru di ruggid lanscape a di awt sang
an a soh wi did a gwaan
sohtil dat fateful day
awftah di pashan a di hurricane
furdah dan imaginaeshan ar dream
wi fine wiself lay-dung pan di same bedrack
flowin now togedah as wan stream
ridin sublime tru love lavish terrain
lush an green an brite awftah di rain
shimmarin wid glittahrin eyes
glowin in di glare a di smilin sun
langtime lovah
mi feel blue fi true wen mi tink bout yu
blue like di sky lingahrin pramis af rain
in di leakin lite in di hush af a evenin twilite
wen mi membah how fus time
di two wi come een – it did seem
like a lang lang rivah dat is wide an deep
somtime wi woz silent like di langwidge a rackstone
somtime wi woodah sing wi rivah sang as wi a wine a galang
somtime wi jus cool an caam andah plenty shady tree
somtime sawfly lappin bamboo root as dem swing an sway
somtime cascadin carefree doun a steep gully bank
somtime turbulent in tempament wi flood wi bank
but weddah ebb ar flow tru rain tru drout
wi nevah stray far fram love rigid route
ole-time sweet-awt
up til now mi still cyaan andastan
ow wi get bag doun inna somuch silt an san
rackstone debri lag-jam
sohtil wi ad woz fi flow wi separet pawt
now traversin di tarrid terrain a love lanscape
runnin fram di polueshan af a cantrite awt
mi lang fi di marvelous miracle a hurricane
fi carry mi goh a meet in stream agen
lamentin mi saltid fate
sohmizin seh it too late
T. S. ELIOT
La Figlia Che Piange
O quam te memorem virgo…
Stand on the highest pavement of the stair –
Weave, weave the sunlight in your hair –
Clasp your flowers to you with a pained surprise –
Fling them to the ground and turn
With a fugitive resentment in your eyes:
But weave, weave the sunlight in your hair.
So I would have had him leave,
So I would have had her stand and grieve,
So he would have left
As the soul leaves the body torn and bruised,
As the mind deserts the body it has used.
I should find
Some way incomparably light and deft,
Some way we both should understand,
Simple and faithless as a smile and shake of the hand.
She turned away, but with the autumn weather
Compelled my imagination many days,
Many days and many hours:
Her hair over her arms and her arms full of flowers.
And I wonder how they should have been together!
I should have lost a gesture and a pose.
Sometimes these cogitations still amaze
The troubled midnight and the noon’s repose.
WILLIAM EMPSON
Villanelle
It is the pain, it is the pain, endures.
Your chemic beauty burned my muscles through.
Poise of my hands reminded me of yours.
What later purge from this deep toxin cures?
What kindness now could the old salve renew?
It is the pain, it is the pain, endures.
The infection slept (custom or change inures)
And when pain’s secondary phase was due
Poise of my hands reminded me of yours.
How safe I felt, whom memory assures,
Rich that your grace safely by heart I knew.
It is the pain, it is the pain, endures.
My stare drank deep beauty that still allures.
My heart pumps yet the poison draught of you.
Poise of my hands reminded me of yours.
You are still kind whom the same shape immures.
Kind and beyond adieu. We miss our cue.
It is the pain, it is the pain, endures.
Poise of my hands reminded me of yours.
THOMAS HARDY
At Castle Boterel
As I drive to the junction of lane and highway,
And the drizzle bedrenches the waggonette,
I look behind at the fading byway,
And see on its slope, now glistening wet,
Distinctly yet
Myself and a girlish form benighted
In dry March weather. We climb the road
Beside a chaise. We had just alighted
To ease the sturdy pony’s load
When he sighed and slowed.
What we did as we climbed, and what we talked of
Matters not much, nor to what it led, –
Something that life will not be balked of
Without rude reason till hope is dead,
And feeling fled.
It filled but a minute. But was there ever
A time of such quality, since or before,
In that hill’s story? To one mind never,
Though it has been climbed, foot-swift, foot-sore,
By thousands more.
Primaeval rocks form the road’s steep border,
And much have they faced there, first and last,
Of the transitory in Earth’s long order;
But what they record in colour and cast
Is – that we two passed.
And to me, though Time’s unflinching rigour,
In mindless rote, has ruled from sight
The substance now, one phantom figure
Remains on the slope, as when that night
Saw us alight.
I look and see it there, shrinking, shrinking,
I look back at it amid the rain
For the very last time; for my sand is sinking,
And I shall traverse old love’s domain
Never again.
VIKRAM SETH
Progress Report
My need has frayed with time; you said it would.
It has; I can walk again across the flood
Of gold silk poppies on the straw-gold hills
Under a deep Californian sky that expels
All truant clouds; watch squads of cattle graze
By the radio-telescope; blue-battered jays