7.
She falls in love with the waitress.
8.
She starts by saying that she’s quitting the country,
that there’s nothing in London to keep her.
9.
He loses his voice, has to write it all down.
She spills a glass of wine, the ink blurs and swims
across the page. I’m sorry she says, and he nods,
his eyes turning to crystal.
10.
They laugh.
11.
They have passionate sex in the single toilet.
Outside, a lengthening queue tuts and frets.
Someone presses their ear to the door.
12.
She doesn’t believe him.
13.
They have 3 children. Some nights, she tells them
(again) how their father won her heart
over chicken gyoza and ebi katsu.
Whenever he hears this, something in him rises
like a bull-chested spinnaker.
14.
Her mobile rings. The moment falls, like a crumb,
to the napkin in her lap. She brushes it away.
15.
He learns a new language – says it in French or Swahili.
She’s mightily impressed, but doesn’t understand.
16.
She chokes on a noodle. The tips of her fingers turn blue
as she fights for breath, and fails. Later, he learns to love
the bite of alcohol and numbs his tongue with ice.
17.
She chokes on a noodle. He Heimlichs her.
She sees him in a different light,
as he dabs the sparkling sputum
from her lips.
18.
He watches the way she eats
and thinks better of saying anything.
19.
Before he can speak, she leans across the table,
fingers barely touching the corners of his mouth,
and says I know, already. I know.
GEORGE HERBERT
Love
Love bade me welcome: yet my soul drew back,
Guilty of dust and sin.
But quick-eyed Love, observing me grow slack
From my first entrance in,
Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning,
If I lacked any thing?
‘A guest’, I answered, ‘worthy to be here’:
Love said, ‘You shall be he.’
‘I the unkind, ungrateful? Ah my dear,
I cannot look on thee.’
Love took my hand, and smiling did reply,
‘Who made the eyes but I?’
‘Truth, Lord, but I have marred them: let my shame
Go where it doth deserve.’
‘And know you not’, says Love, ‘who bore the blame?’
‘My dear, then I will serve.’
‘You must sit down’, says Love, ‘and taste my meat’:
So I did sit and eat.
OLIVIA MCCANNON
Timing
It’s now my love for you is perfect as an egg
Soft-boiled – a quail’s egg with a mottled shell
Whose markings are the landscape of our world.
I peel – the skin is soft between my teeth
I roll it on my tongue and taste its heat
Then I choose to bite and eat or keep it whole.
WALT WHITMAN
Are You the New Person Drawn toward Me?
Are you the new person drawn toward me?
To begin with take warning, I am surely far different from what
you suppose;
Do you suppose you will find in me your ideal?
Do you think it so easy to have me become your lover?
Do you think the friendship of me would be unalloy’d
satisfaction?
Do you think I am trusty and faithful?
Do you see no further than this façade, this smooth and tolerant
manner of me?
Do you suppose yourself advancing on real ground toward a real
heroic man?
Have you no thought O dreamer that it may be all maya,
illusion?
W. B. YEATS
He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven
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.
ALICE OSWALD
Sonnet
I can’t sleep in case a few things you said
no longer apply. The matter’s endless,
but definitions alter what’s ahead
and you and words are like a hare and tortoise.
Aaaagh there’s no description – each a fractal
sectioned by silences, we have our own
skins to feel through and fall back through – awful
to make so much of something so unknown.
But even I – some shower-swift commitments
are all you’ll get; I mustn’t gauge or give
more than I take – which is a way to balance
between misprision and belief in love
both true and false, because I’m only just
short of a word to be the first to trust.
GALWAY KINNELL
Kissing the Toad
Somewhere this dusk
a girl puckers her mouth
and considers kissing
the toad a boy has plucked
from the cornfield and hands
her with both hands,
rough and lichenous
but for the immense ivory belly,
like those old fat cats
sprawling on Mediterranean beaches,
with popped eyes,
it watches the girl who might kiss it,
pisses, quakes, tries
to make its smile wider:
to love on, oh yes, to love on.
Haplessly
AMY LOWELL
The Bungler
You glow in my heart
Like the flames of uncounted candles.
But when I go to warm my hands,
My clumsiness overturns the light,
And then I stumble
Against the tables and chairs.
EDMUND SPENSER
from Amoretti
XXX
My love is like to ice, and I to fire:
how comes it then that this her cold so great
is not dissolv’d through my so hot desire,
but harder grows the more I her entreat?
Or how comes it that my exceeding heat
is not delayed by her heart frozen cold,
but that I burn much more in boiling sweat,
and feel my flames augmented manifold?
What more miraculous thing may be told
that fire, which all things melt, should harden ice;
and ice, which is congealed with senseless cold,
should kindle fire by wonderful device?
Such is the power of love in gentle mind
that it can alter all the course of kind.
W. B. YEATS
The Song of Wandering Aengus
I went out to the hazel wood,
Because a fire was in my head,
And cut and peeled a hazel wand,
And hooked a berry to a thread;
And when white moths were on the wing,
And moth-like stars were flickering out,
I dropped the berry in a stream
And caught a little silver trout.
When I had laid it on the floor
I went to blow the fire aflame,
But something
rustled on the floor,
And some one called me by my name;
It had become a glimmering girl
With apple blossom in her hair
Who called me by my name and ran
And faded through the brightening air.
Though I am old with wandering
Through hollow lands and hilly lands,
I will find out where she has gone,
And kiss her lips and take her hands;
And walk among long dappled grass,
And pluck till time and times are done
The silver apples of the moon,
The golden apples of the sun.
THOMAS CAMPION
Thrice toss these oaken ashes in the air,
Thrice sit thou mute in this enchanted chair;
Then thrice three times tie up this true love’s knot.
And murmur soft: ‘She will, or she will not.’
Go burn these poisonous weeds in yon blue fire,
These screech-owl’s feathers and this prickling briar,
This cypress gathered at a dead man’s grave,
That all thy fears and cares an end may have.
Then come, you fairies, dance with me a round;
Melt her hard heart with your melodious sound.
In vain are all the charms I can devise;
She hath an art to break them with her eyes.
THOMAS HARDY
A Broken Appointment
You did not come,
And marching Time drew on, and wore me numb. –
Yet less for loss of your dear presence there
Than that I thus found lacking in your make
That high compassion which can overbear
Reluctance for pure lovingkindness’ sake
Grieved I, when, as the hope-hour stroked its sum,
You did not come.
You love not me,
And love alone can lend you loyalty;
– I know and knew it. But, unto the store
Of human deeds divine in all but name,
Was it not worth a little hour or more
To add yet this: Once you, a woman, came
To soothe a time-torn man; even though it be
You love not me?
JOHN CROWE RANSOM
Piazza Piece
– I am a gentleman in a dustcoat trying
To make you hear. Your ears are soft and small
And listen to an old man not at all,
They want the young men’s whispering and sighing.
But see the roses on your trellis dying
And hear the spectral singing of the moon;
For I must have my lovely lady soon,
I am a gentleman in a dustcoat trying.
– I am a lady young in beauty waiting
Until my truelove comes, and then we kiss.
But what grey man among the vines is this
Whose words are dry and faint as in a dream?
Back from my trellis, Sir, before I scream!
I am a lady young in beauty waiting.
STEVIE SMITH
Infelice
Walking swiftly with a dreadful duchess,
He smiled too briefly, his face was as pale as sand,
He jumped into a taxi when he saw me coming,
Leaving me alone with a private meaning,
He loves me so much, my heart is singing.
Later at the Club when I rang him in the evening
They said: Sir Rat is dining, is dining, is dining,
No Madam, he left no message, ah how his silence speaks,
He loves me too much for words, my heart is singing.
The Pullman seats are here, the tickets for Paris, I am waiting,
Presently the telephone rings, it is his valet speaking,
Sir Rat is called away, to Scotland, his constituents,
(Ah the dreadful duchess, but he loves me best)
Best pleasure to the last, my heart is singing.
One night he came, it was four in the morning,
Walking slowly upstairs, he stands beside my bed,
Dear darling, lie beside me, it is too cold to stand speaking,
He lies down beside me, his face is like the sand,
He is in a sleep of love, my heart is singing.
Sleeping softly softly, in the morning I must wake him,
And waking he murmurs, I only came to sleep.
The words are so sweetly cruel, how deeply he loves me,
I say them to myself alone, my heart is singing.
Now the sunshine strengthens, it is ten in the morning,
He is so timid in love, he only needs to know,
He is my little child, how can he come if I do not call him,
I will write and tell him everything, I take the pen and write:
I love you so much, my heart is singing.
EPHELIA
To One That Asked Me Why I Loved J.G.
Why do I love? go ask the glorious sun
Why every day it round the world doth run:
Ask Thames and Tiber why they ebb and flow:
Ask damask roses why in June they blow:
Ask ice and hail the reason why they’re cold:
Decaying beauties, why they will grow old:
They’ll tell thee, Fate, that everything doth move,
Inforces them to this, and me to love.
There is no reason for our love or hate,
’Tis irresistible as Death or Fate;
’Tis not his face; I’ve sense enough to see,
That is not good, though doated on by me:
Nor is’t his tongue, that has this conquest won,
His carriage can to none obliging be,
’Tis rude, affected, full of vanity:
Strangely ill natur’d, peevish and unkind,
Unconstant, false, to jealousy inclin’d:
His temper could not have so great a power,
’Tis mutable, and changes every hour:
Those vigorous years that women so adore
Are past in him: he’s twice my age and more;
And yet I love this false, this worthless man,
With all the passion that a woman can;
Doat on his imperfections, though I spy
Nothing to love; I love, and know not why.
Since ’tis decreed in the dark book of Fate,
That I should love, and he should be ingrate.
SIR JOHN SUCKLING
Against Fruition
Fie upon hearts that burn with mutual fire;
I hate two minds that breathe but one desire;
Were I to curse th’ unhallowed sort of men,
I’d wish them to love, and be loved again.
Love’s a chameleon that lives on mere air,
And surfeits when it comes to grosser fare:
’Tis petty jealousies and little fears,
Hopes joined with doubts, and joys with April tears,
That crowns our love with pleasures: these are gone
When once we come to full fruition;
Like waking in a morning, when all night
Our fancy hath been fed with true delight.
Oh! what a stroke ’t would be! Sure I should die
Should I but hear my mistress once say ‘ay’.
That monster Expectation feeds too high
For any woman e’er to satisfy:
And no brave spirit ever cared for that
Which in down-beds with ease he could come at.
She’s but an honest whore that yields, although
She be as cold as ice, as pure as snow:
He that enjoys her hath no more to say
But ‘Keep us fasting if you’ll have us pray.’
Then, fairest mistress, hold the power you have
By still denying what we still do crave:
In keeping us in hopes strange things to see
That never were, nor are
, nor e’er shall be.
ROBERT BROWNING
Life in a Love
Escape me?
Never –
Beloved!
While I am I, and you are you,
So long as the world contains us both,
Me the loving and you the loth,
While the one eludes, must the other pursue.
My life is a fault at last, I fear:
It seems too much like a fate, indeed!
Though I do my best I shall scarce succeed.
But what if I fail of my purpose here?
It is but to keep the nerves at strain,
To dry one’s eyes and laugh at a fall,
And, baffled, get up and begin again, –
So the chase takes up one’s life, that’s all.
While, look but once from your farthest bound
At me so deep in the dust and dark,
No sooner the old hope goes to ground
Than a new one, straight to the self-same mark,
I shape me –
Ever
Removed!
Incurably
DOROTHY PARKER
Symptom Recital
I do not like my state of mind;
I’m bitter, querulous, unkind.
I hate my legs, I hate my hands,
I do not yearn for lovelier lands.
I dread the dawn’s recurrent light;
I hate to go to bed at night.
I snoot at simple, earnest folk.
I cannot take the gentlest joke.
I find no peace in paint or type.
My world is but a lot of tripe.
I’m disillusioned, empty-breasted.
For what I think, I’d be arrested.
I am not sick, I am not well.
My quondam dreams are shot to hell.
My soul is crushed, my spirit sore;
I do not like me any more.
I cavil, quarrel, grumble, grouse.
I ponder on the narrow house.
I shudder at the thought of men…
I’m due to fall in love again.