In memory of loves lost and
appreciation of loves found.
Introduction copyright © 2017 by Jessica Strand.
Compilation copyright © 2017 by Jessica Strand and Leslie Jonath.
Illustrations copyright © 2017 by Jennifer Orkin Lewis.
Pages 92–95 constitute a continuation of the copyright page.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher.
ISBN: 978-1-4521-5623-1 (epub, mobi)
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data available.
ISBN: 978-1-4521-5599-9 (hc)
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Contents
INTRODUCTION 5
DESIRE & LONGING 9
THIS MUCH AND MORE 10
DITTY OF FIRST DESIRE 11
OPENNESS 12
TWENTY-ONE LOVE POEMS (POEM II) 15
POEM FROM THE DESERT ROAD (KURUNTOKAI, VERSE 237) 17
POEM FROM THE JASMINE-FILLED WOODS (KURUNTOKAI, VERSE 220) 18
LOVE SONG FOR LUCINDA 21
CHOICE 22
THE DREAM 25
LOVE’S PHILOSOPHY 26
A LOVE SONG 27
THE THREE JAPANESE TANKAS 30
THE GARDEN 31
(I CARRY YOUR HEART WITH ME) 32
BOND AND FREE 34
HEART-BREAK & LOSS 35
WHEN YOU ARE OLD 37
THE HEART’S MEMORY OF THE SUN GROWS FAINT 38
NEUTRAL TONES 40
ABSOLUTELY CLEAR 41
THE LESSON OF THE FALLING LEAVES 43
A COMPLAINT 44
THE SMILE 45
ONE ART 46
DO NOT ASK ME FOR THAT LOVE AGAIN 48
MUSIC WHEN SOFT VOICES DIE (TO—) 50
LOVE AFTER LOVE 51
THE WEEPING GIRL (LA FIGLIA CHE PIANGE) 53
BREAD AND MUSIC 55
DO NOT STAND BY MY GRAVE AND WEEP 56
SORROWS OF THE MOON 58
DREAMING OF LI PO 59
TOMORROW 62
PASSION & PARTNER SHIP 63
LOVE SONG 64
FINAL SOLILOQUY OF THE INTERIOR PARAMOUR 66
BEI HENNEF 67
SONNET XVI 69
WILD NIGHTS – WILD NIGHTS! 70
DEEP IN LOVE 71
A GLIMPSE 72
LET ME NOT TO THE MARRIAGE OF TRUE MINDS (SONNET 116) 74
HOW DO I LOVE THEE? (SONNET 43) 75
MEETING AT NIGHT 76
HARMONY IN THE BOUDOIR 78
LOVE SONG 79
THE OWL AND THE PUSSY-CAT 81
A WORD TO HUSBANDS 83
CAMOMILE TEA 84
FOR LOVE 86
TO MY DEAR AND LOVING HUSBAND 89
OUR MASTERPIECE IS THE PRIVATE LIFE 90
CREDITS 92
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 96
ABOUT THE AUTHOR 97
INTRODUCTION
“Poetry is the spontaneous overflow ofpowerful feelings: it takes its origin fromemotion recollected in tranquility.”
—WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
The beauty of a great poem is that it gives language to an emotion that we’re unable to express otherwise. I can’t think of another art form where words are the medium to crystallize the depths of our emotional life. Poetry at its best makes us feel understood.
In this anthology, we focus on the endless territory of our hearts; we focus on love. These poems look at every incarnation of our affection, from the moment Eros strikes to the sickening rootless feeling of a broken heart. The book is divided into three sections: Desire & Longing, Heartbreak & Loss, and Passion & Partnership. By organizing the anthology this way, it will help you find poems that fit the sentiment you’re trying to convey, or the emotions you’re trying to understand—or it might just make it easier and more fun to read.
The book contains fifty poems from different cultures and time periods, each charting the zigzagging road of love. From Wislawa Szymborska’s “Openness,” in which the first few lines throw us into the raw fervor of desire: “Here we are, naked lovers / beautiful to each other—and that’s enough— / the leaves of our eyelids our only covers, / we’re lying amidst deep night.” To the whimsical, crazy passion found in Joseph Brodsky’s “Love Song”: “If you were drowning, I’d come to the rescue, / wrap you in a blanket and pour hot tea. / If I were a sheriff, I’d arrest you / and keep you in the cell under lock and key.” To the more cynical humor of Ogden Nash’s “A Word to Husbands”: “To keep your marriage brimming, / With love in the loving cup, / Whenever you’re wrong, admit it; / Whenever you’re right, shut up.”
Love is the main emotion that defines so many other things in our lives: age (our first great love), death (I loved him/her), friendship (s/he was a loving friend), or the way we look at someone’s character (such a loving person). Thinking about this collection, I realized that love defines our view and experience of the world. Without love we have no sense of ourselves, we’re adrift. With love, all relationships, reasons for our actions, and choices that we make are clearer. We live striving to be loved—and wanting, hoping to show love to others. Without love, life feels unlived. As Alfred Lord Tennyson said so aptly, “Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.”
With a world so full of love poems, how did I decide to choose these fifty? It took time. Time recalling poems I loved in college and pinned up on my wall; poems I recited to friends, to lovers, to my son; poems I read at weddings and funerals—and also to myself, over and over again, when nothing made sense but the poem in front of me. There are so many beautiful poems about love that to whittle it down to fifty is nearly impossible. I hope I’ve chosen poems that will resonate with you. You could pick those ten, fifteen, or twenty that ring true for you—or you may find just one, one poem that speaks to you and helps you understand that feeling you’ve never been able to put into words.
—Jessica Strand
DESIRE & LONGING
THIS MUCH AND MORE
by Djuna Barnes
If my lover were a comet
Hung in air,
I would braid my leaping body
In his hair.
Yea, if they buried him ten leagues
Beneath the loam,
My fingers they would learn to dig
And I’d plunge home!
DITTY OF FIRST DESIRE
by Federico García Lorca
In the green morning
I wanted to be a heart.
A heart.
And in the ripe evening
I wanted to be a nightingale.
A nightingale.
(Soul,
turn orange-colored.
Soul,
turn the color of love.)
In the vivid morning
I wanted to be myself.
A heart.
And at the evening’s end
I wanted to be my voice.
A nightingale.
Soul,
turn orange-colored.
Soul,
turn the color of love.
OPENNESS
by Wislawa Szymborska
Here we are, naked lovers,
beautiful to each other—and that’s enough—
the leaves of our eyelids our only covers,
we’re lying amidst deep night.
But they kn
ow about us, they know,
the four corners, and the stove nearby us.
Clever shadows also know
the table knows, but keeps quiet.
Our teacups know full well
why the tea is getting cold.
And old Swift can surely tell
that his book’s been put on hold.
Even the birds are in the know:
I saw them writing in the sky
brazenly and openly
the very name I call you by.
The trees? Could you explain to me
their unrelenting whispering?
The wind may know, you say to me,
but how, is just a mystery.
A moth surprised us through the blinds,
it’s wings a fuzzy flutter.
It’s silent path—see how it winds
in a stubborn holding pattern.
Maybe it sees where our eyes fail
with an insect’s inborn sharpness.
I never sensed, nor could you tell
that our hearts were aglow in the darkness.
TWENTY-ONE LOVE POEMS (POEM II)
by Adrienne Rich
I wake up in your bed. I know I have been dreaming.
Much earlier, the alarm broke us from each other,
you’ve been at your desk for hours. I know what I dreamed:
our friend the poet comes into my room
where I’ve been writing for days,
drafts, carbons, poems are scattered everywhere,
and I want to show her one poem
which is the poem of my life. But I hesitate,
and wake. You’ve kissed my hair
to wake me. I dreamed you were a poem,
I say, a poem I wanted to show someone . . .
and I laugh and fall dreaming again
of the desire to show you to everyone I love,
to move openly together
in the pull of gravity, which is not simple,
which carries the feathered grass a long way down the
upbreathing air.
POEM FROM THE DESERT ROAD (KURUNTOKAI, VERSE 237)
by Allur Nanmula
Talaivan says—
Fearlessly, my heart has departed
to embrace my beloved.
If its arms are too slack to hold her
what use is it?
The distances between us stretch long.
Must I think of the many forests
where deadly tigers rise up roaring
like the waves of the dark ocean
standing between us? I don’t dare.
POEM FROM THE JASMINE-FILLED WOODS (KURUNTOKAI, VERSE 220)
by Okkur Macatti
Talaivi says—
The millet grew and now is stubble
nibbled by stags while jasmine blossoms flourish
alongside, their buds unfolding to show white petals
like a wildcat’s smile.
Evening comes, scented with jasmine
bringing bees to the buds,
but see, he hasn’t come,
he who left for other riches.
LOVE SONG FOR LUCINDA
by Langston Hughes
Love
Is a ripe plum
Growing on a purple tree.
Taste it once
And the spell of its enchantment
Will never let you be.
Love
Is a bright star
Glowing in far Southern skies.
Look too hard
And its burning flame
Will always hurt your eyes.
Love
Is a high mountain
Stark in a windy sky.
If you
Would never lose your breath
Do not climb too high.
CHOICE
by Angela Morgan
I’d rather have the thought of you
To hold against my heart,
My spirit to be taught of you
With west winds blowing,
Than all the warm caresses
Of another love’s bestowing,
Or all the glories of the world
In which you had no part.
I’d rather have the theme of you
To thread my nights and days,
I’d rather have the dream of you
With faint stars glowing,
I’d rather have the want of you,
The rich, elusive taunt of you
Forever and forever and forever unconfessed
Than claim the alien comfort
Of any other’s breast.
O lover! O my lover,
That this should come to me!
I’d rather have the hope for you,
Ah, Love, I’d rather grope for you
Within the great abyss
Than claim another’s kiss —
Alone I’d rather go my way
Throughout eternity.
THE DREAM
by Edna St. Vincent Millay
Love, if I weep it will not matter,
And if you laugh I shall not care;
Foolish am I to think about it,
But it is good to feel you there.
Love, in my sleep I dreamed of waking, —
White and awful the moonlight reached
Over the floor, and somewhere, somewhere,
There was a shutter loose, —it screeched!
Swung in the wind, —and no wind blowing! —
I was afraid, and turned to you,
Put out my hand to you for comfort, —
And you were gone! Cold, cold as dew,
Under my hand the moonlight lay!
Love, if you laugh I shall not care,
But if I weep it will not matter, —
Ah, it is good to feel you there!
LOVE’S PHILOSOPHY
by Percy Bysshe Shelley
The fountains mingle with the river
And the rivers with the ocean,
The winds of heaven mix for ever
With a sweet emotion;
Nothing in the world is single;
All things by a law divine
In one spirit meet and mingle—
Why not I with thine?
See the mountains kiss high heaven
And the waves clasp one another;
No sister-flower would be forgiven
If it disdain’d its brother;
And the sunlight clasps the earth
And the moonbeams kiss the sea:
If thou kiss not me?
A LOVE SONG
by William Carlos Williams
What have I to say to you
When we shall meet?
Yet—
I lie here thinking of you.
The stain of love
Is upon the world.
Yellow, yellow, yellow,
It eats into the leaves,
Smears with saffron
The horned branches that lean
Heavily
Against a smooth purple sky.
There is no light—
Only a honey-thick stain
That drips from leaf to leaf
And limb to limb
Spoiling the colors
Of the whole world.
I am alone.
The weight of love
Has buoyed me up
Till my head
Knocks against the sky.
See me!
My hair is dripping with nectar—
Starlings carry it
On their black wings.
See, at last
My arms and my hands
Are lying idle.
How can I tell
If I shall ever love you again
As I do now?
THE THREE JAPANESE TANKAS
by Ono no Komachi
1
Should the world of love
&nbs
p; end in darkness,
without our glimpsing
that cloud-gap
where the moon’s light fills the sky?
2
Since my heart placed me
on board your drifting ship,
not one day has passed
that I haven’t been drenched
in cold waves.
3
How sad that I hope
to see you even now,
after my life has emptied itself
like this stalk of grain
into the autumn wind.
THE GARDEN
by Jacques Prévert
Thousands and thousands of years
Would not suffice
To tell of
The sweet moment of eternity
When you kissed me
When I kissed you
One moment in the light of winter
In Montsouris Park in Paris
In Paris
Upon this Earth
This Earth which is a star.
(I CARRY YOUR HEART WITH ME)
by E. E. Cummings
i carry your heart with me(i carry it in
my heart)i am never without it(anywhere
i go you go, my dear;and whatever is done
by only me is your doing,my darling)
i fear
no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want
no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)
and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you
here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows
higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that’s keeping the stars apart
i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)