BOND AND FREE
by Robert Frost
Love has earth to which she clings
With hills and circling arms about—
Wall within wall to shut fear out.
But Thought has need of no such things,
For Thought has a pair of dauntless wings.
On snow and sand and turf, I see
Where Love has left a printed trace
With straining in the world’s embrace.
And such is Love and glad to be.
But Thought has shaken his ankles free.
Thought cleaves the interstellar gloom
And sits in Sirius’ disc all night,
Till day makes him retrace his flight,
With smell of burning on every plume,
Back past the sun to an earthly room.
His gains in heaven are what they are.
Yet some say Love by being thrall
And simply staying possesses all
In several beauty that Thought fares far
To find fused in another star.
HEART-BREAK & LOSS
WHEN YOU ARE OLD
by William Butler Yeats
When you are old and grey 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.
THE HEART’S MEMORY OF THE SUN GROWS FAINT
by Anna Akhmatova
The heart’s memory of the sun grows faint.
The grass is yellower.
A few early snowflakes blow in the wind,
Barely, barely.
The narrow canals have stopped flowing—
The water is chilling.
Nothing will ever happen here—
Oh, never!
The willow spreads its transparent fan
Against the empty sky.
Perhaps I should not have become
Your wife.
The heart’s memory of the sun grows faint.
What’s this? Darkness?
It could be! . . . One night brings winter’s first
Hard freeze.
NEUTRAL TONES
by Thomas Hardy
We stood by a pond that winter day,
And the sun was white, as though chidden of God,
And a few leaves lay on the starving sod;
—They had fallen from an ash, and were gray.
Your eyes on me were as eyes that rove
Over tedious riddles of years ago;
And some words played between us to and fro
On which lost the more by our love.
The smile on your mouth was the deadest thing
Alive enough to have strength to die;
And a grin of bitterness swept thereby
Like an ominous bird a-wing. . . .
Since then, keen lessons that love deceives,
And wrings with wrong, have shaped to me
Your face, and the God curst sun, and a tree,
And a pond edged with grayish leaves.
ABSOLUTELY CLEAR
by Shams al-Din Hafiz Shirazi
Don’t surrender your loneliness
So quickly.
Let it cut more deep.
Let it ferment and season you
As few human
Or even divine ingredients can.
Something missing in my heart tonight
Has made my eyes so soft,
My voice
So tender,
My need of God
Absolutely
Clear.
THE LESSON OF THE FALLING LEAVES
by Lucille Clifton
the leaves believe
such letting go is love
such love is faith
such faith is grace
such grace is god.
i agree with the leaves.
A COMPLAINT
by William Wordsworth
There is a change—and I am poor;
Your love hath been, nor long ago,
A fountain at my fond heart’s door,
Whose only business was to flow;
And flow it did; not taking heed
Of its own bounty, or my need.
What happy moments did I count!
Blest was I then all bliss above!
Now, for that consecrated fount
Of murmuring, sparkling, living love,
What have I? shall I dare to tell?
A comfortless and hidden well.
A well of love—it may be deep—
I trust it is,—and never dry:
What matter? if the waters sleep
In silence and obscurity.
—Such change, and at the very door
Of my fond heart, hath made me poor.
THE SMILE
by William Blake
There is a Smile of Love
And there is a Smile of Deceit
And there is a Smile of Smiles
In which these two Smiles meet
And there is a Frown of Hate
And there is a Frown of disdain
And there is a Frown of Frowns
Which you strive to forget in vain
For it sticks in the Hearts deep Core
And it sticks in the deep Back bone
And no Smile that ever was smild
But only one Smile alone
That betwixt the Cradle & Grave
It only once Smild can be
But when it once is Smild
Theres an end to all Misery
ONE ART
by Elizabeth Bishop
The art of losing isn’t hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.
Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.
Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.
I lost my mother’s watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.
I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn’t a disaster.
—Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan’t have lied. It’s evident
the art of losing’s not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.
DO NOT ASK ME FOR THAT LOVE AGAIN
by Faiz Ahmed Faiz
That which then was ours, my love,
don’t ask me for that love again.
The world then was gold, burnished with light—and only
because of you. That’s what I had believed.
How could one weep for sorrows other than yours?
How could one have any sorrow but the one you gave?
So what were these protests, these rumours of injustice?
A glimpse of your face was evidence of springtime.
The sky, whenever I looked, was nothing but your eyes.
If you’d fall into my arms, Fate would be helpless.
All this I’d thought, all this I’d believed.
But there were other sorrows, comforts other than love.
The rich had cast their s
pell on history:
dark centuries had been embroidered on brocades and
silks.
Bitter threads began to unravel before me as I went into
alleys and in open markets saw bodies plastered with ash,
bathed in blood.
I saw them sold and bought, again and again.
This too deserves attention. I can’t help but look back when
I return from those alleys—what should one do?
And you are still so ravishing—what should I do?
There are other sorrows in this world,
comforts other than love.
Don’t ask me, my love, for that love again.
MUSIC WHEN SOFT VOICES DIE (TO—)
by Percy Bysshe Shelley
Music, when soft voices die,
Vibrates in the memory
Odours, when sweet violets sicken,
Live within the sense they quicken.
Rose leaves, when the rose is dead,
Are heaped for the belovèd’s bed;
And so thy thoughts, when thou art gone,
Love itself shall slumber on.
LOVE AFTER LOVE
by Derek Walcott
The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other’s welcome,
and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you
all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love-letters from the bookshelf,
the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.
THE WEEPING GIRL (LA FIGLIA CHE PIANGE)
by T. S. Eliot
Stand on the highest pavement of the stair—
Lean on a garden urn—
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 a 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.
BREAD AND MUSIC
by Conrad Potter Aiken
Music I heard with you was more than music,
And bread I broke with you was more than bread;
Now that I am without you, all is desolate;
All that was once so beautiful is dead.
Your hands once touched this table and this silver,
And I have seen your fingers hold this glass.
These things do not remember you, beloved:
And yet your touch upon them will not pass.
For it was in my heart you moved among them,
And blessed them with your hands and with your eyes.
And in my heart they will remember always:
They knew you once, O beautiful and wise.
DO NOT STAND BY MY GRAVE AND WEEP
by Mary Elizabeth Frye
Do not stand at my grave and weep
I am not there; I do not sleep.
I am a thousand winds that blow,
I am the diamond glints on snow,
I am the sun on ripened grain,
I am the gentle autumn rain.
When you awaken in the morning’s hush
I am the swift uplifting rush
Of quiet birds in circled flight.
I am the soft stars that shine at night.
Do not stand at my grave and cry,
I am not there; I did not die.
SORROWS OF THE MOON
by Charles Baudelaire
Tonight the moon dreams in a deeper languidness,
And, like a beauty on her cushions, lies at rest;
While drifting off to sleep, a tentative caress
Seeks, with a gentle hand, the contour of her breast;
As on a crest above her silken avalanche,
Dying, she yields herself to an unending swoon,
In the azure sky where blossoms have been strewn.
When sometimes, in her weariness, upon our sphere
She might permit herself to shed a furtive tear,
A poet of great piety, a foe of sleep,
Catches in the hollow of his hand that tear,
An opal fragment, iridescent as a star;
Within his heart, far from the sun, it’s buried deep.
DREAMING OF LI PO
by Tu Fu
1.
Parted by death, we’d strangle on our tears;
parting in life, we’ve memories to cling to.
There is pestilence south of the river,
you are exiles, and I have not a word.
Old friend, I see you only in dreams,
but you know my heart is with you.
It’s not the same as having your living spirit:
that road’s too long to be measured.
Your spirit is in the heart of green maple,
your spirit returns to the dark frontier.
Tangled in the nets of law, tell me,
how can the spirit soar?
Moonlight fills my room. Your poor face
shines, reflected in the rafters.
The waters are deep, the waves wide.
May peaceful serpents pass you by.
2.
All day, huge clouds roll by.
You, exile, must travel.
Three nights I dreamed of you,
I dreamed we were together.
“I try, I try,” you say, “but
this bitter road is difficult to travel:
winds drive lakes and rivers into waves,
my boat and oars would fail.”
Leaving, you smoothed your long white hair
like a man who embraced his failures.
In Ch’ang-an, they lavish praise on bureaucrats
while you endure and endure.
They say that heaven’s net is wide.
We’re tangles in the web of aging.
Your fame will last ten thousand years
though you are silent, vanished from this world.
TOMORROW
by Victor Hugo
Tomorrow morn, what time the fields grow white,
I shall set off; I know you look for me,
Across the forest’s gloom, the mountain height:
I can no longer dwell away from thee.
I’ll walk with eyes upon my thoughts intent,
Hearing no outer noise, seeing no sight;
Alone, unknown, hands clasped, and earthward bent,
Sad, and the day for me shall be as night.
On evening’s golden hues I shall not gaze,
Nor on the vessels that to Harfleur come;
But my quest o’er, upon thy grave shall place
A wreath of holly green, and he
ather bloom.
PASSION & PARTNER SHIP
LOVE SONG
by Joseph Brodsky
If you were drowning, I’d come to the rescue,
wrap you in my blanket and pour hot tea.
If I were a sheriff, I’d arrest you
and keep you in the cell under lock and key.
If you were a bird, I’d cut a record
and listen all night to your high-pitched trill.
If I were a sergeant, you’d be my recruit,
and boy I can assure you you’d love the drill.
If you were Chinese, I’d learn the languages,
burn a lot of incense, wear funny clothes.
If you were a mirror, I’d storm the Ladies’,
give you my red lipstick and puff your nose.
If you loved volcanoes, I’d be lava
relentlessly erupting from my hidden source.
And if you were my wife, I’d be your lover
because the church is firmly against divorce.
FINAL SOLILOQUY OF THE INTERIOR PARAMOUR
by Wallace Stevens
Light the first light of the evening, as in a room
In which we rest and, for small reason, think
The world imagined is the ultimate good.
This is, therefore, the intensest rendezvous.
It is in that thought that we collect ourselves,
Out of all the indifferences, into one thing:
Within a single thing, a single shawl
Wrapped tightly round us, since we are poor, a warmth,
A light, a power, the miraculous influence.
Here, now, we forget each other and ourselves.