Edna St. Vincent Millay, 1931
Next | TOC> If Ever Two Were One> Koch
Permanently
One day the Nouns were clustered in the street.
An Adjective walked by, with her dark beauty.
The Nouns were struck, moved, changed.
The next day a Verb drove up, and created
the Sentence.
Each Sentence says one thing—for example,
"Although it was a dark rainy day when the
Adjective walked by, I shall remember the
pure and sweet expression on her face until
the day I perish from the green, effective
earth."
Or, "Will you please close the window, Andrew?"
Or, for example, "Thank you, the pink pot of
flowers on the window sill has changed color
recently to a light yellow, due to the heat
from the boiler factory which exists nearby."
In the springtime the Sentences and Nouns
lay silently on the grass.
A lonely Conjunction here and there would call,
"And! But!"
But the Adjective did not emerge.
As the adjective is lost in the sentence,
So am I lost in your eyes, ears, nose, and throat—
You have enchanted me with a single kiss
Which can never be undone
Until the destruction of language.
Kenneth Koch, 1962
Next | TOC> If Ever Two Were One> Nims
Love Poem
My clumsiest dear, whose hands shipwreck vases,
At whose quick touch all glasses chip and ring,
Whose palms are bulls in china, burs in linen,
And have no cunning with any soft thing
Except all ill-at-ease fidgeting people:
The refugee uncertain at the door
You make at home; deftly you steady
The drunk clambering on his undulant floor.
Unpredictable dear, the taxi drivers' terror,
Shrinking from far headlights pale as a dime
Yet leaping before red apoplectic streetcars—
Misfit in any space. And never on time.
A wrench in clocks and the solar system. Only
With words and people and love you move
at ease;
In traffic of wit expertly maneuver
And keep us, all devotion, at your knees.
Forgetting your coffee spreading on our flannel,
Your lipstick grinning on our coat,
So gaily in love's unbreakable heaven
Our souls on glory of spilt bourbon float.
Be with me, darling, early and late.
Smash glasses—
I will study wry music for your sake.
For should your hands drop white and empty
All the toys of the world would break.
John Frederick Nims, 1947
Next | TOC> If Ever Two Were One> Brooke
Oh Death Will Find Me
Oh! Death will find me, long before I tire
Of watching you; and swing me suddenly
Into the shade and loneliness and mire
Of the last land! There, waiting patiently,
One day, I think, I'll feel a cool wind blowing,
See a slow light across the Stygian tide,
And hear the Dead about me stir, unknowing,
And tremble. And I shall know that you
have died,
And watch you, a broad-browed and smiling
dream,
Pass, light as ever, through the lightless host,
Quietly ponder, start, and sway, and gleam—
Most individual and bewildering ghost!
And turn, and toss your brown delightful head
Amusedly, among the ancient Dead.
Rupert Brooke, 1911
Next | TOC> If Ever Two Were One> Whitman
Long I thought that knowledge
alone would suffice me
Long I thought that knowledge alone would suffice me— O if I could but obtain knowledge!
Then my lands engrossed me—Lands of the prairies, Ohio's land, the southern savannas, engrossed me— For them I would live— I would be their orator;
Then I met the examples of old and new heroes— I heard of warriors, sailors, and all dauntless persons— And it seemed to me that I too had it in me to be as dauntless as any— and would be so;
And then, to enclose all, it came to me to strike up the songs of the New World—And then I believed my life must be spent in singing;
But now take notice, land of the prairies, land of the south savannas, Ohio's land,
Take notice, you Kanuck woods—and you Lake Huron— and all that with you roll toward Niagara— and you Niagara also,
And you, Californian mountains—That you each and all find somebody else to be your singer of songs,
For I can be your singer of songs no longer— One who loves me is jealous of me, and withdraws me from all but love,
With the rest I dispense—I sever from what I thought would suffice me, for it does not— it is now empty and tasteless to me,
I heed knowledge, and the grandeur of The States, and the example of heroes, no more,
I am indifferent to my own songs—I will go with him I love.
It is to be enough for us that we are together— We never separate again.
Walt Whitman, 1860
Next | TOC> If Ever Two Were One> Hughes
Same in Blues
I said to my baby,
Baby, take it slow.
I can't, she said, I can't!
I got to go!
There's a certain
amount of traveling
in a dream deferred.
Lulu said to Leonard,
I want a diamond ring.
Leonard said to Lulu,
You won't get a goddam thing!
A certain
amount of nothing
in a dream deferred.
Daddy, daddy, daddy,
All I want is you.
You can have me, baby—
But my lovin' days is through
A certain
amount of impotence
in a dream deferred
Three parties
On my party line—
But that third party,
Lord, ain't mine!
There's liable
to be confusion
in a dream deferred.
From river to river
Uptown and down
There's liable to be confusion
when a dream gets kicked around.
Langston Hughes, 1951
Next | TOC> If Ever Two Were One> Hughes
50-50
I'm all alone in this world, she said,
Ain't got nobody to share my bed,
Ain't got nobody to hold my hand—
The truth of the matter's
I ain't got no man.
Big Boy opened his mouth and said,
Trouble with you is
You ain't got no head!
If you had a head and used your mind
You could have me with you
All the time.
She answered, Babe, what must I do?
He said, Share your bed—
And your money, too.
Langston Hughes, 1942
Next | TOC> If Ever Two Were One> Sandburg
Soiled Dove
Let us be honest; the lady was not a harlot
until she married a corporation lawyer
who picked her from a Ziegfeld chorus.
Before then she never took anybody's money
and paid for her silk stockings out of what
she earned singing and dancing.
She loved one man and he loved six women
and the game was changing her looks,
calling for more and more massage money
and high coin
for the beauty doctors.
Now she drives a long, underslung motor car
all by herself, reads in the day's papers
what her husband is doing to the inter-state
commerce commission, requires a larger
corsage from year to year, and wonders
sometimes how one man is coming along
with six women.
Carl Sandburg, 1916
Next | TOC> If Ever Two Were One> Shakespeare
Let me not to the marriage of
true minds
Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O, no! it is an ever-fixèd mark,
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wand'ring bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height
be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and
cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom—
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.
William Shakespeare, 1594
Next | TOC> If Ever Two Were One> Keats
When I Have Fears
When I have fears that I may cease to be
Before my pen has gleaned my teeming brain,
Before high-piled books, in charactery,
Hold like rich garners the full ripened grain;
When I behold, upon the night's starred face,
Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance,
And think that I may never live to trace
Their shadows, with the magic hand of
chance;
And when I feel, fair creature of an hour,
That I shall never look upon thee more,
Never have relish in the faery power
Of unreflecting love—then on the shore
Of the wide world I stand alone, and think
Till love and fame to nothingness do sink.
John Keats, 1818
Next | TOC> If Ever Two Were One> Pound
The River Merchant's Wife:
A Letter
While my hair was still cut straight across
my forehead
I played about the front gate, pulling flowers.
You came by on bamboo stilts, playing horse,
You walked about my seat, playing with
blue plums.
And we went on living in the village of Chokan:
Two small people, without dislike or suspicion.
At fourteen I married My Lord you.
I never laughed, being bashful.
Lowering my head, I looked at the wall.
Called to, a thousand times, I never looked back.
At fifteen I stopped scowling,
I desired my dust to be mingled with yours
Forever and forever and forever.
Why should I climb the look out?
At sixteen you departed,
You went into far Ku-to-yen,
by the river of swirling eddies,
And you have been gone five months.
The monkeys make sorrowful noise overhead.
You dragged your feet when you went out.
By the gate now, the moss is grown,
the different mosses,
Too deep to clear them away!
The leaves fall early this autumn, in wind.
The paired butterflies are already yellow with
August
Over the grass in the West garden;
They hurt me. I grow older.
If you are coming down through the narrows
of the river Kiang,
Please let me know beforehand,
And I will come out to meet you
As far as Cho-fu-Sa.
Rihaku (Li Bai) 8th century
Translated by Ezra Pound, 1915
Next | TOC> If Ever Two Were One> Lawrence
Love on the Farm
What large, dark hands are those at the window
Grasping in the golden light
Which weaves its way through the evening wind
At my heart's delight?
Ah, only the leaves! But in the west
I see a redness suddenly come
Into the evening's anxious breast—
'Tis the wound of love goes home!
The woodbine creeps abroad
Calling low to her lover:
The sunlit flirt who all the day
Has poised above her lips in play
And stolen kisses, shallow and gay
Of pollen, now has gone away—
She woos the moth with her sweet, low word;
And when above her his moth-wings hover
Then her bright breast she will uncover
And yield her honey-drop to her lover.
Into the yellow, evening glow
Saunters a man from the farm below;
Leans, and looks in at the low-built shed
Where the swallow has hung her marriage bed.
The bird lies warm against the wall.
She glances quick her startled eyes
Towards him, then she turns away
Her small head, making warm display
Of red upon the throat. Her terrors sway
Her out of the nest's warm, busy ball,
Whose plaintive cry is heard as she flies
In one blue swoop from out the sties
Into the twilight's empty hall.
Hide your quaintly scarlet blushes,
Still your quick tail, lie still as dead,
Till the distance folds over his ominous tread!
The rabbit presses back her ears,
Turns back her liquid, anguished eyes
And crouches low; then with wild spring
Spurts from the terror of his oncoming;
To be choked back, the wire ring
Her frantic effort throttling:
Piteous brown ball of quivering fears!
Ah, soon in his large, hard hands she dies,
And swings all loose from the swing of his walk!
Yet calm and kindly are his eyes
And ready to open in brown surprise
Should I not answer to his talk
Or should he my tears surmise.
I hear his hand on the latch, and rise from
my chair
Watching the door open; he flashes bare
His strong teeth in a smile, and flashes his eyes
In a smile like triumph upon me;
then careless-wise
He flings the rabbit soft on the table board
And comes toward me: he! the uplifted sword
Of his hand against my bosom! and oh, the broad
Blade of his glance that asks me to applaud
His coming! With his hand he turns my face
to him
And caresses me with his fingers that still
smell grim
Of rabbit's fur! God, I am caught in a snare!
I know not what fine wire is round my throat;
I only know I let him finger there
My pulse of life, and let him nose like a stoat
Who sniffs with joy before he drinks the blood.
And down his mouth comes to my mouth!
and down
His bright dark eyes come over me, like a hood
Upon my mind! his lips meet mine, and a flood
Of sweet fire sweeps across me, so I drown
Against him, die, and find death good.
D. H. Lawrence, 1911
Next | TOC> If Ever Two Were One> Mew
The Farmer's Bride
Three summers since I chose a maid,
Too young maybe—but more's to do
At harvest time than bide and woo.
When us was wed she turned afraid
Of love and me and all things human;
Like the shut of a winter's day.
Her smile went out, and 'twasn't a woman—
More like a little frightened fay.
One night, in the Fall, she runned away.
"Out 'mong the sheep, her be," they said,
"Should properly have been abed;"
But sure enough she wasn't there
Lying awake with her wide brown stare.
So over seven-acre field and up-along across
the down
We chased her, flying like a hare
Before our lanterns. To Church Town
All in a shiver and a scare
We caught her, fetched her home at last
And turned the key upon her, fast.
She does the work about the house
As well as most, but like a mouse:
Happy enough to chat and play
With birds and rabbits and such as they,
So long as menfolk keep away.
"Not near, not near!" her eyes beseech
When one of us comes within reach.
The women say that beasts in stall
Look round like children at her call.
I've hardly heard her speak at all.
Shy as a leveret, swift as he,
Straight and slight as a young larch tree,
Sweet as the first wild violets, she
To her wild self. But what to me?
The short days shorten and the oaks are brown,
The blue smoke rises to the low gray sky,
One leaf in the still air falls slowly down,
A magpie's spotted feathers lie
On the black earth spread white with rime,
The berries redden up to Christmas-time.
What's Christmas time without there be
Some other in the house than we!
She sleeps up in the attic there
Alone, poor maid. 'Tis but a stair
Betwixt us. Oh! my God! the down,
The soft young down of her, the brown,