Love Poetry Out Loud (13 page)

or half-asleep or alone.

Later the sky was all stars,

the obvious ones and those

you need to look at a little sideways

until they offer themselves.

I wanted to see them all —

wanted too much, you'd say —

like this desire to float

between the egg and the grave,

unaccountable, neither lost nor found,

then wanting the comfortable

orthodoxies of home.

I grew up thinking home was a place

you left with a bat

in your hands; you came back dirty

or something was wrong.

Only bad girls were allowed

to roam as often or as far.

Shall we admit

that because of our bodies

your story can never be mine,

mine never yours?

That where and when they intersect

is the greatest intimacy we'll ever have?

Every minute or so a mockingbird

delivers its repertoire.

Here's my blood

in the gray remains of a mosquito.

I know I'm just another slug

in the yard, but that's not what

my body knows.

The boy must die is the lesson

hardest learned.

I'll be home soon. Will you understand

if not forgive

that I expect to be loved

beyond deserving, as always?

 

Sideways =
The eye's structure is such that it sees color best when looking straight ahead; the “corners” of the eye see black and white best, and so can perceive faint stars that aren't visible when stared at directly
.

Thomas Hardy

W
oman much missed, how you call to me, call to me,

Saying that now you are not as you were

When you had changed from the one who was all to me,

But as at first, when our day was fair.

Can it be you that I hear? Let me view you, then,

Standing as when I drew near to the town

Where you would wait for me: yes, as I knew you then,

Even to the original air-blue gown!

Or is it only the breeze, in its listlessness

Travelling across the wet mead to me here,

You being ever dissolved to wan wistlessness,

Heard no more again far or near?

Thus I; faltering forward,

Leaves around me falling,

Wind oozing thin through the thorn from norward,

And the woman calling.

 

LETTING GO

“If you love someone,” the truism tells us, “set them free.” Easy said. Sometimes there's a part of us that just won't let go, no matter how sensibly we argue with ourselves. The next two poets are having a hard time of it
.

 

A Haunting

The life had gone out of Thomas Hardy's marriage long before his wife died. So why, after her death, does he find himself haunted by her? As you read this poem, listen for the way that the ghostly voice echoes and the effect it has on the poet in the last stanza, which falters like the poet
.

Wistlessness =
Wistfulness, a poetic word suggestive of both silence and wishing
.

Norward =
North
.

 

Holding On

Weddings traditionally take place in front of many witnesses — for a reason. With all those people looking on, it's hard to take back promises. Here, Robert Bridges argues that the affair that's ending has been in full view of witnesses such as the sun, the moon, the stars, and the flowers
.

Scare =
Frighten away, undo
.

Chid =
Scolded
.

Robert Bridges

I
will not let thee go.

Ends all our month-long love in this?

Can it be summed up so,

Quit in a single kiss?

I will not let thee go.

I will not let thee go.

If thy words' breath could scare thy deeds,

As the soft south can blow

And toss the feathered seeds,

Then might I let thee go.

I will not let thee go.

Had not the great sun seen, I might;

Or were he reckoned slow

To bring the false to light,

Then might I let thee go.

I will not let thee go.

The stars that crowd the summer skies

Have watched us so below

With all their million eyes,

I dare not let thee go.

I will not let thee go.

Have we not chid the changeful moon,

Now rising late, and now

Because she set too soon,

And shall I let thee go?

I will not let thee go.

Have not the young flowers been content,

Plucked ere their buds could blow,

To seal our sacrament?

I cannot let thee go.

I will not let thee go.

I hold thee by too many bands:

Thou sayest farewell, and lo!

I have thee by the hands,

And will not let thee go.

 

MISSING YOU

What does it mean to miss someone? After all, you're not aiming arrows at a bull's-eye or chucking rocks at a bottle. No, it's more like trying to find something that should be there—you've missed it somehow. These next two poets look around and discover they're alone
.

Katherine Mansfield

W
e started speaking —

Looked at each other; then turned away —

The tears kept rising to my eyes

But I could not weep

I wanted to take your hand

But my hand trembled.

You kept counting the days

Before we should meet again

But both of us felt in our heart

That we parted for ever and ever.

The ticking of the little clock filled the quiet room —

Listen I said; it is so loud

Like a horse galloping on a lonely road.

As loud as that — a horse galloping past in the night.

You shut me up in your arms —

But the sound of the clock stifled our hearts' beating.

You said “I cannot go: all that is living of me

Is here for ever and ever.”

Then you went.

The world changed. The sound of the clock grew fainter

Dwindled away — became a minute thing —

I whispered in the darkness: “If it stops, I shall die.”

 

Promises

Sometimes people promise things they can't deliver and say things just to be saying them, even though deep down they know they're not true. Here, Katherine Mansfield's rational self knows that, but all she can hear are the promises — and the time ticking by
.

 

Bachelor Pad

Tough guys don't dance, don't care what other people think, and don't get lonely. Oh yeah, they don't write poetry either. Sure they don't
.

Raymond Carver

N
ow that you've gone away for five days,

I'll smoke all the cigarettes I want,

where I want. Make biscuits and eat them

with jam and fat bacon. Loaf. Indulge

myself. Walk on the beach if I feel

like it. And I feel like it, alone and

thinking about when I was young. The people

then who loved me beyond reason.

And how I loved them above all others.

Except one. I'm saying I'll do everything

I want here while you're away!

But there's one thing I won't do.

I won't sleep in our bed without you.

No. It doesn't please me to do so.

I'll sleep where I damn well feel like it —

where I sleep best when you're away

and I can't hold you the way I do.

On the broken sofa in my study.

 

TIME OUT

Love poems often offer a message that we should enjoy love while we can, since time is passing. But when lovers are apart, time no longer seems to be on their side
.

 

Bearded =
With Spanish moss, an epiphytic bromeliad plant
.

Polyp =
The great limestone structures we call
coral
are actually secreted by tiny animals — coral polyps — that live in them like snails live in their shells. See also Derek Walcott's poem on
page 124
.

 

Black Lagoon

This poem may seem tough to follow, but pay attention: Two lovers watch the sun set and night flow into the landscape. To the poet it seems as if they are coral outcroppings, watching stonily as the tide of time flows into the lagoon and covers them. Imagine it, he suggests to his lover: it is good practice for the way that time will eat away at the solid substance of our lives, covering us ultimately in darkness
.

Ruth =
Sorrow and pity
.

Robert Penn Warren

T
he oaks, how subtle and marine,

Bearded, and all the layered light

Above them swims; and thus the scene,

Recessed, awaits the positive night.

So, waiting, we in the grass now lie

Beneath the languorous tread of light:

The grasses, kelp-like, satisfy

The nameless motions of the air.

Upon the floor of light, and time,

Unmurmuring, of polyp made,

We rest; we are, as light withdraws,

Twin atolls on a shelf of shade.

Ages to our construction went,

Dim architecture, hour by hour:

And violence, forgot now, lent

The present stillness all its power.

The storm of noon above us rolled,

Of light the fury, furious gold,

The long drag troubling us, the depth:

Dark is unrocking, unrippling, still.

Passion and slaughter, ruth, decay

Descend, minutely whispering down,

Silted down swaying streams, to lay

Foundation for our voicelessness.

All our debate is voiceless here,

As all our rage, the rage of stone;

If hope is hopeless, the fearless is fear,

And history is thus undone.

Our feet once wrought the hollow street

With echo when the lamps were dead

At windows, once our headlight glare

Disturbed the doe that, leaping, fled.

I do not love you less that now

The caged heart makes iron stroke,

Or less that all that light once gave

The graduate dark should now revoke.

We live in time so little time

And we learn all so painfully,

That we may spare this hour's term

To practice for eternity.

 

Einstein Was Right

The theory of relativity posits that time proceeds at different rates depending on where you are and how fast you're going. Anyone who's had to wait for a loved one will confirm it. For DJ Renegade, all sorts of strange things are happening to the fabric of reality
.

Mad Dog =
Street name for a potent fortified wine produced by Mogen David
.

DJ Renegade

T
he telephone

has put on a bathrobe,

complaining that my constant staring

makes it feel naked,

And I find myself out in the street

interrogating raindrops

as to your whereabouts.

This one particular raindrop

keeps being very evasive

answering in metaphors,

(I may have to get rough).

Happiness stumbles along

smelling of Mad Dog

and mumbo sauce,

wearing cheap sneakers

with holes the size

of a headache

and a shirt that reads

like a menu of stains.

I've begun bottling my tears,

to serve as holy water,

and all the vowels

of my vocabulary

are now lookouts

on my windowsill,

waiting to trumpet

your return.

 

WINTER WORDS

Poets grow old, but love doesn't. Shakespeare wasn't past his early forties when he wrote this sonnet, and W. S. Merwin was in his seventies when he wrote the poem that follows it. Their attitudes couldn't be more different
.

 

By the Time I Get to Phoenix

The mythical phoenix, when it gets old, burns up. And Shakespeare ain't feeling any younger either. Lucky for him, like the phoenix, new life—in the form of undying art — is ready to spring from the ashes
.

Choirs =
Benches, like the ruined monastery quires that dot the English countryside, which were full of singers in Catholic England only a few decades before Shakespeare was born
.

William Shakespeare

T
hat time of year thou mayst in me behold

When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang

Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,

Bare ruin'd choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.

In me thou seest the twilight of such day

As after sunset fadeth in the west,