three poems about love
three poems about love
come to me
i'll take care of you
protect you
calm, calm down
you're exhausted
come lay down
you don't have to explain : i understand
you know : that i adore you
you know : that i love you
so don't make me say it
it would burst the bubble
break the charm
jump off
your building is on fire
i'll catch you : i'll catch you
destroy all that is keeping you down
and then i'll nurse you : i'll nurse you
you know : that i adore you
you know : that i love you
so don't make me say it
it would burst the bubble
break the charm
Sonnet 116 by Shakespeare
| 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-fixed mark |
| That looks on tempests and is never shaken; |
| It is the star to every wandering 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. |
A Valediction Forbidding Mourning by John Donne
As virtuous men pass mildly away,
And whisper to their souls to go,
Whilst some of their sad friends do say,
"Now his breath goes," and some say, "No."
So let us melt, and make no noise, 5
No tear-floods, nor sigh-tempests move ;
'Twere profanation of our joys
To tell the laity our love.
Moving of th' earth brings harms and fears ;
Men reckon what it did, and meant ; 10
But trepidation of the spheres,
Though greater far, is innocent.
Dull sublunary lovers' love
—Whose soul is sense—cannot admit
Of absence, 'cause it doth remove 15
The thing which elemented it.
But we by a love so much refined,
That ourselves know not what it is,
Inter-assurèd of the mind,
Care less, eyes, lips and hands to miss. 20
Our two souls therefore, which are one,
Though I must go, endure not yet
A breach, but an expansion,
Like gold to aery thinness beat.
If they be two, they are two so 25
As stiff twin compasses are two ;
Thy soul, the fix'd foot, makes no show
To move, but doth, if th' other do.
And though it in the centre sit,
Yet, when the other far doth roam, 30
It leans, and hearkens after it,
And grows erect, as that comes home.
Such wilt thou be to me, who must,
Like th' other foot, obliquely run ;
Thy firmness makes my circle just, 35
And makes me end where I begun.
1 comment:
Two that resonate. I originally saw a snippet of the first one on the bus in Portland and hunted at the library for the complete poem.
Misgivings, William Matthews
"Perhaps you'll tire of me," muses
my love, although she's like a great city
to me, or a park that finds new
ways to wear each flounce of light
and investiture of weather.
Soil doesn't tire of rain, I think,
but I know what she fears: plans warp,
planes explode, topsoil gets peeled away
by floods. And worse than what we can't
control is what we could; those drab,
scuttled marriages we shed so
gratefully may augur we're on our owns
for good reasons. "Hi honey," chirps Dread
when I come though the door, "you're home."
Experience is a great teacher
of the value of experience,
its claustrophobic prudence,
its gloomy name-the-disasters-
in-advance charisma. Listen,
my wary one, it's far too late
to unlove each other. Instead let's cook
something elaborate and not
invite anyone to share it but eat it
all up very slowly.
Serenade, Pablo Neruda
On your brow rests the color of the poppies,
the mourning of widows finds echo, oh hapless one,
when you run behind the railroads, in the fields,
the slender worker turns his back on you,
from your footprints sweet toads sprout trembling.
The youth without memories greets you, asks you about his
forgotten wish,
his hands move in your atmosphere like birds,
and there is great humidity surrounding him:
crossing his incomplete thoughts,
wishing to reach something, oh, seeking you,
his pale eyes blink in your net
like lost instruments that suddenly gleam.
Oh I remember the first day of thirst,
the shadow pressed against the jasmines,
the deep body in which you took refuge
like a drop that also trembles.
But you silence the great trees, and above the moon,
far away above,
you spy upon the sea like a thief.
Oh, night, my startled soul asks you,
you, desperately, about the metal that it needs.
Posted by Eric On Saturday, November 11, 2006 at 8:11 PM
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