Miss = It’s not a specific part that’s missed.
Compasses = Two-pronged instruments used to draw circles or measure intervals.
Just = A perfect circle.
* * *
* * *
Gonne Again
The famous Irish beauty Maud Gonne was long the object of W. B. Yeats’s adoration indeed, she’s the focus of all three Yeats poems in this book. She mostly kept him at arm’s length, though, and later married a “drunken vainglorious lout” (Yeats’s words) active in the Irish independence movement. In this poem by the young Yeats, the poet seems to sense that no happy ending awaits, and imagines his love old and alone in years to come.
Love … crowd of stars = How idealized love banished earthly, “real” love.
* * *
WHEN YOU ARE OLD
W. B. 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.
I WILL NOT GIVE THEE ALL MY HEART
Grace Hazard Conkling
I will not give thee all my heart
For that I need a place apart
To dream my dreams in, and I know
Few sheltered ways for dreams to go:
But when I shut the door upon
Some secret wonder—still, withdrawn —
Why does thou love me even more,
And hold me closer than before?
When I of love demand the least,
Thou biddest him to fire and feast:
When I am hungry and would eat,
There is no bread, though crusts were sweet.
If I with manna may be fed,
Shall I go all uncomforted?
Nay! Howsoever dear thou art,
I will not give thee all my heart.
* * *
A PROPER RESERVE
Society teaches us to hold back something of ourselves, but what’s not said between two lovers can become more important than what is. The next two poems are portraits of reserve, one before it becomes a problem, the other one after.
* * *
* * *
Manna = Heavenly food that sustained the Israelites in the wilderness when they had no bread.
* * *
* * *
Seduced and Abandoned?
As a means of self-preservation, the speaker in Conkling’s poem resists the urge to give herself up entirely to her lover, whom she suspects will discard her as soon as he “solves” her mystery.
* * *
* * *
Bad Sun Rising
Imagine this setting near a lovely pond, with green leaves, birds singing, and light in the lovers’ eyes, and you can perhaps imagine the deception that Hardy mentions here—the way in which he saw what he wanted then, and now sees it for what it was.
Chidden of = Scolded by.
More by our love = This is tricky to read; it helps if you pause between “by” and “our.” so that the sense of the line is that their love deteriorated further because of the words exchanged.
* * *
NEUTRAL TONES
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.
“I HEAR AN ARMY CHARGING UPON THE LAND”
James Joyce
I hear an army charging upon the land,
And the thunder of horses plunging, foam about their knees:
Arrogant, in black armor, behind them stand,
Disdaining the reins, with fluttering whips, the charioteers.
They cry unto the night their battle-name:
I moan in sleep when I hear afar their whirling laughter.
They cleave the gloom of dreams, a blinding flame,
Clanging, clanging upon the heart as upon an anvil.
They come shaking in triumph their long green hair:
They come out of the sea and run shouting by the shore.
My heart, have you no wisdom thus to despair?
My love, my love, my love, why have you left me alone?
* * *
SOUND AND SILENCE
Heavy metal rock ballads excepted, loud noises and harsh sounds aren’t generally associated with tender sentiments. Here are two poems in which the sound echoes the sense.
* * *
* * *
Bad Dreams
Dreams are often silent. Not this one. James Joyce gained fame as a novelist, but also published two little-known books of verse that are notable for their delicate evocation of sound and spirit. Listen to the sounds of the words in this poem from Chamber Music and to how they reflect the sounds of a nightmare.
* * *
* * *
Love That Dare Not Speak Its Name
Oscar Wilde, famed as a glib conversationalist and witty raconteur, writes in this poem about being struck dumb by love. With good reason. He had to keep his homosexuality “in the closet.” When he was publicly “outed.” he was put on trial under sensational circumstances, convicted, imprisoned, and ruined financially.
Silentium Amoris = The Silence of Love.
* * *
SILENTIUM AMORIS
Oscar Wilde
As often-times the too resplendent sun
Hurries the pallid and reluctant moon
Back to her sombre cave, ere she hath won
A single ballad from the nightingale,
So doth thy Beauty make my lips to fail,
And all my sweetest singing out of tune.
And as at dawn across the level mead
On wings impetuous some wind will come,
And with its too harsh kisses break the reed
Which was its only instrument of song,
So me too stormy passions work my wrong,
And for excess of Love my Love is dumb.
But surely unto Thee mine eyes did show
Why I am silent, and my lute unstrung;
Else it were better we should part, and go,
Thou to some lips of sweeter melody,
And I to nurse the barren memory
Of unkissed kisses, and songs never sung.
* * *
FILLING IN THE BLANKS
We need loving, which is not to say that we always get what we need. Searching for love can lead us into some ambiguous places — places that the word love hides from public view … places that may in fact contain nothing. Here are two poems about love and emptiness.
* * *
VARIATIONS ON THE WORD LOVE
Margaret Atwood
This is a word we use to plug
holes with. It’s the right size for those warm
blanks in speech, for those red heart-
shaped vacancies on the page that look nothing
like real hearts. Add lace
and you can sell
it. We insert it also in the one empty
space on the printed form
that comes with no instructions. There are whole
magazines with not much in them
but the word love, you can
rub it all over your body and you
can cook with it too. How do we know
it isn’t what goes on at the cool
debaucheries of slugs under damp
pieces of cardboard? As for the weed-
seedlings nosing their tough snouts up
among the lettuces, they shout it.
Love! Love! sing the soldiers, raising
their glittering knives in salute.
Then there’s the two
of us. This word
is far too short for us, it has only
four letters, too sparse
to fill those deep bare
vacuums between the stars
that press on us with their deafness.
It’s not love we don’t wish
to fall into, but that fear.
This word is not enough but it will
have to do. It’s a single
vowel in this metallic
silence, a mouth that says
O again and again in wonder
and pain, a breath, a finger-
grip on a cliffside. You can
hold on or let go.
* * *
The Big O
What choice have we except to try to love? That’s the question Margaret Atwood seems to be asking with this poem. The answers may be unsettling, but still she keeps trying.
Deafness = There’s no sound in a vacuum.
* * *
TAKING OFF MY CLOTHES
Carolyn Forché
I take off my shirt, I show you.
I shaved the hair out under my arms.
I roll up my pants, I scraped off the hair
on my legs with a knife, getting white.
My hair is the color of chopped maples.
My eyes dark as beans cooked in the south.
(Coal fields in the moon on torn-up hills)
Skin polished as a Ming bowl
showing its blood cracks, its age, I have hundreds
of names for the snow, for this, all of them quiet.
In the night I come to you and it seems a shame
to waste my deepest shudders on a wall of a man.
You recognize strangers,
think you lived through destruction.
You can’t explain this night, my face, your memory.
You want to know what I know?
Your own hands are lying.
* * *
Realization
Here’s a hard one. You could read it as a poem from a woman speaking to a man, painting a picture of doubt and recrimination after a loveless coupling in which she was never “there” for him. Or you could read it as a woman’s words to another woman (one who is denying her feelings for the speaker), a call for sexual self-realization. How would you read it?
Names for the snow = Eskimos are (incorrectly) thought to have many more names for snow than do other cultures.
* * *
7
PLEASURES OF THE FLESH
“When a man says he had pleasure with a woman he does not mean conversation.”
—Samuel Johnson
* * *
ON THE MAT AND IN THE SEA
The metaphors we use to describe love’s entanglements are as many and varied as … well … the fishes of the sea. So, if you have to ask why a poet might compare lovers to wrestlers or divers, you’re probably too young to be reading this.
* * *
* * *
Victorian-Era Grappling
The American poet Louisa S. Bevington published her work in the 1880s, a century before the steroid-swollen monsters of pro wrestling showed up on our television sets. So, try to picture the lithe athletes of ancient Greek sculpture and pottery; you’ll enjoy the poem more.
Twain! = Two apart!
* * *
WESTLING
Louisa S. Bevington
Our oneness is the wrestlers’, fierce and close.
Thrusting and thrust;
One life in dual effort for one prize,—
We fight, and must;
For soul with soul does battle evermore
Till love be trust.
Our distance is love’s severance; sense divides,
Each is but each;
Never the very hidden spirit of thee
My life doth reach;
Twain! since we love athwart the gulf that needs
Kisses and speech.
Ah! wrestle closelier! we draw nearer so
Than any bliss
Can bring twain souls who would be whole and one,
Too near to kiss:
To be one thought, one voice before we die,—
Wrestle for this.
WET
Marge Piercy
Desire urges us on deeper
and farther into the coral maze
of the body, dense, tropical
where we cannot tell plant
from animal, mind from body
prey from predator, swaying
magenta, teal, green-golden
anemones weaving wide open.
The stronger lusts flash
corn rows of dagger teeth,
but the little desires slip,
sleek frisky neon flowers
into the corners of the eye.
The mouth tastes their strange
sweet and salty blood
burning the back of the tongue.
Deeper and deeper into
the thick warm translucence
where mind and body melt,
where we see with our tongues
and taste with our fingers;
there the horizon of excess
folds as we approach
into plains of not enough.
Now we are returned to ourselves
flung out on the beach
exhausted, flanks heaving
out of oxygen and time,
grinning like childish daubs
of boats. Now it is sleep
draws us down, surrendered
to its dark glimmer.
* * *
In Another Element
We can lose ourselves in the act of love, an experience where sex becomes otherworldly, transporting, rapturous … Perhaps that’s what leads Marge Piercy to this evocation of reef explorers and the rapture of the deep.
* * *
* * *
[YOUR JOKE HERE]
Let’s face it: it’s funny. We give it names, we employ dozens of clever euphemisms, we make kicks to the groin a staple of clowning, we mythologize it as the heel of the modern-day Achilles. For Robert Graves, a student of history and myth, it becomes a stand-in for male vanity and aspiration. For the Canadian poet Lorna Crozier, it becomes a stand-out.
* * *
* * *
Bombard = Medieval cannon that fired stone balls at castle walls.
Ravelin = The outwork of a fortification.
Die = Common Elizabethan-era pun on sexual climax.
* * *
DOWN, WANTON, DOWN!
Robert Graves
Down, wanton, down! Have you no shame
That at the whisper of Love’s name,
Or Beauty’s, presto! up you raise
Your angry head and stand at gaze?
Poor bombard-captain, sworn to reach
The ravelin and effect a breach —
Indifferent what you storm or why,
So be that in the breach you die!
Love may be blind, but Love at least
Knows what is man and what mere beast;
Or Beauty wayward, but requires
More delicacy from her
squires.
Tell me, my witless, whose one boast
Could be your staunchness at the post,
When were you made a man of parts
To think fine and profess the arts?
Will many-gifted Beauty come
Bowing to your bald rule of thumb,
Or Love swear loyalty to your crown?
Be gone, have done! Down, wanton, down!
* * *
Stand-up Comedy
Graves channels the spirit of Elizabethan-era literary wit and low Shakespearean bawdy here, spinning out a series of puns and double entendres that would make Falstaff roar and Mistress Quickly blush.
* * *
POEM FOR SIGMUND
Lorna Crozier
It’s a funny thing,
a Brontosaurus with a long neck
and pea-sized brain, only room
for one thought and that’s
not extinction. It’s lucky
its mouth is vertical
and not the other way
or we’d see it
smiling like a Cheshire cat.
(Hard to get in the mood
with that grin in your mind.)
No wonder I feel fond of it,
Love Poetry Out Loud Page 8