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.
* * *
THE VOICE
Thomas Hardy
Woman 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.
* * *
I WILL NOT LET THEE GO
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.
* * *
THE MEETING
Katherine Mansfield
We 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.
* * *
STILL LOOKING OUT FOR NUMBER ONE
Raymond Carver
Now 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.
* * *
BEARDED OAKS
Robert Penn Warren
The 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.
* * *
48 HOURS AFTER YOU LEFT
DJ Renegade
The 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.
* * *
“THAT TIME OF YEAR THOU MAYST IN ME BEHOLD”
William Shakespeare
That 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,
Which by and by black night doth take away,
Death’s second self, that seals up all in rest.
In me thou seest the glowing of such fire
That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,
As the death-bed whereon it must expire,
Consum’d with that which it was nourish’d by.
This thou perceiv’st, which makes thy love more strong,
To love that well, which thou must leave ere long.
GOOD NIGHT
W. S. Merwin
Sleep softly my old love
my beauty in the dark
night is a dream we have
as you know as you know
night is a dream you know
an old love in the dark
around you as you go
without end as you know
in the night where you go
sleep softly my old love
without end in the dark
in the love that you know
* * *
Going Gentle
The Welsh poet Dylan Thomas famously pleaded with his dying father not to “go gentle into that good night.” In this poem, which evokes Thomas’s poem through its title and its repetitive, incantatory structure (something common to many Welsh verse forms), W. S. Merwin seems not to find the prospect of nightfall quite so worrisome as he and his old love approach it.
* * *
9
A FAILURE TO COMMUNICATE
“Then you should say what you mean,” the March Hare went on.
“I do,” Alice hastily replied; “at least—at least I mean what I say — That’s the same thing, you know.”
“Not the same thing a bit!” said the Hatter. “Why, you might just as well say that ‘I see what I eat’ is the same thing as ‘I eat what I see’!”
—Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
* * *
IN PRAISE OF THE INARTICULATE
Good communication, counselors will tell you, is the key to a lasting relationship. Poets, being poets, would prefer to let their poems do the talking for them— which should be the same thing but somehow isn’t. Any wonder that there are so many poems about broken hearts?
* * *
Too Much Information
Writing teachers try to drill into their students the principle that it’s better to show than to tell. Readers prefer dealing with the concrete and specific than with abstract notions (such as “love”). Here William Blake learns the consequences of too much tell and not enough show.
Pain = Attempt.
* * *
NEVER PAIN TO TELL THY LOVE
William Blake
Never pain to tell thy Love
Love that never told can be
For the gentle wind does move
Silently invisibly.
I told my love I told my love,
I told her all my heart
Trembling cold in ghastly fears
Ah! she doth depart
Soon as she was gone from me
A traveller came by
Silently invisibly:
O was no deny
YOU SAY I LOVE NOT
Robert Herrick
You say I love not, ’cause I do not play
Still with your curls and kiss the time away.
You blame me, too, because I can’t devise
Some sport to please those babies in your eyes:
By Love’s religion, I must here confess it,
The most I love when I the least express it.
Small griefs find tongues; full casks are ever found
To give, if any, yet but little sound.
Deep waters noiseless are; and this we know,
That chiding streams betray small depths below.
So when Love speechless is she doth express
Love Poetry Out Loud Page 10