What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why, I have forgotten, and what arms have lain Under my head till morning; but the rain Is full of ghosts tonight, that tap and sigh Upon the glass and listen for reply, And in my heart there stirs a quiet pain For unremembered lads that not again Will turn to me at midnight with a cry.
Thus in the winter stands the lonely tree, Nor knows what birds have vanished one by one, Yet knows its boughs more silent than before: I cannot say what loves have come and gone, I only know that summer sang in me A little while, that in me sings no more.
--Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892-1950), Pulitzer-prize awarded American poet
Sometimes I have wanted to throw you off like a heavy coat. Sometimes I have said you would not let me breathe or move. But now that I am free to choose light clothes or none at all I feel the cold and all the time I think how warm it used to be.
--Vicky Feaver (1943- ), English poet and professor
There are names for what binds us: strong forces, weak forces. Look around, you can see them: the skin that forms in a half-empty cup, nails rusting into the places they join, joints dovetailed on their own weight. The way things stay so solidly wherever they've been set down— and gravity, scientists say, is weak.
And see how the flesh grows back across a wound, with a great vehemence, more strong than the simple, untested surface before. There's a name for it on horses, when it comes back darker and raised: proud flesh,
as all flesh, is proud of its wounds, wears them as honors given out after battle, small triumphs pinned to the chest—
And when two people have loved each other see how it is like a scar between their bodies, stronger, darker, and proud; how the black cord makes of them a single fabric that nothing can tear or mend.
--Jane Hirshfield (1953- ), American poet, translator, and essayist, from Of Gravity & Angels, 1988
The late Gracie Allen was a very lucid comedienne, Especially in the way that lucid means shining and bright. What her husband George Burns called her illogical logic Made a halo around our syntax and ourselves as we laughed. George Burns most often was her artful inconspicuous straight man. He could move people about stage, construct skits and scenes, write And gather jokes. They were married as long as ordinary magic Would allow, thirty-eight years, until Gracie Allen's death. In her fifties Gracie Allen developed a heart condition. She would call George Burns when her heart felt funny and fluttered He'd give her a pill and they'd hold each other till the palpitation Stopped—just a few minutes, many times and pills. As magic fills Then fulfilled must leave a space, one day Gracie Allen's heart fluttered And hurt and stopped. George Burns said unbelievingly to the doctor, "But I still have some of the pills." --Alice Notley (1945- ) from Grave of Light: New and Selected Poems, 1970-2005.
There's a man who's been out sailing In a decade full of dreams And he takes her to a schooner And he treats her like a queen Bearing beads from California With their amber stones and green He has called her from the harbor He has kissed her with his freedom He has heard her off to starboard In the breaking and the breathing Of the water weeds While she was busy being free There's a man who's climbed a mountain And he's calling out her name And he hopes her heart can hear Three thousand miles he calls again He can think her there beside him He can miss her just the same He has missed her in the forest While he showed her all the flowers And the branches sang the chorus As he climbed the scaley towers Of a forest tree While she was somewhere being free There's a man who's sent a letter And he's waiting for reply He has asked her of her travels Since the day they said goodbye He writes "Wish you were beside me We can make it if we try" He has seen her at the office With her name on all his papers Thru the sharing of the profits He will find it hard to shake her From his memory And she's so busy being free There's a lady in the city And she thinks she loves them all There's the one who's thinking of her There's the one who sometimes calls There's the one who writes her letters With his facts and figures scrawl She has brought them to her senses They have laughed inside her laughter Now she rallies her defenses For she fears that one will ask her For eternity And she's so busy being free There's a man who sends her medals He is bleeding from the war There's a jouster and a jester And a man who owns a store There's a drummer and a dreamer And you know there may be more She will love them when she sees them They will lose her if they follow And she only means to please them And her heart is full and hollow Like a cactus tree * While she's so busy being free -- Joni Mitchell (1943- ), Canadian singer-songwriter and artist, from Song to a Seagull, 1968
Everything I am is what survived love's leaving. Everything I see, eat, want, have is what survived the goneness of what love is. Love, like time, takes down the house, leaving only the partial walls, open squares of light for windows, and a door. the people here wrap their special stones in large tea leaves. I walked back from that looking for a fallen bamboo the right length for drying kimonos, thinking what a surprise it is that even such a love becomes familiar like everything else. I kept a place for it, stubborn, blessed. Even through the six years of pain after. Now it's like the sun going down each day. Or the moon changing size predictably all along its range of feeling. Dies and comes again. but love is like the salmon that have not come back to Walnut Creek for the last three years. -- Linda Gregg (1942-2019) American poet, who passed away today.
Love has gone and left me and the days are all alike; Eat I must, and sleep I will, — and would that night were here! But ah! — to lie awake and hear the slow hours strike! Would that it were day again! — with twilight near! Love has gone and left me and I don't know what to do; This or that or what you will is all the same to me; But all the things that I begin I leave before I'm through, — There's little use in anything as far as I can see. Love has gone and left me, — and the neighbors knock and borrow, And life goes on forever like the gnawing of a mouse, — And to-morrow and to-morrow and to-morrow and to-morrow There's this little street and this little house. --Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892-1950), American poet and dramatist
On Raglan Road on an autumn day I met her first and knew That her dark hair would weave a snare that I might one day rue; I saw the danger, yet I walked along the enchanted way, And I said, let grief be a fallen leaf at the dawning of the day. On Grafton Street in November we tripped lightly along the ledge Of the deep ravine where can be seen the worth of passion's pledge, The Queen of Hearts still making tarts and I not making hay - O I loved too much and by such and such is happiness thrown away. I gave her gifts of the mind I gave her the secret sign that's known To the artists who have known the true gods of sound and stone And word and tint. I did not stint for I gave her poems to say. With her own name there and her own dark hair like clouds over fields of May On a quiet street where old ghosts meet I see her walking now Away from me so hurriedly my reason must allow That I had wooed not as I should a creature made of clay - When the angel woos the clay he'd lose his wings at the dawn of day.
--Patrick Kavanagh (1904-1967), originally titled "Dark Haired Miriam Ran Away," in 1948
This poem was set to music by Luke Kelly of The Dubliners; here is a cover by Joan Osbourne and the Chieftains, from the album Tears of Stone (1999).
And you know the light is fading all too soon You're just two umbrellas one late afternoon You don't know the next thing you will say This is your favorite kind of day It has no walls, the beauty of the rain Is how it falls, how it falls, how it falls And there's nothing wrong, but there is something more And sometimes you wonder what you love her for She says you've known her deepest fears Cause she's shown you a box of stained-glass tears It can't be all-- the truth about the rain Is how it falls, how it falls, how it falls But when she gave you more to find You let her think she'd lost her mind And that's all on you Feeling helpless if she asked for help Or scared you'd have to change yourself And you can't deny this room will keep you warm You can look out of your window at the storm But you watch the phone and hope it rings You'll take her any way she sings, Or how she calls, the beauty of the rain Is how it falls, how it falls, how it falls How it falls, how it falls, how it falls
You can't see me yet Seeing takes a long, long time From the outside in Measuring each shift and sigh But as you let your eyes adjust To the darkness deep within Sifting through the ash and dust We are the places that we've been You can't hear me yet Listening takes a long, long time And I've so much to tell But words die on these lips of mine But in the stillness you may sense Every thing I long to say Unraveling like golden threads The walls will all come down this way You don't know me yet Knowing takes a long, long time And time is all we have Never traveling in straight lines So memorize each turn and twist Just be careful as you go For if love is a labyrinth Then my heart is Jericho
--Mary Chapin Carpenter (1958- ), from the album Ashes and Roses (2012). Chapin's notes about this song can be found here.
Oh mother, mother, where is happiness? They took my lover's tallness off to war, Left me lamenting. Now I cannot guess What I can use an empty heart-cup for. He won't be coming back here any more. Some day the war will end, but, oh, I knew When he went walking grandly out that door That my sweet love would have to be untrue. Would have to be untrue. Would have to court Coquettish death, whose impudent and strange Possessive arms and beauty (of a sort) Can make a hard man hesitate--and change. And he will be the one to stammer, "Yes." Oh mother, mother, where is happiness?
--Gwendolyn Brooks (1917-2000), American, Poet Laureate of Illinois
