The following poets are just a few from the collection of poetry and art called LOVING, edited by
Charles Sullivan. It is a book i would highly recommend adding to any poetry and/or art collection.
YOU THOUGHT I WAS THAT TYPE
Anna Akhmatova, translated from Russian by Richard McKane
You thought I was that type:
that you could forget me,
and that I'd plead and weep and throw myself
under the hooves of a bay mare,
or that I'd ask the sorcerers
for some magic potion made from roots
and send you a terrible gift:
my precious perfumed handkerchief.
Damn you! I will not grant
your cursed soul vicarious tears or a single glance.
And I swear to you by the garden of the angels,
I swear by the miracle-working ikon,
and by the fire and smoke of our nights:
I will never come back to you.
TONIGHT I CAN WRITE THE SADDEST LINES
Pablo Neruda, translated from Spanish by W. S. Merwin
Tonight I can write the saddest lines
Write, for example, "The night is shattered
and the blue stars shiver in the distance."
The night wind revolves in the sky and sings.
Tongiht I can write the saddest lines.
I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.
Through nights like this one I held her in my arms.
I kissed her again and again under the endless sky.
She loved me, sometimes I loved her too.
How could one not have loved her great still eyes.
Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
To think that I do not have her. To feel that I have lost her.
To hear the immense night, still more immense without her.
And the verse falls to the soul like dew to the pasture.
What does it matter that my love could not keep her.
The night is shattered and she is not with me.
This is all. In the distance someone is singing. In the distance.
My soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.
My sight searches for her as though to go to her.
My heart looks for her, and she is not with me.
The same night whitening the same trees.
We, of that time, are no longer the same.
I no longer love her, that's certain, but how I loved her.
My voice tried to find the wind to touch her hearing.
Another's. She will be another's. Like my kisses before.
Her voice. Her bright body. Her infinite eyes.
I no longer love her, that's certain, but maybe I love her.
Love is so short, forgetting is so long.
Because through nights like this one I held her in my arms
my soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.
Though this be the last pain that she makes me suffer
and these the last verses that I write for her.
A PITY - WE WERE SUCH A GOOD INVENTION
Yehuda Amichai, translated from Hebrew by Assia Gutman
They amputated
Your thighs off my hips
As far as I'm concerned
They are all surgeons. All of them.
They dismantled us
Each from the other.
As far as I'm concerned
They are all engineers. All of them.
A pity. We were such a good
And loving invention.
An aeroplane made from a man and wife.
Wings and everything.
We hovered a little above the earth.
We even flew a little.
THE FIRST DAY
Christina Rossetti
I wish I could remember the first day,
First hour, first moment of your meeting me;
If bright or dim the season, it might be
Summer or winter for aught I can say.
So unrecorded did it slip away,
So blind was I to see and to forsee,
So dull to mark the budding of my tree
That would not blossom yet for many a May.
If only I could recollect it! Such
A day of days! I let it come and go
As traceless as a thaw of bygone snow.
It seemed to mean so little, meant so much!
If only now I could recall that touch,
First touch of hand in hand! - Did one but know!
WILD NIGHTS
Emily Dickinson
Wild Nights - Wild Nights!
Were I with thee
Wild Nights should be
Our luxury!
Futile - the Winds -
To a Heart in port -
Done with the Compass -
Done with the Chart!
Rowing in Eden -
Ah, the Sea!
Might I but moor - Tonight -
In Thee!
KISSING
Brian Mueller
Kissing someone on the lips
is like sharing a ripe fruit
while dancing in the snow
you try to devour them until sparks
fly and you spin in a circle
and you fall and you feel
like you fell in the ocean. She
whispers in your ear "I love
you."
I TRY TO KEEP
Erica Jong
I try to keep
falling in love
if only to keep
death
at bay.
I know
that the burned
witches,
that the seared flesh
of the enemy -
O we are all
each other's
enemies,
even sometimes those
who latley
were
lovers -
are not
to reconstituted
nor healed
by my
falling
in love;
& yet
here is
the paradox:
love drives
the poem -
& the poem
is
hope.