Je t’adore – Thomas Kinsella

Je t’adore

by Thomas Kinsella

The other props are gone.
Sighing in one another’s
Iron arms, propped above nothing,
We praise Love the limiter.

Emily Dickinson

I HAVE no life but this,
To lead it here;
Nor any death, but lest
Dispelled from there;

Nor tie to earths to come, 5
Nor action new,
Except through this extent,
The realm of you.

1924.

In Love Made Visible

photo by:  H. Armstrong Roberts/ClassicStock/Corbis (1955)

In Love Made Visible

by May Swenson

In love are we made visible
As in a magic bath
are unpeeled
to the sharp pit
so long concealed

With love’s alertness
we recognize
the soundless whimper
of the soul
behind the eyes
A shaft opens
and the timid thing
at least leaps to surface
with full-spread wing

The fingertips of love discover
more than the body’s smoothness
They uncover a hidden conduit
for the transfusion
of empathies that circumvent
the mind’s intrusion

In love we are set free
Objective bone
and flesh no longer insulate us
to ourselves alone
We are released
and flow into each other’s cup
Our two frail vials pierced
drink each other up

Still I Love to Rhyme – Robert Louis Stevenson

painting by: John Singer Sargent, August 1885

Still I Love to Rhyme

by Robert Louis Stevenson

Still I love to rhyme, and still more, rhyming, to wander
Far from the commoner way;
Old-time trills and falls by the brook-side still do I ponder,
Dreaming to-morrow to-day.

Come here, come, revive me, Sun-God, teach me, Apollo,
Measures descanted before;
Since I ancient verses, I emulous follow,
Prints in the marbles of yore.

Still strange, strange, they sound in old-young raiment invested,
Songs for the brain to forget -
Young song-birds elate to grave old temples benested
Piping and chirruping yet.

Thoughts? No thought has yet unskilled attempted to flutter
Trammelled so vilely in verse;
He who writes but aims at fame and his bread and his butter,
Won with a groan and a curse.

Not Waving but Drowning – Stevie Smith

Not Waving but Drowning

by Stevie Smith

Nobody heard him, the dead man,
But still he lay moaning:
I was much further out than you thought
And not waving but drowning.

Poor chap, he always loved larking
And now he’s dead
It must have been too cold for him his heart gave way,
They said.

Oh, no no no, it was too cold always
(Still the dead one lay moaning)
I was much too far out all my life
And not waving but drowning.

If you would like to hear Stevie Smith read her poem, the BBC has a copy here.  Also Poemhunter has a collection of Stevie Smith poems availible as a PDF download here.

The Daffodil Fields – John Masefield

The Daffodil Fields

by John Masefield

(View entire post to download this book).

She faded to the memory of a kiss,

There in the rough life among foreign faces;

Love cannot live where leisure never is;

He could not write to her from savage places,

Where drunken mates were betting on the aces,

And rum went round and smutty songs were lifted.

He would not raise her banner against that; he drifted,

Ceasing, in time, to write, ceasing to think,

But happy in the wild life to the bone;

The riding in vast space, the songs, the drink,

Some careless heart beside him like his own,

The racing and the fights, the ease unknown

In older, soberer lands; his young blood thrilled.

The pampas seemed his own, his cup of joy was filled.

And one day, riding far after strayed horses,

He rode beyond the ranges to a land

Broken and made most green by watercourses,

Which served as strayline to the neighbouring brand.

A house stood near the brook; he stayed his hand,

Seeing a woman there, whose great eyes burned,
So that he could not choose but follow when she
turned.

After that day he often rode to see
That woman at the peach farm near the brook,
And passionate love between them came to be
Ere many days. Their fill of love they took;
And even as the blank leaves of a book
The days went over Mary, day by day,
Blank as the last, was turned, endured, passed, turned
away.
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