love poems for her

If I, dearest Lily, did not love thee,
How this prospect would enchant my sight!
And yet if I, Lily, did not love thee,
Could Ifind, or here, or there, delight?

Ah ! who'll e'er those days restore,
Those bright days of early love!
Who'll one hour again concede,
Of that time so fondly cherish'd!
Silently my wounds I feed,
And with wailing evermore
Sorrow o'er each joy now perish'd.
Ah! who'll e'er the days restore
Of that time so fondly cherish'd!

She comes each morning
with the sea on her head.

Fresh oysters for sale, fresh oysters!
She cries like the sunlight,

wrinkles rippling
though there isn't a puff of wind,

hands filled with thunderous storm clouds.

When will it rain,
when will it rain?

Her firm buttocks
are rolling breakers.

Faster than the dark,
lighter than a bird,

lovely, so lovely,
she strides beside the sun.

In sunlight suffused
with the glow of apples

on thin, distant branches
in orchards near Taegu,

morning shakes, as the train,
like an illness,
reaches now the height of its fever.

Love, my love
so far away:

in moments like this
even silk
round my waist

That person's name escapes me now
but her eyes and her lips
remain in my heart.

Even when the winds blow,
even when the rains fall,
outside the window, I can't forget
that night of streetlight shadows.

When love passes
what remains of the past —
a lakeside on a summer's day,
a park in autumn,
on that park bench,
the leaves falling,
the leaves turning to dust,
covered with leaves,
though we say love disappears —
that person's name escapes me now
but her eyes and her lips

Tapping, tapping the carved wooden fish,
overcome by drowsiness,

the lovely young monk
has drifted into sleep.

As the Buddha wordlessly
smiles, just smiles,

along the thousand league western border

under a dazzling evening sky,
peonies fall and fall.

At sunrise
on Kilimanjaro
what is it the three peaks
— grandfather,
father,
and son —
in silent communication
agree to do?

By a tree of dawn
just the height of a giraffe
they reveal a giraffe couple
as they tear off and eat the leaves.
They reveal a kiss as the couple recalls
love, a kiss just as still
as still can be.

The loved one is not only the beloved; it is also everything yearned for. If all humankind is the beloved for Sakyamuni, philosophy is the beloved for Kant. If the gentle spring rain is the beloved for the rose, then Italy is the beloved for Mazzini. The loved one is not only that which is loved but also that which loves.
If love be freedom, then the beloved also is freedom. But aren't you all bound helplessly by the high-sounding name of freedom? You have a love, even you? If so, it is no love, it is your shadow.

May my love become an alder tree
of Kumsong in Hoeyang, and
I an arrowroot vine in
the third month or fourth:
Like a spider's web around a butterfly,
the vine goes around the tree,
tightly this way, tightly that,
wrongly loosened, properly wound,
bound, then loosened from down below
all the way to the top,
tightly winding round and round
without a single gap, and
unchanging, day and night,
it's coiled around, twisting.
Though, in the heart of winter,

I send you, my love,
select branches of the willow.
Plant them to be admired
outside your bedroom window.
If a night rain makes them bud,
think that it is I.