love poems

There is a woman on Michigan Boulevard keeps a parrot and goldfish and two white mice.

She used to keep a houseful of girls in kimonos and three pushbuttons on the front door.

Now she is alone with a parrot and goldfish and two white mice . . . but these are some of her thoughts:

The love of a soldier on furlough or a sailor on shore leave burns with a bonfire red and saffron.

The love of an emigrant workman whose wife is a thousand miles away burns with a blue smoke.

The wishes on this child's mouth
Came like snow on marsh cranberries;
The tamarack kept something for her;
The wind is ready to help her shoes.
The north has loved her; she will be
A grandmother feeding geese on frosty
Mornings; she will understand
Early snow on the cranberries
Better and better then.

How many feet ran with sunlight, water, and air?

What little devils shaken of laughter, cramming their little ribs with chuckles,

Fixed this lone red tulip, a woman's mouth of passion kisses, a nun's mouth of sweet thinking, here topping a straight line of green, a pillar stem?

Who hurled this bomb of red caresses? — nodding balloon-film shooting its wireless every fraction of a second these June days:
Love me before I die ;
Love me — love me now .

Body of Jesus taken down from the cross
Carved in ivory by a lover of Christ,
It is a child's handful you are here,
The breadth of a man's finger,
And this ivory loin cloth
Speaks an interspersal in the day's work,
The carver's prayer and whim
And Christ-love.

I humm'd an air of sweet Mozart,
A tender sigh of love,
With just enough of jealous heart
To make it like the dove.
It haunted me thro' a field of oats
And o'er a thymy down
To where the sea with rocking boats
Wore sunset like a crown

Love they alone the joyful heart
The night wind & the leaf? —
That when we are sick with an evil smart
They whisper nought but grief.

I thought in my young days to find
Relief for breast & brow:
In the mere breathing of the wind,
And swaying of the bough.

But now, with no remorseful calm,
I look where dead men rest,
Half jealous of that pallid balm
Which sleeps on brow & breast.

Could we know how kin we are
With every little drooping flower
With every little distant star
And every viewless power.

Could we but be content to live
As flower below, or star above
And in our daily counsels give
Less logic and more love

The desert vulture
jealousy
The sea gull
love secure
He rests not thro' the flaming day;
Ev'n in the burning Heaven above
He soars but in the search of prey;
And that is jealous love.

The sea-gull dips his salt white wings

Descend O radiant God! — the plains are thirsting
To drink the cooling dews — and man is tir'd —
More faintly pull the Steeds —
Sink in thy chariot down.

Behold who from the Oceans crystal wave
Smiles lovingly and beckons! Knows her thy heart? —
More swiftly fly the Steeds
Thetis the Divine one beckons —

Quick from the chariot into her arms
Springs the God Driver — Love usurps the reins
Still halt the panting Steeds
And drink the cooling flood!

5

Kindred forgets Thee.
I alone bear the Smart.
The small worm that frets Thee,
Is cold at my heart.

6


Farewell! the world now
Reclaims our first troth,
Claims — till this willow bough
Droop over both.