This is love: to fly toward a secret sky,
to cause a hundred veils to fall each moment.
First, to let go of live.
In the end, to take a step without feet;
to regard this world as invisible,
and to disregard what appears to be the self.
Heart, I said, what a gift it has been
to enter this circle of lovers,
to see beyond seeing itself,
to reach and feel within the breast.
Looking for a place
where we might turn off
the inner dialogue,
the monologue
of futures & regrets,
of pasts not past enough
& futures that may never come
to pass,
we found this boat
bobbing in the blue,
this refuge amid reefs,
this white hull
within this azure sibilance of sea,
this central rocking
so like the rocking
before birth.
Venus was born of the waters,
borne over them
to teach us about love-
our only sail
on the seas of our lives
it's 1962 March 28th
I'm sitting by the window on the Prague-Berlin train
night is falling
I never knew I liked
night descending like a tired bird on a smoky wet plain
I don't like
comparing nightfall to a tired bird
I didn't know I loved the earth
can someone who hasn't worked the earth love it
I've never worked the earth
it must be my only Platonic love
and here I've loved rivers all this time
whether motionless like this they curl skirting the hills
European hills crowned with chateaus
They tell how Atys, wild with love,
Roams the mount and haunted grove;
Cybele's name he howls around,
The gloomy blast returns the sound!
Oft too by Claros' hallow'd spring,
The votaries of the laurell'd king
Quaff the inspiring, magic stream,
And rave in wild, prophetic dream.
But frenzied dreams are not for me,
Great Bacchus is my deity!
Full of mirth, and full of him,
While waves of perfume round me swim;
While flavour'd bowls are full supplied,
And you sit blushing by my side,
They say — priests say —
That God loves the world.
Maybe he does,
When the dew is pearl'd
On the emerald grass,
Or the young dawns shine
Would you be satisfied,
Proteus mine,
Just to be loved
When your hair was curled,
As Earth is beloved
When earth is fine?
I love you more
Than God loves the world.
They loved one another! young Edward and his wife,
And in their cottage-home they dwelt, apart from sin and strife.
Each evening Edward weary came from a day of honest toil,
And Mary made the fire blaze, and smiled a cheerful smile.
Oh! what was wealth or pomp to them, the gaudy glittering show,
Of jewels blazing on the breast, where heaves a heart of woe!
The merry laugh, the placid sleep, were theirs; they hated sloth,
And all the little that they had, belonged alike to both,
For they loved one another!
They lived enamoured of the lovely moon,
The dawn and twilight on their gentle lake.
Then Passion marvellously born did shake
Their breast and drave them into the mid-noon.
Their lives did shrink to one desire, and soon
They rose fire-eyed to follow in the wake
Of one eternal thought,--when sudden brake
Their hearts. They died, in miserable swoon.
Of all their agony not a sound was heard.
The glory of the Earth is more than they.
She asks her lovely image of the day:
They choose not ill their lot who choose
All quietly to live and die,
By Science sheltered or the Muse,
In unpretending privacy.
Proud epitaph—the world's acclaim—
These ask thou not; if, in their room,
Some few but love thy living name,
And household tears bedew the tomb.
Meaningless is the song of cuckoo and that of dove.
There's nothing so important on earth but love.
Meaningless is the gold of Africa, the ruby, the pearl.
There's nothing so important but the love of a girl.
Meaningless is the throne of America, the President's power,
There's nothing so important but the peak of love's tower.
There, where I saw her lovely beauty painted,
Where, Venus-like, my sacred goddess shineth,
There, with *precellent object mine eyes fainted,
That fair, but fatal star, my dole divineth.
As soon as morning in her light appeareth,
Her sweet salute, my mind o’erclouded, cleareth;
When night again the day’s delight bereaveth,
My heart’s true sacrifice she quick receiveth:
But night and day she craftily forsakes me,
To tedious day, to loathsome night betakes me.
