romantic poems

The night is so still, the streets are at rest,
This is the house that my love graced,
This is the town she’s long since left,
But the house is here in the selfsame place.
A man’s there too, who stands and stares,
And wrings his hands, in violent pain:
When I see his look it makes me scared –
The moonlight shows my face again.
You doppel-gänger! You pallid creature!
Why do you act that torment through,
Love, torturing me on this very corner,
For so many nights, those years I knew.

I love pins
Long pins
Short pins
Skinny pins
Fat pins

All kinds of pins

Like little needles of truth
Perfect for puncturing lies
Release the air
Stale and dry
That holds us.


(Previously published in The Short North Gazette, Apr 2002)

Stay, O love, and hear my plaint !
Love-sick, I yearn for you.

You've made a Kartik full moon peak and pine,
Seeking you over hill and dale.

How hard to watch youth waste away -
O, what price to pay for love !

Masval, yembenal and pomegranate blossoms
I offer at your feet, my love.

Your eyes are swords of blandishment,
Well aimed straight at my heart.

Both love and torment flow from you -
You are both the wound and the balm.

Stay your feet, my love, to let me kiss them
With my life. O, listen to my tale of woe !

You know no kindness, pity, mercy, faith !
How strange, my sweetheart ! O, turn back
From your cruel sport of inflicting pain !

Being an artless woman, not knowing where to go,
I can do no more than nurse the pain of love.

Pouring out my woes, when we met long ago,
Made me feel so light, all anger melting away.

As modesty dictates, I confined the fire

A BLUE-BELL springs upon the ledge,
A lark sits singing in the hedge;
Sweet perfumes scent the balmy air,
And life is brimming everywhere.
What lark and breeze and bluebird sing,
Is Spring, Spring, Spring!
No more the air is sharp and cold;
The planter wends across the wold,
And, glad, beneath the shining sky
We wander forth, my love and I.
And ever in our hearts doth ring
This song of Spring, Spring!
For life is life and love is love,
'Twixt maid and man or dove and dove.

WHEN the game began between them for a jest,
He played king and she played queen to match the best;
Laughter soft as tears, and tears that turned to laughter,
These were things she sought for years and sorrowed after.

Pleasure with dry lips, and pain that walks by night;
All the sting and all the stain of long delight;
These were things she knew not of, that knew not of her,
When she played at half a love with half a lover.

Time was chorus, gave them cues to laugh or cry;
They would kill, befool, amuse him, let him die;

Remnants of sun ribbon the river--
half and half, black river red.
Third night, ninth month lovely hour;
pearled dew, bent bow moon.

Beneath the stars and summer moon
A pair of wedded lovers walk,
Upon the stars and summer moon
They turn their happy eyes, and talk.

Edith.

“Those stars, that moon, for me they shine
With lovely, but no startling light;
My joy is much, but not as thine,
A joy that fills the pulse, like fright.”

Alfred.

“My love, a darken'd conscience clothes
The world in sackcloth; and, I fear,
The stain of life this new heart loathes,
Still clouds my sight; but thine is clear.

Go, little book, and find our Friend,
Who Nature and the Muses loves,
Who cares the public virtues blend
With all the softness of the groves.

A fitter time thou canst not choose,
His fostering friendship to repay;
Go then, and try, my rural muse,
To steal his widowed hours away.

TELL ME, LOVE, when I rove o'er some far distant plain,
Shall I cherish the passion that dwells in my breast?
Or will ABSENCE subdue the keen rigours of pain,
And the swift wing of TIME bring the balsam of rest?

Shall the image of HIM I was born to adore,
Inshrin'd in my bosom my idol still prove?
Or seduced by caprice shall fine feeling no more,
With the incense of TRUTH gem the altar of LOVE?

When I view the deep tint of the dew-dropping Rose,
Where the bee sits enamour'd its nectar to sip;