romantic poems

It was your idea
to park and watch the elephants
swaying among the trees
like royalty
at that make-believe safari
near Laguna.
I didn"t know anything that big
could be so quiet.

And once, you stopped
on a dark desert road
to show me the stars
climbing over each other
riotously
like insects
like an orchestra
thrashing its way
through time itself
I never saw light that way
again.

I am in love, hence free to live
by heart, to ad lib as I caress.
A soul is light when full,
heavy when vacuous.
My soul is light. She is not afraid
to dance the agony alone,
for I was born wearing your shirt,
will come from the dead with that shirt on.

The angels I love
bicker over cod guts and snapper spines.
They joust for flounder skulls and pick the bones clean,
screaming. Their harsh, fine voices
break across my town
in a language lost to my kind,
thoughtless in the clear now of now
without death. Christ, walk down streets paved
with rain to me and you drown in my choir,
my angels beating prayer under wing
which is the want I have not loved
well. Where did my weather go? Meet me
where my hidden weather went,
where praise and rain
are never spent.

Have you love for me,
Yours my love shall be,
While the days of life are flowing.
Short was summer's stay,
Grass now pales away,
With our play will come regrowing.

What you said last year
Sounds yet in my ear, —
Birdlike at the window sitting,
Tapping, trilling there,
Singing, in would bear
Joy the warmth of sun befitting.

Litli-litli-lu,
Do you hear me too,
Youth behind the birch-trees biding?
Now the words I send, —
Darkness will attend,
May be you can give them guiding.

Love thy neighbor, to Christ be leal!
Crush him never with iron-heel,
Though in the dust he 's lying!
All the living responsive await
Love with power to recreate,
Needing alone the trying.

Her, my own sad love divine,
Did I pierce as with a knife,
Stabbed with words that seemed not mine
Her more dear to me than life.

And she raised, she raised her head,
Slow that smile, pale to the brow:
" Lovely songs when I am dead
You will make for me; but how
Shall I hear them then? " she said,
" Make them now, O make them now! "

Come let us make love deathless, thou and I,
Seeing that our footing on the Earth is brief —
Seeing that her multitudes sweep out to die
Mocking at all that passes their belief.
For standard of our love not theirs we take;
If we go hence to-day
Fill the high cup that is so soon to break
With richer wine than they!

Ay, since beyond these walls no heavens there be
Joy to revive or wasted youth repair,
I'll not bedim the lovely flame in thee
Nor sully the sad splendour that we wear.

I'll sing of Love an hundred songs;
For there's an endless store.
I'll sing of Love till the listening stars
Shall crowd the ocean floor.
And then I'll sing again of Love
And then of Love once more.

Here is the riddle; here the key:
Uncoil the silken mesh.
For Otus is a human soul
And Rismel is the flesh.
And tho my theme is the age's dream
Its heart is young and fresh.

Otus quaffed white flame of sun
That gilded Gramard's noon.
But Rismel breathed where the cold weed wreathed

I will open my heart to Love and we will glean
The fields together;
Garnering a good harvest.
He shall gather the nations of the world as blossoms
And weave them into a crown,
As little children braid corn-flowers for their curls,
And twine dandelions, with laughter;
As maidens gather roses
Which because of their sweet odor
They place in their bosoms,
Leaving blood upon the thorns.

My soul thrills, even as I think the laburnum
Thrills with April sap, longing to link
Her chain of gold in the love universal.

In the forgiving moonlight, on a marble slab of the morgue
A woman lies, whiter than the marble.
Colder than the moon.
There is a blot upon her.
Has Love turned murderer?
Who has put a blot upon her whiteness?
Has the moon done this or the sun or the stars?
Or the majesty which made sun and moon and earth
And belted Orion?
She were not shamed unless Man shamed her.
And what is man that he
Dare shame the vilest thing that lives?
The beasts of the field have purer knowledge,