romantic poems

be unto love as rain is unto colour; create
me gradually (or as these emerging now
hills invent the air)
breathe simply my each how
my trembling where my still invisible when. Wait

if I am not heart, because at least I beat
— always think I am gone like a sun which must go
sometimes, to make an earth gladly seem firm for you:
remember (as those pearls more than surround this throat)

I wear your dearest fears beyond their ceaselessness

(nor has a syllable of the heart's eager dim

because I love you) last night

clothed in sealace
appeared to me
your mind drifting
with chuckling rubbish
of pearl weed coral and stones;

lifted, and (before my
eyes sinking) inward, fled; softly
your face smile breasts gargled
by death: drowned only

again carefully through deepness to rise
these your wrists
thighs feet hands

poising
to again utterly disappear;
rushing gently swiftly creeping
through my dreams last
night, all of your
body with its spirit floated

speaking of love (of
which Who knows the
meaning; or how dreaming
becomes

if your heart's mine) i
guess a grassblade
Thinks beyond or
around (as poems are

made) Our picking it. this
caress that laugh
both quickly signify
life's only half (through

deep weather then
or none let's feel
all) mind in mind flesh
In flesh succeeding disappear

the first president to be loved by his
bitterest enemies " is dead

the only man woman or child who wrote
a simple declarative sentence with seven grammatical
errors " is dead "
beautiful Warren Gamaliel Harding
" is " dead
he's
" dead "
if he wouldn't have eaten them Yapanese Craps

somebody might hardly never not have been unsorry, perhaps.

He that cannot choose but love,
And strives against it still,
Never shall my fancy move;
For he loves 'gainst his will;

Nor he which is all his own,
And can at pleasure choose,
When I am caught he can be gone,
And when he list refuse.

Nor he that loves none but fair,
For such by all are sought;
Nor he that can for foul ones care,
For his judgement then is naught:

Nor he that hath wit, for he
Will make me his jest or slave;
Nor a fool, for when others . . .
He can neither . . . .

i have loved, let us see if that's all.
Bit into you as teeth, in the stone
of a musical fruit. My lips pleasantly groan
on your taste. Jumped the quick wall

of your smile into stupid gardens
if this were not enough (not really enough
pulled one before one the vague tough

exquisite
flowers, whom hardens
richly, darkness. On the whole
possibly have i loved....? you)
sheath before sheath

stripped to the Odour. (and here's what WhoEver will know
Had you as bite teeth;
i stood with you as a foal

cruelly, love
walk the autumn long;
the last flower in whose hair,
thy lips are cold with songs

for which is
first to wither, to pass?
shallowness of sunlight
falls and, cruelly,
across the grass
Comes the
moon

love, walk the
autumn
love, for the last
flower in the hair withers;
thy hair is acold with
dreams,
love thou art frail

—walk the longness of autumn
smile dustily to the people,
for winter
who crookedly care.

My titillations have no foot-notes
And their memorials are the phrases
Of idiosyncratic music.

The love that will not be transported
In an old, frizzled, flambeaued manner,
But muses on its eccentricity,

Is like a vivid apprehension
Of bliss beyond the mutes of plaster,
Or paper souvenirs of rapture,

Of bliss submerged beneath appearance,
In an interior ocean's rocking
Of long, capricious fugues and chorals.

Dust develops
from inside
as well as
on top when
objects stop
being used.
No unguent
can soothe
the chap of
abandonment.
Who knew
the polish
and balm in
a person's
simple passage
among her things.
We knew she
loved them
but not what
love means.











From Poetry Magazine, September 2006. Used with permission.

Let them have your laughter, give me only
All the withheld tears, the broken glory,
All the depth and silence of your spirit;
What have I to do with your exalting?
I can simply touch your fragrant garlands
Timidly, and wonder why you let me.

Always when I ask you why you let me
You seem half afraid, and tell me only
That I am the goddess of your garlands
And my fingers touch them into glory
Loftier than all the world's exalting,
Warm still with the murmur of a spirit.

O if I could hover with my spirit,