Category: Poetry

Have seen dawn and sunset on moors and windy hills
Coming in solemn beauty like slow old tunes of Spain:
I have seen the lady April bringing in the daffodils,
Bringing the springing grass and the soft warm April rain.

I have heard the song of the blossoms and the old chant of the sea,
And seen strange lands from under the arched white sails of ships;
But the loveliest things of beauty God ever has showed to me
Are her voice, her hair, her eyes, her enormous heart and soul, her laugh,
The way she moves her hands when she speaks,
And the dear red curve of her lips.

– John Masefield (adapted)

I will come whenever she calls,
especially if she says
I love you,
especially that,
even if she swears
and promises nothing
but love.

The light from her
covers every
thing equally,
even my body throws no shadow
it too is consumed with light.

But this word – love
the shape of her lips
as she says it
well, this word grows and grows
inside me
it shakes itself, begins
to eat this paper
until we two shine in
its transparent throat and still
are riven, are glistening, hip and thigh,
her loosened hair
which knows no hesitation.

Come with me, I said, and no one knew
where, or how my body ached,
no carnations or barcaroles for me,
only a desire that you had opened.

I said it again: Come with me,
and no one saw the moon that bled in my mouth
or the blood that rose in the silence.

That is why, when I heard your voice say
I am coming, it was as if you had let loose
the grief, the love, the fury of a cork-trapped wine

that geysers flooding from deep in its vault:
in my mouth I felt the taste of fire again,
of blood and carnations, of salt and drops of rain.