Long ago, I was wounded. I lived
to revenge myself
against my father, not
for what he was—
for what I was: from the beginning of time,
in childhood, I thought
that pain meant
I was not loved.
It meant I loved.
– Louise Glück
Tag: poems
Remind Me
Summer is late, my heart.
Words plucked out of the air
some forty years ago
when I was wild with love
and torn almost in two
scatter like leaves this night
of whistling wind and rain.
It is my heart that’s late,
it is my song that’s flown.
Outdoors all afternoon
under a gunmetal sky
staking my garden down,
I kneeled to the crickets trilling
underfoot as if about
to burst from their crusty shells;
and like a child again
marveled to hear so clear
and brave a music pour
from such a small machine.
What makes the engine go?
Desire, desire, desire.
The longing for the dance
stirs in the buried life.
One season only,
and it’s done.
So let the battered old willow
thrash against the windowpanes
and the house timbers creak.
Darling, do you remember
the man you married? Touch me,
remind me who I am.
– Stanley Kunitz
Unplanned
That I
am much too old
for you
or that you
are too young for me
these are all
weighty arguments
that would be decisive
in the workshops
where
more enlightened people
cut
their calculated futures
strictly to measure
Awake
Awake, my dear.
Be kind
to your sleeping heart.
Take it out
into the vast fields
of Light
And let it
breathe.
– Hafiz
Yes
It’s about the blood
banging in the body,
and the brain
lolling in its bed
like a happy baby.
At your touch, the nerve,
that volatile spook tree,
vibrates. The lungs
take up their work
with a giddy vigor.
Tremors in the joints
and tympani,
dust storms
in the canister of sugar.
The coil of ribs
heats up, begins
to glow. Come
here.
– Catherine Doty
The Gorgeous Nothings
“In this short Life
that only [merely] lasts an hour
How much—how
little—is
within our
power.”
– Emily Dickinson, from The Gorgeous Nothings: Emily Dickinson’s Envelope Poems
Time Does Not Bring Relief
Time does not bring relief; you all have lied
Who told me time would ease me of my pain!
I miss her in the weeping of the rain;
I want her at the shrinking of the tide;
The old snows melt from every mountain-side,
And last year’s leaves are smoke in every lane;
But last year’s bitter loving must remain
Heaped on my heart, and my old thoughts abide.
There are a hundred places where I fear
To go,—so with her memory they brim.
And entering with relief some quiet place
Where never fell her foot or shone her face
I say, “There is no memory of her here!”
And so stand stricken, so remembering her.
– Edna St. Vincent Millay (adapted)
The More Loving One
Looking up at the stars, I know quite well
That, for all they care, I can go to hell,
But on earth indifference is the least
We have to dread from man or beast.
How should we like it were stars to burn
With a passion for us we could not return?
If equal affection cannot be,
Let the more loving one be me.
Admirer as I think I am
Of stars that do not give a damn,
I cannot, now I see them, say
I missed one terribly all day.
Were all stars to disappear or die,
I should learn to look at an empty sky
And feel its total dark sublime,
Though this might take me a little time.
– W.H. Auden
Whatever Happens
Whatever happens. Whatever
what is is is what
I want. Only that. But that.
– Galway Kinnell
Too Blue
Not With a Club
Not with a club, the Heart is broken,
Nor with a stone;
A whip, so small you could not see it,
I’ve known
To lash the Magic Creature
Till it fell,
Yet that Whip’s Name
too noble then to tell.
– Emily Dickinson from 1304
Love Song
memoryhouse 