the mother, hiding with her child from
the death squads of brutality,
if she, trying to keep the child
quiet, to keep them from being found out,
holds her hand over his mouth, holds him
against her, tighter and tighter, until he stops
breathing;
if the restorer—trying to bring back
to perfection the masterpiece scarred by its
transit through time, wipes away
by mistake, the mysterious smile. . .
if what
loves, and love is, takes away what it aims
to preserve,
then here is the place to fall
silent, meaning well but in danger
of marring what we would praise,
Ooooh, realiz, what a perceptive poem. This reminds me of us, parents and grandparents, teaching our children about morality, ethics, religion....and thereby suffocating the natural goodness in humanity.....Trying to restore a masterpiece? Or, trying to tame the barbarian in all of us? And thereby, by mistake, wiping away the mystery and the smile.
Wonderful! Thank you!
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Love Poems
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- Penelope
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Re: Love Poems
Only those become weary of angling who bring nothing to it but the idea of catching fish.
He was born with the gift of laughter and a sense that the world is mad....
Rafael Sabatini
He was born with the gift of laughter and a sense that the world is mad....
Rafael Sabatini
- giselle
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Re: Love Poems
“What loves, takes away” is a great poem. Glad to see the Love Poems thread alive again. Love poems come in many shapes and sizes as does love itself. And love is a complex beast so its good that we have poetry to help us figure it out. Here’s a love poem from the 2007 Griffin Poetry Prize Anthology, well I guess its a love poem? I think it’s complex in some ways but simple at the same time and funny in an odd, ironic way.
The Owl You Heard
The owl you heard hooting
In the middle of the night wasn’t me.
It was an owl.
Or maybe you were
So asleep you didn’t even hear it.
The sprinklers on their timer, programmed to come on
At such a strangely late hour in life
For watering a garden,
Refreshed your sleep four thousand miles away by
Hissing sweetly,
Deepening the smell of green in Eden.
You heard the summer chirr of insects.
You heard the sky of stars.
You didn’t know it, fast asleep at dawn in Paris.
You didn’t hear a thing.
You heard me calling.
I am no longer human.
Frederick Seidel
The Owl You Heard
The owl you heard hooting
In the middle of the night wasn’t me.
It was an owl.
Or maybe you were
So asleep you didn’t even hear it.
The sprinklers on their timer, programmed to come on
At such a strangely late hour in life
For watering a garden,
Refreshed your sleep four thousand miles away by
Hissing sweetly,
Deepening the smell of green in Eden.
You heard the summer chirr of insects.
You heard the sky of stars.
You didn’t know it, fast asleep at dawn in Paris.
You didn’t hear a thing.
You heard me calling.
I am no longer human.
Frederick Seidel
- Saffron
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Re: Love Poems
I love the poem and think you are very right about love - complex and just when you think you might have a grip on it, the handle breaks free.giselle wrote:“What loves, takes away” is a great poem. Glad to see the Love Poems thread alive again. Love poems come in many shapes and sizes as does love itself. And love is a complex beast so its good that we have poetry to help us figure it out. Here’s a love poem from the 2007 Griffin Poetry Prize Anthology, well I guess its a love poem? I think it’s complex in some ways but simple at the same time and funny in an odd, ironic way.
The Owl You Heard
Frederick Seidel
- realiz
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Re: Love Poems
..and if it comes backthink you are very right about love - complex and just when you think you might have a grip on it, the handle breaks free.
it's yours
and if is doesn't
it never was.
Love can never be gripped too tightly. Maybe it can never be gripped at all?
I like The Owl You Heard. I wondered about these lines:
At such a strangely late hour in life
Deepening the smell of green in Eden.
You heard the sky of stars
and, I am no longer human
- realiz
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Re: Love Poems
Here is another one about love and loss.
Snowshoe to Otter Creek
1975 Stacie Cassarino
love lasts by not lasting
—Jack Gilbert
I’m mapping this new year’s vanishings:
lover, yellow house, the knowledge of surfaces.
This is not a story of return.
There are times I wish I could erase
the mind’s lucidity, the difficulty of Sundays,
my fervor to be touched
by a woman two Februarys gone. What brings the body
back, grieved and cloven, tromping these woods
with nothing to confide in? New snow reassumes
the circleting trees, the bridge above the creek
where I stand like a stranger to my life.
There is no single moment of loss, there is
an amassing. The disbeliever sleeps at an angle
in the bed. The orchard is a graveyard.
Is this the real end? Someone shoveling her way out
with cold intention? Someone naming her missing?
Snowshoe to Otter Creek
1975 Stacie Cassarino
love lasts by not lasting
—Jack Gilbert
I’m mapping this new year’s vanishings:
lover, yellow house, the knowledge of surfaces.
This is not a story of return.
There are times I wish I could erase
the mind’s lucidity, the difficulty of Sundays,
my fervor to be touched
by a woman two Februarys gone. What brings the body
back, grieved and cloven, tromping these woods
with nothing to confide in? New snow reassumes
the circleting trees, the bridge above the creek
where I stand like a stranger to my life.
There is no single moment of loss, there is
an amassing. The disbeliever sleeps at an angle
in the bed. The orchard is a graveyard.
Is this the real end? Someone shoveling her way out
with cold intention? Someone naming her missing?
- Saffron
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Re: Love Poems
Thanks for posting! I really like the image and feel evoked by the lines:realiz wrote:Here is another one about love and loss.
Snowshoe to Otter Creek
1975 Stacie Cassarino
love lasts by not lasting
—Jack Gilbert
There is no single moment of loss, there is
an amassing. The disbeliever sleeps at an angle
in the bed.
I also really like:
There are times I wish I could erase
the mind’s lucidity, the difficulty of Sundays,
my fervor to be touched
by a woman two Februarys gone.
These lines captures why it can be hard to let go when the mind is able to remember with such clarity and intensity and the feeling of loss is just that - intense rememberings accompanied by longing.
- giselle
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Re: Love Poems
I reflected on these lines a bit too. I wondered if the poem has an undertone of death to it. I think owl imagery does appear in the death context in poetry and fiction sometimes and the reference to 'strangely late hour' and 'no longer human' could possibly hint at this. My first thoughts about 'no longer human' were more in line with loss of love though and I am more inclined to that interpretation. I think the ambiguity of these lines in 'The Owl You Heard' and perhaps an overall ambiguity and uncertainty in the poem, that starts out with the first couple lines where it is 'not' an owl, I think hints at the difficulties and ambiguities that we can face sometimes in loving relationships.realiz wrote: I like The Owl You Heard. I wondered about these lines:
At such a strangely late hour in life
Deepening the smell of green in Eden.
You heard the sky of stars
and, I am no longer human
On 'Snowshoe to Otter Creek', which I really like, the line that jumps out at me is "the bridge above the creek where I stand like a stranger to my life." Like a stranger to my life - what a great way to express a profound sense of loss.
- Saffron
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Re: Love Poems
This poem is a day late, but not a dollar short.
I Love You Sweatheart
A man risked his life to write the words.
A man hung upside down (an idiot friend
holding his legs?) with spray paint
to write the words on a girder fifty feet above
a highway. And his beloved,
the next morning driving to work…?
His words are not (meant to be) so unique.
Does she recognize his handwriting?
Did he hint to her at her doorstep the night before
of “something special, darling, tomorrow”?
And did he call her at work
expecting her to faint with delight
at his celebration of her, his passion, his risk?
She will know I love her now,
the world will know my love for her!
A man risked his life to write the words.
Love is like this at the bone, we hope, love
is like this, Sweatheart, all sore and dumb
and dangerous, ignited, blessed – always,
regardless, no exceptions,
always in blazing matters like these: blessed.
Thomas Lux
What grabbed me about this poem: The writer's uses of the word bone toward the end of the poem caught my attention. For me using the word bone to indicate depth and or intensity causes me an immediate visceral reaction - I'm hooked.
I Love You Sweatheart
A man risked his life to write the words.
A man hung upside down (an idiot friend
holding his legs?) with spray paint
to write the words on a girder fifty feet above
a highway. And his beloved,
the next morning driving to work…?
His words are not (meant to be) so unique.
Does she recognize his handwriting?
Did he hint to her at her doorstep the night before
of “something special, darling, tomorrow”?
And did he call her at work
expecting her to faint with delight
at his celebration of her, his passion, his risk?
She will know I love her now,
the world will know my love for her!
A man risked his life to write the words.
Love is like this at the bone, we hope, love
is like this, Sweatheart, all sore and dumb
and dangerous, ignited, blessed – always,
regardless, no exceptions,
always in blazing matters like these: blessed.
Thomas Lux
What grabbed me about this poem: The writer's uses of the word bone toward the end of the poem caught my attention. For me using the word bone to indicate depth and or intensity causes me an immediate visceral reaction - I'm hooked.
- Penelope
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- One more post ought to do it.
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Re: Love Poems
A man risked his life to write the words.
And it could be a futile gesture because his romantic intensity would frighten her off if she didn't feel the same passion.
No one took such a risk for me, although a man once put a message in the 'personal' column of a national newspaper, risking his wife seeing it.
And it could be a futile gesture because his romantic intensity would frighten her off if she didn't feel the same passion.
No one took such a risk for me, although a man once put a message in the 'personal' column of a national newspaper, risking his wife seeing it.
Only those become weary of angling who bring nothing to it but the idea of catching fish.
He was born with the gift of laughter and a sense that the world is mad....
Rafael Sabatini
He was born with the gift of laughter and a sense that the world is mad....
Rafael Sabatini