Love Poetry Out Loud (11 page)

Which was its only instrument of song,

So me too stormy passions work my wrong,

And for excess of Love my Love is dumb.

But surely unto Thee mine eyes did show

Why I am silent, and my lute unstrung;

Else it were better we should part, and go,

Thou to some lips of sweeter melody,

And I to nurse the barren memory

Of unkissed kisses, and songs never sung.

 

FILLING IN THE BLANKS

We need loving, which is not to say that we always get what we need. Searching for love can lead us into some ambiguous places — places that the word love hides from public view … places that may in fact contain nothing. Here are two poems about love and emptiness
.

 

Margaret Atwood

T
his is a word we use to plug

holes with. It's the right size for those warm

blanks in speech, for those red heart-

shaped vacancies on the page that look nothing

like real hearts. Add lace

and you can sell

it. We insert it also in the one empty

space on the printed form

that comes with no instructions. There are whole

magazines with not much in them

but the word
love
, you can

rub it all over your body and you

can cook with it too. How do we know

it isn't what goes on at the cool

debaucheries of slugs under damp

pieces of cardboard? As for the weed-

seedlings nosing their tough snouts up

among the lettuces, they shout it.

Love! Love! sing the soldiers, raising

their glittering knives in salute.

Then there's the two

of us. This word

is far too short for us, it has only

four letters, too sparse

to fill those deep bare

vacuums between the stars

that press on us with their deafness.

It's not love we don't wish

to fall into, but that fear.

This word is not enough but it will

have to do. It's a single

vowel in this metallic

silence, a mouth that says

O again and again in wonder

and pain, a breath, a finger-

grip on a cliffside. You can

hold on or let go.

 

The Big O

What choice have we except to try to love? That's the question Margaret Atwood seems to be asking with this poem. The answers may be unsettling, but still she keeps trying
.

Deafness =
There's no sound in a vacuum
.

Carolyn Forché

I
take off my shirt, I show you.

I shaved the hair out under my arms.

I roll up my pants, I scraped off the hair

on my legs with a knife, getting white.

My hair is the color of chopped maples.

My eyes dark as beans cooked in the south.

(Coal fields in the moon on torn-up hills)

Skin polished as a Ming bowl

showing its blood cracks, its age, I have hundreds

of names for the snow, for this, all of them quiet.

In the night I come to you and it seems a shame

to waste my deepest shudders on a wall of a man.

You recognize strangers,

think you lived through destruction.

You can't explain this night, my face, your memory.

You want to know what I know?

Your own hands are lying.

 

Realization

Here's a hard one. You could read it as a poem from a woman speaking to a man, painting a picture of doubt and recrimination after a loveless coupling in which she was never “there” for him. Or you could read it as a woman's words to another woman (one who is denying her feelings for the speaker), a call for sexual self-realization. How would you read it?

Names for the snow =
Eskimos are (incorrectly) thought to have many more names for snow than do other cultures
.

“When a man says he had pleasure with a woman he does not mean conversation.”

—Samuel Johnson

ON THE MAT AND IN THE SEA

The metaphors we use to describe love's entanglements are as many and varied as … well … the fishes of the sea. So, if you have to ask why a poet might compare lovers to wrestlers or divers, you're probably too young to be reading this
.

 

Victorian-Era Grappling

The American poet Louisa S. Bevington published her work in the 1880s, a century before the steroid-swollen monsters of pro wrestling showed up on our television sets. So, try to picture the lithe athletes of ancient Greek sculpture and pottery; you'll enjoy the poem more
.

Twain! =
Two apart!

Louisa S. Bevington

O
ur oneness is the wrestlers', fierce and close.

Thrusting and thrust;

One life in dual effort for one prize,—

We fight, and must;

For soul with soul does battle evermore

Till love be trust.

Our distance is love's severance; sense divides,

Each is but each;

Never the very hidden spirit of thee

My life doth reach;

Twain! since we love athwart the gulf that needs

Kisses and speech.

Ah! wrestle closelier! we draw nearer so

Than any bliss

Can bring twain souls who would be whole and one,

Too near to kiss:

To be one thought, one voice before we die,—

Wrestle for this.

Marge Piercy

D
esire urges us on deeper

and farther into the coral maze

of the body, dense, tropical

where we cannot tell plant

from animal, mind from body

prey from predator, swaying

magenta, teal, green-golden

anemones weaving wide open.

The stronger lusts flash

corn rows of dagger teeth,

but the little desires slip,

sleek frisky neon flowers

into the corners of the eye.

The mouth tastes their strange

sweet and salty blood

burning the back of the tongue.

Deeper and deeper into

the thick warm translucence

where mind and body melt,

where we see with our tongues

and taste with our fingers;

there the horizon of excess

folds as we approach

into plains of not enough.

Now we are returned to ourselves

flung out on the beach

exhausted, flanks heaving

out of oxygen and time,

grinning like childish daubs

of boats. Now it is sleep

draws us down, surrendered

to its dark glimmer.

 

In Another Element

We can lose ourselves in the act of love, an experience where sex becomes otherworldly, transporting, rapturous … Perhaps that's what leads Marge Piercy to this evocation of reef explorers and the rapture of the deep
.

 

[YOUR JOKE HERE]

Let's face it: it's funny. We give it names, we employ dozens of clever euphemisms, we make kicks to the groin a staple of clowning, we mythologize it as the heel of the modern-day Achilles. For Robert Graves, a student of history and myth, it becomes a stand-in for male vanity and aspiration. For the Canadian poet Lorna Crozier, it becomes a stand-out
.

 

Bombard =
Medieval cannon that fired stone balls at castle walls
.

Ravelin =
The outwork of a fortification
.

Die =
Common Elizabethan-era pun on sexual climax
.

Robert Graves

D
own, wanton, down! Have you no shame

That at the whisper of Love's name,

Or Beauty's, presto! up you raise

Your angry head and stand at gaze?

Poor bombard-captain, sworn to reach

The ravelin and effect a breach —

Indifferent what you storm or why,

So be that in the breach you die!

Love may be blind, but Love at least

Knows what is man and what mere beast;

Or Beauty wayward, but requires

More delicacy from her squires.

Tell me, my witless, whose one boast

Could be your staunchness at the post,

When were you made a man of parts

To think fine and profess the arts?

Will many-gifted Beauty come

Bowing to your bald rule of thumb,

Or Love swear loyalty to your crown?

Be gone, have done! Down, wanton, down!

 

Stand-up Comedy

Graves channels the spirit of Elizabethan-era literary wit and low Shakespearean bawdy here, spinning out a series of puns and double entendres that would make Falstaff roar and Mistress Quickly blush
.

Lorna Crozier

I
t's a funny thing,

a Brontosaurus with a long neck

and pea-sized brain, only room

for one thought and that's

not extinction. It's lucky

its mouth is vertical

and not the other way

or we'd see it

smiling like a Cheshire cat.

(Hard to get in the mood

with that grin in your mind.)

No wonder I feel fond of it,

its simple trust of me

as my hands slide down your belly,

the way it jumps up

like a drawing in a child's pop-up book,

expecting me

to say “Hi!

Surprised to see you,”

expecting tenderness

from these envious woman's hands.

 

Sometimes Not Just a Cigar

Among Sigmund Freud's most controversial psychological theories was his suggestion that female children grow up with a sense of having been castrated and, consequently, envy the male organ and want to possess it. Lorna Crozier finds the whole idea amusing
.

 

AFTER WORDS

The kiss, the embrace, the act of love — they can be tender, but they are moments of arousal and excitement. Just after those moments have passed, when the rapture retreats and we come back to ourselves and to the loving other who is with us, is when some of our greatest love poetry finds its inspiration
.

 

Slope =
The poet briefly becomes like the goddess of love, and the view is from the
mons veneris
(mountain of Venus)
.

Venus =
In the myth of Venus and Adonis, the goddess becomes infatuated with a beautiful youth, an infatuation that Auden shares
.

W. H. Auden

L
ay your sleeping head, my love,

Human on my faithless arm;

Time and fevers burn away

Individual beauty from

Thoughtful children, and the grave

Proves the child ephemeral:

But in my arms till break of day

Let the living creature lie,

Mortal, guilty, but to me

The entirely beautiful.

Soul and body have no bounds:

To lovers as they lie upon

Her tolerant enchanted slope

In their ordinary swoon,

Grave the vision Venus sends

Of supernatural sympathy,

Universal love and hope;

While an abstract insight wakes

Among the glaciers and the rocks

The hermit's carnal ecstasy.

Certainty, fidelity

On the stroke of midnight pass

Like vibrations of a bell

And fashionable madmen raise

Their pedantic boring cry:

Every farthing of the cost,

All the dreaded cards foretell,

Shall be paid, but from this night

Not a whisper, not a thought

Not a kiss nor look be lost.

Beauty, midnight, vision dies:

Let the winds of dawn that blow

Softly round your dreaming head

Such a day of welcome show

Eye and knocking heart may bless,

Find our mortal world enough;

Noons of dryness find you fed

By the involuntary powers,

Nights of insult let you pass

Watched by every human love.

 

A View from the Mountain

In this moment of vision, the poet finds connection with the particular (the lover in his arms) and the universal (all of creation). W. H. Auden also hears echoes of classical mythology in this intense intimacy
.

 

Love in the Morning

What would a book of love poetry be without something in the “language of love”? Since French has a perfectly good word for the color green, and Verlaine didn't call the poem “Vert,” the green is probably of the English sort — an open grassy area, planted with flowering fruit trees and shrubs. Your editor's translation appears in brackets
.

Feuilles =
Leaves or bracts
.

Rosée =
Dew
.

Front =
Forehead
.

Baisers =
Kisses
.