Love Poetry Out Loud (16 page)

Michael Drayton

S
ince there's no help, come, let us kiss and part.

Nay, I have done, you get no more of me,

And I am glad, yea glad with all my heart

That thus so cleanly I myself can free;

Shake hands forever, cancel all our vows,

And when we meet at any time again

Be it not seen in either of our brows

That we one jot of former love retain.

Now at the last gasp of Love's latest breath,

When, his pulse failing, Passion speechless lies,

When Faith is kneeling by his bed of death

And Innocence is closing up his eyes,

Now if thou would'st, when all have given him over,

From death to life thou might'st him yet recover.

William Shakespeare

S
igh no more, ladies, sigh no more,

Men were deceivers ever,

One foot in sea, and one on shore,

To one thing constant never.

Then sigh not so, but let them go,

And be you blithe and bonny,

Converting all your sounds of woe

Into hey nonny nonny.

Sing no more ditties, sing no moe,

Of dumps so dull and heavy;

The fraud of men was ever so,

Since summer first was leavy.

Then sigh not so, but let them go,

And be you blithe and bonny,

Converting all your sounds of woe

Into hey nonny nonny.

 

Nothing New under the Sun

Shakespeare's take draws more on the wisdom of the Old Testament book of Ecclesiastes. As much as we try to understand and control the world, finally it's futile. So, with faith and hope, we accept what's past and cheerfully move on to what's next
.

Hey nonny nonny =
A medieval nonsense phrase, which Shakespeare uses to suggest words like
nonce
and a
non
that convey the nowness of love
.

Moe =
More
.

Dumps =
Depression
.

Leavy =
Leafy
.

 

STEPPING INTO TIME

A parable offered by the Greek philosopher Heraclitus says that you cannot step into the same river twice. Here, two poets venture into the river of time and let it carry them where it will, realizing that there's no going back to the beginning and doing it again. Love's like that too
.

 

Hoagland =
A friend of the poet's, in a remembered conversation
.

Dean Young

I
love you he said but saying it took twenty years

so it was like listening to mountains grow.

I love you she says fifty times into a balloon

then releases the balloon into a room

whose volume she calculated to fit

the breath it would take to read

the complete works of Charlotte Bronte aloud.

Someone else pours green dust into the entryway

and puts rice paper on the floor. The door

is painted black. On the clothesline

shirttails snap above the berserk daffodils.

Hoagland says you've got to plunge the sword

into the charging bull. You've got

to sew yourself into a suit of light.

For the vacuum tube, it's easy,

just heat the metal to incandescence

and all that dark energy becomes radiance.

A kind of hatching, syntactic and full of buzz.

No contraindications, no laws forbidding

buying gin on Sundays. No if you're pregnant,

if you're operating heavy machinery because

who isn't towing the scuttled tonnage

of some self? Sometimes just rubbing

her feet is enough. Just putting out

a new cake of soap. Sure, the contents

are under pressure and everyone knows

that last step was never intended to bear

any weight but isn't that why we're standing there?

Ripples in her hair, I love you she hollers

over the propellers. Yellow scarf in mist.

When I planted all those daffodils,

I didn't know I was planting them

in my own chest. Play irretrievably

with the lid closed, Satie wrote on the score.

But Hoagland says he's sick of opening

the door each morning not on diamonds

but piles of coal, and he's sick of being

responsible for the eons of pressure needed

and the sea is sick of being responsible

for the rain, and the river is sick of the sea.

So the people who need the river

to float waste to New Jersey

throw in antidepressants. So the river

is still sick but nervous now too,

its legs keep thrashing out involuntarily,

flooding going concerns, keeping the president

awake. So the people throw in beta-blockers

to make it sleep which it does, sort of,

dreaming it's a snake again but this time

with fifty heads belching ammonia

which is nothing like the dreams it once had

of children splashing in the blue of its eyes.

So the president gets on the airways

with positive vectors and vows

to give every child a computer

but all this time, behind the podium,

his penis is shouting, Put me in, Coach,

I can be the river! So I love you say

the flashbulbs but then the captions

say something else. I love you says

the hammer to the nail. I love Tamescha

someone sprays across the For Sale sign.

So I tell Hoagland it's a fucked-up ruined

world in such palatial detail, he's stuck

for hours on the phone. Look at those crows,

they think they're in on the joke and

they don't love a thing. They think

they have to be that black to keep

all their radiance inside. I love you

the man says as his mother dies

so now nothing ties him to the earth,

not fistfuls of dirt, not the silly songs

he remembers singing as a child.

I love you I say meaning lend me twenty bucks.

 

Like a River

Dean Young wrote that a sense of an “unavoidable and unopposable forward flood” of images led him to make this a love poem. Notice how they swirl and eddy with the current, somehow united in the direction they're going
.

Satie =
French composer Erik Satie (1866–1925)
.

Coal =
Diamonds and coal are both produced by pressure on carbon deposits
.

Beta-blockers =
Drugs that moderate the heartbeat and lower blood pressure
.

 

What Could Have Been

Gary Snyder's long study of Zen Buddhism informs this poem. Zen teaches the student to focus on the moment — the now—as a way of removing oneself from the operations of karma, the actions of past lives that determine present conditions
.

Yase =
A village in the mountains north of Kyoto, Japan, where Snyder lived for some years
.

Gary Snyder

Y
ou said, that October,

In the tall dry grass by the orchard

When you chose to be free,

“Again someday, maybe ten years.”

After college I saw you

One time. You were strange,

And I was obsessed with a plan.

Now ten years and more have

Gone by: I've always known

where you were —

I might have gone to you

Hoping to win your love back.

You still are single.

I didn't.

I thought I must make it alone.

I Have done that.

Only in dream, like this dawn,

Does the grave, awed intensity

Of our young love

Return to my mind, to my flesh.

We had what the others

All crave and seek for;

We left it behind at nineteen.

I feel ancient, as though I had

Lived many lives.

And may never now know

If I am a fool

Or have done what my

karma demands.

 

NEW BEGINNINGS

Tragedy, in the classical sense, doesn't happen to ordinary folks. You have to be a king or a hero to be eligible. Here, then, are poems by two ordinary poets, one glad to be normal again, and another glad not to be
.

 

Just Another Day

The life of the hymn-writer and novelist Jan Struther, the pen name of Joyce Maxtone Graham (born Joyce Anstruther), was one of striking highs and lows, including several passionate marriages and bitter breakups
.

Jan Struther

N
ow, heaven be thanked, I am out of love again!

I have been long a slave, and now am free;

I have been tortured, and am eased of pain;

I have been blind, and now my eyes can see;

I have been lost, and now the way lies plain;

I have been caged, and now I hold the key;

I have been mad, and now at last am sane;

I am wholly I, that was but a half of me.

So, a free man, my dull proud path I plod,

Who, tortured, blind, mad, caged, was once a God.

 

To-do List

Here's a glimpse into a day in the life of Paul Blackburn, a poet and translator who was a follower of Ezra Pound. He wrote this in 1958, at a time when he had recently separated from his first wife. Blackburn went on to marry twice more
.

Paul Blackburn

R
ise at 7:15

study the

artifacts

(2 books

1 photo

1 gouache sketch

2 unclean socks

perform the necessary ablutions

hands

face, feet

crotch

even answer the door

with good grace, even

if it's the light-and-gas man

announcing himself as “EDISON!

Readjer meter, mister?”

For Chrissake yes

read my meter

Nothing can alter the euphoria

The blister is still on one finger

There just are

some mornings worth getting up

& making a cup

of coffee,

that's all

Charlotte Mew

I
so liked Spring last year

Because you were here; —

The thrushes too —

Because it was these you so liked to hear —

I so liked you.

This year's a different thing, —

I'll not think of you.

But I'll like Spring because it is simply Spring

As the thrushes do.

 

LOOKING FORWARD, LOOKING BACK

The next two poems are about getting over lost love. One poet finds it easy. The other doesn't
.

 

Kindred Souls

During the Edwardian era, when she published, Thomas Hardy called Charlotte Mew “far and away the best living woman poet.” She's not much remembered today, but she shared with Hardy a poetic vision in which nature, independent of any divine purpose, becomes a common reference by which we define ourselves
.

Thomas Hardy

I
look into my glass,

And view my wasting skin,

And say, “Would God it came to pass

My heart had shrunk as thin!”

For then, I, undistrest

By hearts grown cold to me,

Could lonely wait my endless rest

With equanimity.

But Time, to make me grieve,

Part steals, lets part abide;

And shakes this fragile frame at eve

With throbbings of noontide.

 

Hearts Grown Full

Hardy wrote several memorable poems about thrushes. This is not one of those, but it's memorable in its own right. It may seem like an older man's poem (Hardy wrote powerful poetry up until the very end, dying in 1928 at age 88), but in fact it's among his earliest. The heart, it seems, doesn't age as quickly as the skin
.

 

LESSONS LEARNED, AND NOT

Experience is a powerful teacher, but even with its lessons firmly in mind, people have the bad habit of making the same mistakes over and over again. Neither of these two voices of experience seems completely ready to declare itself immune to the attractions of love
.

 

Pug =
A monkey
.

Robber =
An important image for this poem. During this period, robbers and highwaymen (the “gangstas” of their day) were a hazard for travelers — especially a woman on her own
.