LOVE IS ENOUGH
Love is enough: though the world be a-waning,
And the woods have no voice but the voice of complaining,
Though the skies be too dark for dim eyes to discover
The gold-cups and daisies fair blooming thereunder,
Though the hills be held shadows, and the sea a dark wonder,
And this day draw a veil over all deeds passed over,
Yet their hands shall not tremble, their feet shall not falter:
The void shall not weary, the fear shall not alter
These lips and these eyes of the loved and the lover.
William Morris (1834-96)
Click here to read Lucy Larcom's A Year In Heaven
FALLING BEYOND IN LOVE
But will you pray
when I am bedridden?
Pay charlatans
for hope? My cure
is the surround
of your shoulders
that press
buried beating
beneath
my shy breasts.
* * * * *
I pray, that after
I'm gone,
your field of beckoning
sprigs and curlicues
will undulate
under wanded fingers,
clouds disperse from under
your brave breastplate.
Your cure will be
anothers' love.
Judith Pordon
Mother to Son
Well, son, I'll tell you:
Life for me ain't been no crystal stair.
It's had tacks in it,
And splinters,
And boards torn up,
And places with no carpet on the floor --
Bare.
But all the time
I'se been a-climbin' on
And reachin' landin's,
And turnin' corners,
And sometimes goin' in the dark
Where there ain't been no light.
So boy, don't you turn back.
Don't you set down on the steps
'Cause you finds it's kinder hard.
Don't you fall now --
For I'se still goin', honey,
I'se still climbin',
And life for me ain't been no crystal stair.
Langston Hughes
Girls
Girls are made of water
Girls have only
Moonlit paths
Where they tread like the strains of a violin
Towards the forbidden fruit
urged on by the wind,
the clement, warm wind
which brings the rain,
To and fro in their white and slender veils
They swing and sway to the azure heavens.
And onwards they tread
Like the strains of a violin.
Girls have wondrous worlds
in their watery imagination.
They perish in your hands.
They never find the only way
There is to dream.
No one feeds them.
They hurry forth,
Growing up so terribly fast.
Disrobing in rundown lodgings
They sacrifice themselves,
For girls perish
As soon as they are grown...
Despite their earthly
Urges
They remain UNATTAINABLE
For
They live no longer than a sigh.
Lindita ARAPI
True Love
True love. Is it normal
is it serious, is it practical?
What does the world get from two people
who exist in a world of their own?
Click here to read of Wislawa Szymborska's True Love
Request Denied
At the end, no one showed but us:
distant daughter, twice-disowned son
and Wife #6, cracking gum, practicing
your signature on the back of your
withdrawal slip. Who else did you think
would come? From what source
a guest list drawn, a crowd to rally
Click here to read Susan Berlin's Request Denied
The poems above, both the ones found on this page and the ones that are to be downloaded are taken from this link. (Click here.)