TEN MORE LOVE POEMS
ARTHUR RIMBAUD
Phrases
ecstasy. to love the wild concoction that romance ladles out from the great potion of worldly things, to measure these heights with the ornate language of lyric, for certain words get closer than others in the brief hope of sufficing.
When the world is reduced to a single dark wood for our two pairs of dazzled eyes—to a beach for two faithful children—to a musical house for our clear understanding—then I shall find you.
When there is only one old man on earth, lonely, peaceful, handsome, living in unsurpassed luxury, then I am at your feet.
When I have realized all your memories, —when I am the girl who can tie your hands,—then I will stifle you.
FORUGH FARROKHZAD
Conquest of the Garden
the stuttering pulse that threads all living things. in which loving someone is rejoicing in their capacity to be alive, the round fullness by which they meet and then exceed the borders of life. loving as a doubling act, a metaphysical instance of a startling multiplication.
Everyone is afraid
everyone is afraid, but you and I
joined with the lamp
and water and mirror and we were not afraid.
FRANK BIDART
In the Western Night
desire without compass or destination, desire with bypasses the language in which it is meant to be written, desire which knows intimately of fear, and owns fear, and desire that coaxes and embrocates the fear into rapturous heights.
Our not-love is like a man running down
a mountain, who, if he dares to try to stop,
falls over—
my hands wanted to touch your hands
because we had hands.
BERTOLT BRECHT AND MARGARETE STEFFIN
Love in a Time of Exile and War
the revolutionary originates from the unmoving knowledge that one’s need to commit change in the world is to be free from things as they are, and the urge that moves the hand is the completing knowledge of a beloved. in tandem they are a redemptive force.
The little word that we decided on
And none but us knew touch was what it meant
NOMI STONE
On World-Making
if passion makes animals of us then where do we put our thinking. for if the body is a conduit. something must be given and something must be received, and the mind must accompany this transaction. “to love is to tell the story of the world.” with the pieces of what is already there.
To love is to tell the story of the world. There was
an ocean with a boat mountains a meadow too painful to stare
at directly. Haven’t I been here before? Yes. No: not quite here.
ROBERT CREELEY
For Love
love is perhaps even the beginning and the ends of writing—is an indication of direction illimitable and simultaneous. the nodal point of other infinite processions. if one keeps going for long enough eventually the way forward is back towards the source.
Yesterday I wanted to
speak of it, that sense above
the others to me
important because all
that I know derives
from what it teaches me.
MARINA TSVETAEVA
I’d Like to Live With You
what locks the lover in your mind and you locked in your lover’s mind. the fragility of one small room which cannot possibly contain all these things, but does.
the roll-up glowing down
to a tremble of ash
suspended
and you too lazy to even flick it
and everything always
on fire.
蓝蓝 LAN LAN
《让那双爱你的手靠近》Let Those Loving Hands Come Closer
ultimately the frailty of your own physical impressionabilities. that approach is not always a threat, may not always be upon the embattlement of past war-grounds. to be free as a woman is to know unabashedly every urge to come to terms with another.
让那双爱你的手靠近，姑娘
让它们离开时沾满幸福
波浪、山峦、喷泉
长发、乳房、嘴唇
让与世界孪生的美找到名称Let those loving hands come closer, girl
Let them leave drowned in joy
Tides, mountains, fountains
Hair, breasts, lips
Let this beauty that mirrors the world find its calling
BRENDA SHAUGHNESSY
Project for a Fainting
the poem that asks and answers its own questions. there are things closer or further, even though we only have the same word of distance to describe all of it. the lines now fracture distance. breaks it into discrete segments. puts them under the microscope of language to decipher what turns a moment enduring.
Would I dance with you? Both forever and rather die.
It would be like dying, yes. Yes I would.I have loved the slaking of your forgetters, your indifferent
hands on my loosening.
FRANK LIMA
Poem from Amor
it’s no wonder that we look at one another with suspicion, wondering if the whole impetus behind falling in love at all is to hopefully get a good poem out of it.
In the other world, in
other words, I threw away my shoes looking
for you on the throat of aflower.
