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For The Wounded

A still procession goes
Amid the battle's booming,
Its arm the red cross shows;
It prays in many forms of speech,
And, bending o'er the fallen,
Brings peace and home to each.

Not only is it found
Where bleed the wounds of battle,
But all the world around.
It is the love the whole world feels
In noble hearts and tender,
While gentle pity kneels;-

It is all labor's dread
Of war's mad waste and murder,
Praying that peace may spread;
It is all sufferers who heed
The sighing of a brother,

For The Same Book

With all its best of sense and wit
Each Album's earlier leaves are writ;
No page—but Love and Friendship on it
Shower dainty prose and perfumed sonnet;
While not one troubling thought comes nigh
Of future dearth and vacancy.

Yet blight, e'en now, is on the wing
To nip that vernal blossoming;
His tribute flowers Wit fails to yield,
Sense, worldly grown, seeks wider field;
E'en Love and Friendship cease to write,
And half the book is idle white.

Turn, Emblem-seeker, turn and look,
Thou'lt find a moral in the book.

For love I, too, could die she said nor fear it

Such love as some of the dead queens have had
Whose sorrow matched their beauty. I could bear it,
And I think die too, to have been so glad.
With the sweet wonder in a great light lying
I would not e'en upbraid the deadly dart,
But gazing in the eyes of my Love, dying,
Passion my beauty in his aching heart.
Beyond the shadow of my own renewal
So to have set my beauty like a flame,
Quivering as Helen's — ah! that Trojan jewel,
Where all love's pride and sorrow has a name —
I, too, would take time's grandeur to the dust,

For Love

for Bobbie


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.
Today, what is it that
is finally so helpless,

different, despairs of its own
statement, wants to
turn away, endlessly
to turn away.

If the moon did not ...
no, if you did not
I wouldn’t either, but
what would I not

do, what prevention, what
thing so quickly stopped.
That is love yesterday
or tomorrow, not

For Jane With All the Love I Had, Which Was Not Enough

I pick up the skirt,
I pick up the sparkling beads
in black,
this thing that moved once
around flesh,
and I call God a liar,
I say anything that moved
like that
or knew
my name
could never die
in the common verity of dying,
and I pick
up her lovely
dress,
all her loveliness gone,
and I speak to all the gods,
Jewish gods, Christ-gods,
chips of blinking things,
idols, pills, bread,
fathoms, risks,
knowledgeable surrender,
rats in the gravy of two gone quite mad

For Every Woman

This is for every woman
that cries herself to sleep
that lies alone in bed at night
that stays awake, unable to sleep

This is for every woman
that is scared of being hurt again
that has been left behind, heartbroken
that needs to be given something to believe in

This is for every woman
that needs to feel wanted
that wants to feel desirable
that feels like no one even cares

This is for every woman
that has loved another freely
that shows how much she cares
that accepts others for who they are

For Ever

When dusk appears here,
day starts at your place.
Night marches with snake's hood;
my heart and eyebrow tremble in fear.

When night approaches at your place,
our magpies whistle here;
your whole body sweats in fright
as if there were venom in the air.

Lorena, o my sweet bride,
we won't live more on two distant shores;
we will taste honey of same flowers,
we will cultivate love-crops in same fields.

We will see the same dawn with our four eyes
touching the same night by our two hearts;