love poetry

I

I praised the Lord of love who made the world of roses
For his own heart to seek:
Then gave me one white rose that blossoms and uncloses,—
Thy cheek against my cheek!

II.

I praised the Lord who made the soft night fall around me,—
Made star-hosts wax and flee:
Then, since he needed song, with song's wild passion crowned me,—
And with one star-love,—thee!

III.

I praised the Lord who heard the laughter of his daughters
And of the leaves o' the pine

Yes: through me then there passed the power of life immortal.
A revelation came
Sent straight from heaven's far golden high sun-guarded portal:
 A revelation sweet and winged with flame.

I saw new powers of life within my spirit growing:
New pure undreamed-of things
Flashed on my sight with plumes all bright and eyes all glowing
 And new skies' azure gathered in their wings.

Sweet as the skies of some unknown blue-sea-girt island,—
Fresh as the prospect fair

And is not love enough? To give, and give for ever,—
As God spreads light of day
O'er field and flaming hill and forest green and river
And blue soft-laughing bay!

To have the right to love. O man, is not that ample?
To have the right to wake
The soul in woman's eyes: the soul that weak fools trample;
The heart that proud fools break.

To have the right to give love infinite;—a treasure
That cannot pass or fade.
What Fate can hinder me from loving beyond measure,—

Will there be wooing of thee, as below?
 Must thou be sought for, eagerly pursued,
 Followed through many a wayward woman's mood,
Pierced with love's arrows—sometimes plunged in woe?
Then lifted up more passionate heights to know?
 Is this the story of our love, Gertrude?
 Must even spirit-passion have its food
Of coy reluctance, coldness, fiercer glow?

Oh, kiss me, sweet, and turn aside thy face,
 Thy dear face, laughing—woman art thou yet,
 Though on thine auburn locks the crown be set

My mother is scared of the world.
She left my father after forty years.
She was like, Happy anniversary, goodbye;

I respect that.
The moon tonight is dazzling, is full
of itself but not quite full.

A man should not love the moon, said Milosz.
Not exactly. He translated himself
into saying it. A man should not love translation;

there"s so much I can"t know. An hour ago,
marking time with someone I would like to like,
we passed some trees and there were crickets

Weigh odds. Pray. Pay bills.
Tell truth. Love well. Serve real gods.
Meanwhile, daffodils.

*

In a lightning bolt
of memory,
I see our statue of Buddha
(a wedding gift from Uncle Gene
which always sat
on top of the speaker cabinet.
When a visitor asked,
"So, does Buddha like jazz?"
you said, "I hope so.
He's been getting it up the ass
for a long time."

It was your idea
to park and watch the elephants
swaying among the trees
like royalty
at that make-believe safari
near Laguna.
I didn"t know anything that big
could be so quiet.

And once, you stopped
on a dark desert road
to show me the stars
climbing over each other
riotously
like insects
like an orchestra
thrashing its way
through time itself
I never saw light that way
again.

I am in love, hence free to live
by heart, to ad lib as I caress.
A soul is light when full,
heavy when vacuous.
My soul is light. She is not afraid
to dance the agony alone,
for I was born wearing your shirt,
will come from the dead with that shirt on.

The angels I love
bicker over cod guts and snapper spines.
They joust for flounder skulls and pick the bones clean,
screaming. Their harsh, fine voices
break across my town
in a language lost to my kind,
thoughtless in the clear now of now
without death. Christ, walk down streets paved
with rain to me and you drown in my choir,
my angels beating prayer under wing
which is the want I have not loved
well. Where did my weather go? Meet me
where my hidden weather went,
where praise and rain
are never spent.