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You Hate the Telephone

You hate the telephone
but will not see me
face to face
so I am left
beseeching you
long-distance,
trying to thread our love
along the telephone poles
of Vermont,
trying to tunnel it
under the Atlantic
as if it were
a rare fossil
I'd unearthed,
or an offshore pipe
bearing precious oil.

But it is your face
I love,
your funny grin
that now seems
cruel around the edges.
You do not wish to be
cruel-you,
the kindest person in the world,
but driven to curious
rages
when you feel

You Can't Can Love

I don't know how the fishes feel, but I can't help thinking it odd,
That a gay young flapper of a female eel should fall in love with a cod.
Yet - that's exactly what she did and it only goes to prove,
That' what evr you do you can't put the lid on that crazy feeling Love.

Now that young tom-cod was a dreadful rake, and he had no wish to wed,
But he feared that her foolish heart would break, so this is what he said:
"Some fellows prize a woman's eyes, and some admire her lips,
While some have a taste for a tiny waist, but - me, what I like is HIPS."

You Are Great In Love

You are great in love.
You are bold.
My every step is timid.
I'll do nothing bad to you,
but can hardly do you any good.
It seems you are
leading me
off the beaten path through a forest.
Now we're up to our waist in wildflowers.
I don't even know
what flowers they are.
Past experience is of no help here.
I don't know
what to do or how.
You're tired.
You ask to be carried in my arms.
Already you're in my arms.
'Do you see

You And I Saw Hawks Exchanging The Prey

They did the deed of darkness
In their own mid-light.


He plucked a gray field mouse
Suddenly in the wind.


The small dead fly alive
Helplessly in his beak,


His cold pride, helpless.
All she receives is life.


They are terrified. They touch.
Life is too much.


She flies away sorrowing.
Sorrowing, she goes alone.


Then her small falcon, gone.
Will not rise here again.


Smaller than she, he goes
Claw beneath claw beneath

Yes

MY SOUL is raying like a star,
My heart is happier than a bird,
And all to hear through fortune’s jar
One promissory word.

A sound as simple as the low
Quick sliding gurgle of a rill,
And yet with power to overflow
A world with blissful will!

I feel as though the very air
Was breathen from the heart of Love,
As Pleasure in the sun’s bright lair
Sat brooding like a dove!

A billow of the sunny sea,
A cloudlet of the summer sky,
How wide is their felicity—
So widely blest am I!

Year After Year A Love Song

YEAR after year the cowslips fill the meadow,
Year after year the skylarks thrill the air,
Year after year, in sunshine or in shadow,
Rolls the world round, love, and finds us as we were.

Year after year, as sure as birds' returning,
Or field-flowers' blossoming above the wintry mould,
Year after year, in work, or mirth, or mourning,
Love we with love's own youth, that never can grow old.

Sweetheart and ladye-love, queen of boyish passion,
Strong hope of manhood, content of age began;

Ye restless thoughts

Ye restless thoughts, that harbour discontent,
Cease your assaults and let my heart lament,
And let my tongue have leave to tell my grief,
That she may pity, though not grant relief.
Pity would help, alas, what love hath almost slain,
And salve the wound that fester'd this disdain.

Yankunytjatjara Love Poems

1.
I walk to the south I walk to the north
where are you my Warrior?

I sit with the desert I sit with the ocean
where are you my Warrior?

I sing to the trees I sing to the rocks
where are you my Warrior?

I dance with the birds I dance with the animals
where are you my Warrior?

Heaven is everywhere
where are You?

2.
I will show you a field of zebra finch Dreaming in the shadow of the stony hill ochre
when the soft blanket of language hums and kinship campfires flavour windswept hair

XXXII from Love Redeemed

Love feeds, like Intellect, his lamp with truth;
In the clear truths he finds its flame is measured.
And is not flesh, there, verity? In sooth!
So Love not by this fantasy is pleasured
That slurs the fact in flesh. Its atmosphere,
Too rare and nebulous, no fusing shows;
Its manna too ambrosial is and sheer:
Love craves that union, earthly hunger knows.
O sage is Love—he seeks the living line,
The miracles in breathing flesh explores,
The riches in the depth of sense, divine,
The veiled things only eternal longing pours

XXIII

Is it indeed so ? If I lay here dead,
Wouldst thou miss any life in losing mine ?
And would the sun for thee more coldly shine
Because of grave-damps falling round my head ?
I marvelled, my Beloved, when I read
Thy thought so in the letter. I am thine--
But . . . so much to thee ? Can I pour thy wine
While my hands tremble ? Then my soul, instead
Of dreams of death, resumes life's lower range.
Then, love me, Love ! look on me--breathe on me !
As brighter ladies do not count it strange,
For love, to give up acres and degree,