Do not mention the name of love,
O my simple-minded companion.
Strange is the path
When you offer your love.
Your body is crushed at the first step.

If you want to offer love
Be prepared to cut off your head
And sit on it.
Be like the moth,
Which circles the lamp and offers its body.
Be like the deer, which, on hearing the horn,
Offers its head to the hunter.
Be like the partridge,
Which swallows burning coals
In love of the moon.
Be like the fish
Which yields up its life

O stony grey soil of Monaghan
The laugh from my love you thieved;
You took the gay child of my passion
And gave me your clod-conceived.

You clogged the feet of my boyhood
And I believed that my stumble
Had the poise and stride of Apollo
And his voice my thick tongued mumble.

You told me the plough was immortal!
O green-life conquering plough!
The mandril stained, your coulter blunted
In the smooth lea-field of my brow.

You sang on steaming dunghills
A song of cowards' brood,
You perfumed my clothes with weasel itch,

The night is so still, the streets are at rest,
This is the house that my love graced,
This is the town she’s long since left,
But the house is here in the selfsame place.
A man’s there too, who stands and stares,
And wrings his hands, in violent pain:
When I see his look it makes me scared –
The moonlight shows my face again.
You doppel-gänger! You pallid creature!
Why do you act that torment through,
Love, torturing me on this very corner,
For so many nights, those years I knew.

I love pins
Long pins
Short pins
Skinny pins
Fat pins

All kinds of pins

Like little needles of truth
Perfect for puncturing lies
Release the air
Stale and dry
That holds us.


(Previously published in The Short North Gazette, Apr 2002)

Stay, O love, and hear my plaint !
Love-sick, I yearn for you.

You've made a Kartik full moon peak and pine,
Seeking you over hill and dale.

How hard to watch youth waste away -
O, what price to pay for love !

Masval, yembenal and pomegranate blossoms
I offer at your feet, my love.

Your eyes are swords of blandishment,
Well aimed straight at my heart.

Both love and torment flow from you -
You are both the wound and the balm.

Stay your feet, my love, to let me kiss them
With my life. O, listen to my tale of woe !

You know no kindness, pity, mercy, faith !
How strange, my sweetheart ! O, turn back
From your cruel sport of inflicting pain !

Being an artless woman, not knowing where to go,
I can do no more than nurse the pain of love.

Pouring out my woes, when we met long ago,
Made me feel so light, all anger melting away.

As modesty dictates, I confined the fire

Beneath the stars and summer moon
A pair of wedded lovers walk,
Upon the stars and summer moon
They turn their happy eyes, and talk.

Edith.

“Those stars, that moon, for me they shine
With lovely, but no startling light;
My joy is much, but not as thine,
A joy that fills the pulse, like fright.”

Alfred.

“My love, a darken'd conscience clothes
The world in sackcloth; and, I fear,
The stain of life this new heart loathes,
Still clouds my sight; but thine is clear.

“True vision is no startling boon

Go, little book, and find our Friend,
Who Nature and the Muses loves,
Who cares the public virtues blend
With all the softness of the groves.

A fitter time thou canst not choose,
His fostering friendship to repay;
Go then, and try, my rural muse,
To steal his widowed hours away.

TELL ME, LOVE, when I rove o'er some far distant plain,
Shall I cherish the passion that dwells in my breast?
Or will ABSENCE subdue the keen rigours of pain,
And the swift wing of TIME bring the balsam of rest?

Shall the image of HIM I was born to adore,
Inshrin'd in my bosom my idol still prove?
Or seduced by caprice shall fine feeling no more,
With the incense of TRUTH gem the altar of LOVE?

When I view the deep tint of the dew-dropping Rose,
Where the bee sits enamour'd its nectar to sip;

'Tis done---and shivering in the gale
The bark unfurls her snowy sail;
And whistling o'er the bending mast,
Loud sings on high the fresh'ning blast;
And I must from this land be gone,
Because I cannot love but one.

But could I be what I have been,
And could I see what I have seen---
Could I repose upon the breast
Which once my warmest wishes blest---
I should not seek another zone,
Because I cannot love but one.

'Tis long since I beheld that eye
Which gave me bliss or misery;
And I have striven, but in vain,