'Love after Love' by Derek Walcott

The time will come 
when, with elation 
you will greet yourself arriving 
at your own door, in your own mirror 
and each will smile at the other's welcome, 

and say, sit here. Eat. 
You will love again the stranger who was your self. 
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart 
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you 

all your life, whom you ignored 
for another, who knows you by heart. 
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf, 

the photographs, the desperate notes, 
peel your own image from the mirror. 
Sit. Feast on your life. 

from 'The Sonnets 2 Orpheus' by Kent Leatham

13.

             “Voller Apfel, Birne…”

Crankshaft, cough syrup, debit card, app,
Ponzi scheme, Lipitor, Levitra, açaí…
Strange fruit. And still there’s no word
to describe the way she… and then…

Do you call it language during the act?
Is it still an apple when it’s in your mouth?
What about hers? (Did you know fried rattlesnake
jumps in the pan? What’s the word for that?)

The audience gathers for the silent film,
but it’s just someone reading an audio book
in ASL. (“Oh hydrogen jukebox…”)

Reconstituted by Google, Sappho’s poems
all turn out to contain the word “???????????.”
Do you remember her kisses? Were they bittersweet?

'To my dear and loving husband' by Anne Bradstreet (1612 - 1672)

If ever two were one, then surely we.
If ever man were loved by wife, then thee;
If ever wife was a happy in a man,
Compare with me ye women if you can.
I prize thy love more than whole mines of gold,
Or all the riches that the east doth hold.
My love is such that rivers cannot quench,
Nor ought but love from thee give recompence.
They love is such I can no way repay,
The heavens reward thee manifold I pray.
Then while we live, in love let's so persever,
That when we live no more, we may live ever.

'I have a gentil cock' by Anon (early 15th century)

I have a gentil cock
croweth me day
he doth me risen early
my matins for to stay

I have a gentil cock
comen he is of great
his comb is of red coral
his tail is of jet

I have a gentil cock
comen he is of kind
his comb is of red sorrel
his tail is of inde

his legs be of azure
so gentil and so small
his spurs are of silver white
into the wortewale

his eyes are of crystal
locked all in amber
and every night he pertcheth him
in my lady`s chamber

'The Bemusement Arcade' by Sam Willetts

A dream of the “Penny Falls”: a heap of days

as pennies, life’s small change, and a mechanical

shelf nudging them untiringly towards the drop –

but so slightly, you know they’ll hardly fall.

That’s how time was when I was young:

a negligible pressure. I’d wake each day

to find my heap of time as good as undiminished.

So how did I miss the niagara-cascade?

The thing’s rigged, or I’ve been dreaming –

the heap of little days much smaller now,

but my pockets nearly empty, and no-one here,

and the sea so high and dark outside.

'The Waking' by Theodore Roethke

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.
I learn by going where I have to go.
We think by feeling. What is there to know?
I hear my being dance from ear to ear.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
Of those so close beside me, which are you?
God bless the Ground! I shall walk softly there,
And learn by going where I have to go.
Light takes the Tree; but who can tell us how?
The lowly worm climbs up a winding stair;
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
Great Nature has another thing to do
To you and me, so take the lively air,
And, lovely, learn by going where to go.
This shaking keeps me steady. I should know.
What falls away is always. And is near.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I learn by going where I have to go.

'Hurt' by Trent Reznor

I hurt myself today, 

to see if I still feel.

I focus on the pain,

the only thing that's real.

The needle tears a hole,

the old familiar sting -

try to kill it all away 

but I remember everything 

What have I become 

my sweetest friend? 

Everyone I know goes away 

in the end. 

And you could have it all,

My Empire of Dirt,

I will let you down, 

I will make you hurt. 

I wear this crown of shit 

upon my liar's chair - 

full of broken thoughts 

I cannot repair.

Beneath the stains of time, 

the feelings disappear. 

You are someone else 

I am still right here 

If I could start again, 

a million miles away, 

I would keep myself, 

I would find a way.

'Peonies' by Mary Oliver

This morning the green fists of the peonies are getting ready
   to break my heart
     as the sun rises,
        as the sun strokes them with his old, buttery fingers

and they open--
   pools of lace,
      white and pink--
       and all day the black ants climb over them,

boring their deep and mysterious holes
    into the curls,
      craving the sweet sap,
        taking it away

to their dark, underground cities--
   and all day
      under the shifty wind,
       as in a dance to the great wedding,

the flowers bend their bright bodies,
   and tip their fragrance to the air,
     and rise,
       their red stems holding

all that dampness and recklessness
    gladly and lightly,
      and there it is again--
        beauty the brave, the exemplary,

blazing open.
    Do you love this world?
      Do you cherish your humble and silky life?
       Do you adore the green grass, with its terror beneath?

Do you also hurry, half-dressed and barefoot, into the garden,
   and softly,
      and exclaiming of their dearness,
       fill your arms with the white and pink flowers,

with their honeyed heaviness, their lush trembling,
    their eagerness
      to be wild and perfect for a moment, before they are
        nothing, forever?

'The Summer Day' by Mary Oliver

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean-
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down-
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

'The Last Time I Saw Richard' - Joni Mitchell

The last time I saw Richard was Detroit in ’68,
and he told me all romantics meet the same fate someday -
cynical and drunk and boring someone in some dark cafe.
"You laugh", he said, "You think you’re immune?
Go look at your eyes - they’re full of moon.
You like roses and kisses and pretty men to tell you
all those pretty lies, pretty lies.
When you gonna realise they’re only pretty lies,
only pretty lies, just pretty lies?"

He put a quarter in the wurlitzer, and he pushed.
Three buttons and the thing began to whirr
and a bar maid came by in fishnet stockings and a bow tie
and she said "Drink up now it’s gettin’ on time to close".
"Richard, you haven’t really changed", I said.
"It’s just that now you’re romanticizing some pain that’s in your head.
You got tombs in your eyes, but the songs
you punched are dreaming.
Listen, they sing of love so sweet, love so sweet.
When you gonna get yourself back on your feet?"
Oh and love can be so sweet, love so sweet.

Richard got married to a figure skater.
And he bought her a dishwasher and a coffee percolator,
and he drinks at home now most nights with the tv on
and all the house lights left up bright.
I’m gonna blow this damn candle out,
I don’t want nobody comin’ over to my table,
I got nothing to talk to anybody about.
All good dreamers pass this way some day
hidin’ behind bottles in dark cafes.
Dark cafes.
Only a dark cocoon before I get my gorgeous wings
and fly away.
Only a phase, these dark cafe days.

'For Emily, Whenever I May Find Her' by Paul Simon

What I dream I had.
Pressed in organdy,
clothed in crinoline
of smoky burgundy;
softer than the rain.
I wandered empty streets
down past the shop displays.
I heard cathedral bells
tripping down the alley ways,
as I walked on.

And when you ran to me,
your cheeks flushed with the night.
We walked on frosted fields
of juniper and lamplight,
I held your hand.
And when I awoke
and felt you warm and near,
I kissed your honey hair
with my grateful tears.
Oh I love you, girl.

Oh, I love you.

'Coyote' by Joni Mitchell

No regrets coyote
we just come from such different sets of circumstances.
I’m up all night in the studios and you’re up early on your ranch.
You’ll be brushing out a brood mare’s tail while the sun is ascending
and I’ll just be getting home with my reel to reel...
There’s no comprehending just how close 
to the bone and the skin and the eyes
and the lips you can get
and still feel so alone
and still feel related
like stations in some relay.
You’re not a hit and run driver, no, no, racing away
you just picked up a hitcher, 
A prisoner of the white lines on the freeway

We saw a farmhouse burning down in the middle of nowhere,
in the middle of the night and we rolled right past that tragedy
till we turned into some road house lights, where a local band was playing.
Locals were up kicking and shaking on the floor and the next thing I know
That coyote’s at my door. He pins me in a corner and he won’t take no!
He drags me out on the dance floor and we’re dancing close and slow
Now he’s got a woman at home, he’s got another woman down the hall
he seems to want me anyway. 
Why’d you have to get so drunk
and lead me on that way?
You just picked up a hitcher,
a prisoner of the white lines of the freeway

I looked a coyote right in the face on the road to baljennie 
near my old home town. He went running thru the whisker wheat,
chasing some prize down. And a hawk was playing with him.
Coyote was jumping straight up and making passes
he had those same eyes - just like yours under your dark glasses,
privately probing the public rooms
and peeking thru keyholes in numbered doors
where the players lick their wounds
and take their temporary lovers
and their pills and powders to get them thru this passion play

No regrets, coyote
I just get off up aways.
You just picked up a hitcher,
a prisoner of the white lines on the freeway

Coyote’s in the coffee shop.
He’s staring a hole in his scrambled eggs.
He picks up my scent on his fingers.
while he’s watching the waitresses’ legs.
He’s too fat from the Bay of Fundy,
from Appaloosas and eagles and tides
and the air conditioned cubicles
and the carbon ribbon rides
are spelling it out so clear -
either he’s going to have to stand and fight
or take off out of here.
I tried to run away myself,
to run away and wrestle with my ego
and with this flame you put here in this eskimo -
in this hitcher,
in this prisoner,
of the fine white lines,
of the white lines on the free, free way

'She Tells Her Love' by Robert Graves

She tells her love while half asleep,
In the dark hours,
With half-words whispered low:
As Earth stirs in her winter sleep
And put out grass and flowers
Despite the snow,
Despite the falling snow. 

'Prayer' by Carol Ann Duffy

Some days, although we cannot pray, a prayer
utters itself. So, a woman will lift
her head from the sieve of her hands and stare
at the minims sung by a tree, a sudden gift.

Some nights, although we are faithless, the truth
enters our hearts, that small familiar pain;
then a man will stand stock-still, hearing his youth
in the distant Latin chanting of a train.

Pray for us now. Grade I piano scales
console the lodger looking out across
a Midlands town. Then dusk, and someone calls
a child's name as though they named their loss.

Darkness outside. Inside, the radio's prayer -
Rockall. Malin. Dogger. Finisterre.

'Heraclitus on Rivers' by Derek Mahon

Nobody steps into the same river twice.
The same river is never the same
Because that is the nature of water.
Similarly your changing metabolism
Means that you are no longer you.
The cells die, and the precise
Configuration of the heavenly bodies
When she told you she loved you
Will not come again in this lifetime.

You will tell me that you have executed
A monument more lasting than bronze;
But even bronze is perishable.
Your best poem, you know the one I mean,
The very language in which the poem
Was written, and the idea of language,
All these things will pass away in time.