Love Found Read online

  In memory of loves lost and

  appreciation of loves found.

  Introduction copyright © 2017 by Jessica Strand.

  Compilation copyright © 2017 by Jessica Strand and Leslie Jonath.

  Illustrations copyright © 2017 by Jennifer Orkin Lewis.

  Pages 92–95 constitute a continuation of the copyright page.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher.

  ISBN: 978-1-4521-5623-1 (epub, mobi)

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data available.

  ISBN: 978-1-4521-5599-9 (hc)

  Chronicle Books LLC

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  www.chroniclebooks.com

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  Contents

  INTRODUCTION 5

  DESIRE & LONGING 9

  THIS MUCH AND MORE 10

  DITTY OF FIRST DESIRE 11

  OPENNESS 12

  TWENTY-ONE LOVE POEMS (POEM II) 15

  POEM FROM THE DESERT ROAD (KURUNTOKAI, VERSE 237) 17

  POEM FROM THE JASMINE-FILLED WOODS (KURUNTOKAI, VERSE 220) 18

  LOVE SONG FOR LUCINDA 21

  CHOICE 22

  THE DREAM 25

  LOVE’S PHILOSOPHY 26

  A LOVE SONG 27

  THE THREE JAPANESE TANKAS 30

  THE GARDEN 31

  (I CARRY YOUR HEART WITH ME) 32

  BOND AND FREE 34

  HEART-BREAK & LOSS 35

  WHEN YOU ARE OLD 37

  THE HEART’S MEMORY OF THE SUN GROWS FAINT 38

  NEUTRAL TONES 40

  ABSOLUTELY CLEAR 41

  THE LESSON OF THE FALLING LEAVES 43

  A COMPLAINT 44

  THE SMILE 45

  ONE ART 46

  DO NOT ASK ME FOR THAT LOVE AGAIN 48

  MUSIC WHEN SOFT VOICES DIE (TO—) 50

  LOVE AFTER LOVE 51

  THE WEEPING GIRL (LA FIGLIA CHE PIANGE) 53

  BREAD AND MUSIC 55

  DO NOT STAND BY MY GRAVE AND WEEP 56

  SORROWS OF THE MOON 58

  DREAMING OF LI PO 59

  TOMORROW 62

  PASSION & PARTNER SHIP 63

  LOVE SONG 64

  FINAL SOLILOQUY OF THE INTERIOR PARAMOUR 66

  BEI HENNEF 67

  SONNET XVI 69

  WILD NIGHTS – WILD NIGHTS! 70

  DEEP IN LOVE 71

  A GLIMPSE 72

  LET ME NOT TO THE MARRIAGE OF TRUE MINDS (SONNET 116) 74

  HOW DO I LOVE THEE? (SONNET 43) 75

  MEETING AT NIGHT 76

  HARMONY IN THE BOUDOIR 78

  LOVE SONG 79

  THE OWL AND THE PUSSY-CAT 81

  A WORD TO HUSBANDS 83

  CAMOMILE TEA 84

  FOR LOVE 86

  TO MY DEAR AND LOVING HUSBAND 89

  OUR MASTERPIECE IS THE PRIVATE LIFE 90

  CREDITS 92

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 96

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR 97

  INTRODUCTION

  “Poetry is the spontaneous overflow ofpowerful feelings: it takes its origin fromemotion recollected in tranquility.”

  —WILLIAM WORDSWORTH

  The beauty of a great poem is that it gives language to an emotion that we’re unable to express otherwise. I can’t think of another art form where words are the medium to crystallize the depths of our emotional life. Poetry at its best makes us feel understood.

  In this anthology, we focus on the endless territory of our hearts; we focus on love. These poems look at every incarnation of our affection, from the moment Eros strikes to the sickening rootless feeling of a broken heart. The book is divided into three sections: Desire & Longing, Heartbreak & Loss, and Passion & Partnership. By organizing the anthology this way, it will help you find poems that fit the sentiment you’re trying to convey, or the emotions you’re trying to understand—or it might just make it easier and more fun to read.

  The book contains fifty poems from different cultures and time periods, each charting the zigzagging road of love. From Wislawa Szymborska’s “Openness,” in which the first few lines throw us into the raw fervor of desire: “Here we are, naked lovers / beautiful to each other—and that’s enough— / the leaves of our eyelids our only covers, / we’re lying amidst deep night.” To the whimsical, crazy passion found in Joseph Brodsky’s “Love Song”: “If you were drowning, I’d come to the rescue, / wrap you in a blanket and pour hot tea. / If I were a sheriff, I’d arrest you / and keep you in the cell under lock and key.” To the more cynical humor of Ogden Nash’s “A Word to Husbands”: “To keep your marriage brimming, / With love in the loving cup, / Whenever you’re wrong, admit it; / Whenever you’re right, shut up.”

  Love is the main emotion that defines so many other things in our lives: age (our first great love), death (I loved him/her), friendship (s/he was a loving friend), or the way we look at someone’s character (such a loving person). Thinking about this collection, I realized that love defines our view and experience of the world. Without love we have no sense of ourselves, we’re adrift. With love, all relationships, reasons for our actions, and choices that we make are clearer. We live striving to be loved—and wanting, hoping to show love to others. Without love, life feels unlived. As Alfred Lord Tennyson said so aptly, “Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.”

  With a world so full of love poems, how did I decide to choose these fifty? It took time. Time recalling poems I loved in college and pinned up on my wall; poems I recited to friends, to lovers, to my son; poems I read at weddings and funerals—and also to myself, over and over again, when nothing made sense but the poem in front of me. There are so many beautiful poems about love that to whittle it down to fifty is nearly impossible. I hope I’ve chosen poems that will resonate with you. You could pick those ten, fifteen, or twenty that ring true for you—or you may find just one, one poem that speaks to you and helps you understand that feeling you’ve never been able to put into words.

  —Jessica Strand

  DESIRE & LONGING

  THIS MUCH AND MORE

  by Djuna Barnes

  If my lover were a comet

  Hung in air,

  I would braid my leaping body

  In his hair.

  Yea, if they buried him ten leagues

  Beneath the loam,

  My fingers they would learn to dig

  And I’d plunge home!

  DITTY OF FIRST DESIRE

  by Federico García Lorca

  In the green morning

  I wanted to be a heart.

  A heart.

  And in the ripe evening

  I wanted to be a nightingale.

  A nightingale.

  (Soul,

  turn orange-colored.

  Soul,

  turn the color of love.)

  In the vivid morning

  I wanted to be myself.

  A heart.

  And at the evening’s end

  I wanted to be my voice.

  A nightingale.

  Soul,

  turn orange-colored.

  Soul,

  turn the color of love.

  OPENNESS

  by Wislawa Szymborska

  Here we are, naked lovers,

  beautiful to each other—and that’s enough—

  the leaves of our eyelids our only covers,

  we’re lying amidst deep night.

  But they kn
ow about us, they know,

  the four corners, and the stove nearby us.

  Clever shadows also know

  the table knows, but keeps quiet.

  Our teacups know full well

  why the tea is getting cold.

  And old Swift can surely tell

  that his book’s been put on hold.

  Even the birds are in the know:

  I saw them writing in the sky

  brazenly and openly

  the very name I call you by.

  The trees? Could you explain to me

  their unrelenting whispering?

  The wind may know, you say to me,

  but how, is just a mystery.

  A moth surprised us through the blinds,

  it’s wings a fuzzy flutter.

  It’s silent path—see how it winds

  in a stubborn holding pattern.

  Maybe it sees where our eyes fail

  with an insect’s inborn sharpness.

  I never sensed, nor could you tell

  that our hearts were aglow in the darkness.

  TWENTY-ONE LOVE POEMS (POEM II)

  by Adrienne Rich

  I wake up in your bed. I know I have been dreaming.

  Much earlier, the alarm broke us from each other,

  you’ve been at your desk for hours. I know what I dreamed:

  our friend the poet comes into my room

  where I’ve been writing for days,

  drafts, carbons, poems are scattered everywhere,

  and I want to show her one poem

  which is the poem of my life. But I hesitate,

  and wake. You’ve kissed my hair

  to wake me. I dreamed you were a poem,

  I say, a poem I wanted to show someone . . .

  and I laugh and fall dreaming again

  of the desire to show you to everyone I love,

  to move openly together

  in the pull of gravity, which is not simple,

  which carries the feathered grass a long way down the

  upbreathing air.

  POEM FROM THE DESERT ROAD (KURUNTOKAI, VERSE 237)

  by Allur Nanmula

  Talaivan says—

  Fearlessly, my heart has departed

  to embrace my beloved.

  If its arms are too slack to hold her

  what use is it?

  The distances between us stretch long.

  Must I think of the many forests

  where deadly tigers rise up roaring

  like the waves of the dark ocean

  standing between us? I don’t dare.

  POEM FROM THE JASMINE-FILLED WOODS (KURUNTOKAI, VERSE 220)

  by Okkur Macatti

  Talaivi says—

  The rains have come and gone.

  The millet grew and now is stubble

  nibbled by stags while jasmine blossoms flourish

  alongside, their buds unfolding to show white petals

  like a wildcat’s smile.

  Evening comes, scented with jasmine

  bringing bees to the buds,

  but see, he hasn’t come,

  he who left for other riches.

  LOVE SONG FOR LUCINDA

  by Langston Hughes

  Love

  Is a ripe plum

  Growing on a purple tree.

  Taste it once

  And the spell of its enchantment

  Will never let you be.

  Love

  Is a bright star

  Glowing in far Southern skies.

  Look too hard

  And its burning flame

  Will always hurt your eyes.

  Love

  Is a high mountain

  Stark in a windy sky.

  If you

  Would never lose your breath

  Do not climb too high.

  CHOICE

  by Angela Morgan

  I’d rather have the thought of you

  To hold against my heart,

  My spirit to be taught of you

  With west winds blowing,

  Than all the warm caresses

  Of another love’s bestowing,

  Or all the glories of the world

  In which you had no part.

  I’d rather have the theme of you

  To thread my nights and days,

  I’d rather have the dream of you

  With faint stars glowing,

  I’d rather have the want of you,

  The rich, elusive taunt of you

  Forever and forever and forever unconfessed

  Than claim the alien comfort

  Of any other’s breast.

  O lover! O my lover,

  That this should come to me!

  I’d rather have the hope for you,

  Ah, Love, I’d rather grope for you

  Within the great abyss

  Than claim another’s kiss —

  Alone I’d rather go my way

  Throughout eternity.

  THE DREAM

  by Edna St. Vincent Millay

  Love, if I weep it will not matter,

  And if you laugh I shall not care;

  Foolish am I to think about it,

  But it is good to feel you there.

  Love, in my sleep I dreamed of waking, —

  White and awful the moonlight reached

  Over the floor, and somewhere, somewhere,

  There was a shutter loose, —it screeched!

  Swung in the wind, —and no wind blowing! —

  I was afraid, and turned to you,

  Put out my hand to you for comfort, —

  And you were gone! Cold, cold as dew,

  Under my hand the moonlight lay!

  Love, if you laugh I shall not care,

  But if I weep it will not matter, —

  Ah, it is good to feel you there!

  LOVE’S PHILOSOPHY

  by Percy Bysshe Shelley

  The fountains mingle with the river

  And the rivers with the ocean,

  The winds of heaven mix for ever

  With a sweet emotion;

  Nothing in the world is single;

  All things by a law divine

  In one spirit meet and mingle—

  Why not I with thine?

  See the mountains kiss high heaven

  And the waves clasp one another;

  No sister-flower would be forgiven

  If it disdain’d its brother;

  And the sunlight clasps the earth

  And the moonbeams kiss the sea:

  What is all this sweet work worth

  If thou kiss not me?

  A LOVE SONG

  by William Carlos Williams

  What have I to say to you

  When we shall meet?

  Yet—

  I lie here thinking of you.

  The stain of love

  Is upon the world.

  Yellow, yellow, yellow,

  It eats into the leaves,

  Smears with saffron

  The horned branches that lean

  Heavily

  Against a smooth purple sky.

  There is no light—

  Only a honey-thick stain

  That drips from leaf to leaf

  And limb to limb

  Spoiling the colors

  Of the whole world.

  I am alone.

  The weight of love

  Has buoyed me up

  Till my head

  Knocks against the sky.

  See me!

  My hair is dripping with nectar—

  Starlings carry it

  On their black wings.

  See, at last

  My arms and my hands

  Are lying idle.

  How can I tell

  If I shall ever love you again

  As I do now?

  THE THREE JAPANESE TANKAS

  by Ono no Komachi

  1

  Should the world of love

&nbs
p; end in darkness,

  without our glimpsing

  that cloud-gap

  where the moon’s light fills the sky?

  2

  Since my heart placed me

  on board your drifting ship,

  not one day has passed

  that I haven’t been drenched

  in cold waves.

  3

  How sad that I hope

  to see you even now,

  after my life has emptied itself

  like this stalk of grain

  into the autumn wind.

  THE GARDEN

  by Jacques Prévert

  Thousands and thousands of years

  Would not suffice

  To tell of

  The sweet moment of eternity

  When you kissed me

  When I kissed you

  One moment in the light of winter

  In Montsouris Park in Paris

  In Paris

  Upon this Earth

  This Earth which is a star.

  (I CARRY YOUR HEART WITH ME)

  by E. E. Cummings

  i carry your heart with me(i carry it in

  my heart)i am never without it(anywhere

  i go you go, my dear;and whatever is done

  by only me is your doing,my darling)

  i fear

  no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want

  no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)

  and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant

  and whatever a sun will always sing is you

  here is the deepest secret nobody knows

  (here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud

  and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows

  higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)

  and this is the wonder that’s keeping the stars apart

  i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)