She Walks in Beauty: A Woman's Journey Through Poems (8 page)

ROBERT BROWNING

Ferrara:

That's my last Duchess painted on the wall,

Looking as if she were alive. I call

That piece a wonder, now: Frà Pandolf's hands

Worked busily a day, and there she stands.

Will't please you sit and look at her? I said

‘Frà Pandolf' by design, for never read

Strangers like you that pictured countenance,

The depth and passion of its earnest glance,

But to myself they turned (since none puts by

The curtain I have drawn for you, but I)

And seemed as they would ask me, if they durst,

How such a glance came there; so, not the first

Are you to turn and ask thus. Sir, 'twas not

Her husband's presence only, called that spot

Of joy into the Duchess' cheek: perhaps

Frà Pandolf chanced to say ‘Her mantle laps

Over my lady's wrist too much,' or ‘Paint

Must never hope to reproduce the faint

Half-flush that dies along her throat': such stuff

Was courtesy, she thought, and cause enough

For calling up that spot of joy. She had

A heart—how shall I say?—too soon made glad,

Too easily impressed; she liked whate'er

She looked on, and her looks went everywhere.

Sir, 'twas all one! My favour at her breast,

The dropping of the daylight in the West,

The bough of cherries some officious fool

Broke in the orchard for her, the white mule

She rode with round the terrace—all and each

Would draw from her alike the approving speech,

Or blush, at least. She thanked men,—good! but thanked

Somehow—I know not how—as if she ranked

My gift of a nine-hundred-years-old name

With anybody's gift. Who'd stoop to blame

This sort of trifling? Even had you skill

In speech—(which I have not)—to make your will

Quite clear to such an one, and say, ‘Just this

Or that in you disgusts me; here you miss,

Or there exceed the mark'—and if she let

Herself be lessoned so, nor plainly set

Her wits to yours, forsooth, and made excuse,

—E'en then would be some stooping; and I choose

Never to stoop. Oh sir, she smiled, no doubt,

Whene'er I passed her; but who passed without

Much the same smile? This grew; I gave commands;

Then all smiles stopped together. There she stands

As if alive. Will't please you rise? We'll meet

The company below, then. I repeat,

The Count your master's known munificence

Is ample warrant that no just pretence

Of mine for dowry will be disallowed;

Though his fair daughter's self, as I avowed

At starting, is my object. Nay, we'll go

Together down, sir. Notice Neptune, though,

Taming a sea-horse, thought a rarity,

Which Claus of Innsbruck cast in bronze for me!

ROBERT LOWELL

“It is the future generation that presses into being by means of these exuberant feelings and super-sensible soap bubbles of ours.”

SCHOPENHAUER

“The hot night makes us keep our bedroom windows open.

Our magnolia blossoms. Life begins to happen.

My hopped up husband drops his home disputes,

and hits the streets to cruise for prostitutes,

free-lancing out along the razor's edge.

This screwball might kill his wife, then take the pledge.

Oh the monotonous meanness of his lust . . .

It's the injustice . . . he is so unjust—

whiskey-blind, swaggering home at five.

My only thought is how to keep alive.

What makes him tick? Each night now I tie

ten dollars and his car key to my thigh. . . .

Gored by the climacteric of his want,

he stalls above me like an elephant.”

ADRIENNE RICH

The pact that we made was the ordinary pact

of men & women in those days

I don't know who we thought we were

that our personalities

could resist the failures of the race

Lucky or unlucky, we didn't know

the race had failures of that order

and that we were going to share them

Like everybody else, we thought of ourselves as special

Your body is as vivid to me

as it ever was: even more

since my feeling for it is clearer:

I know what it could do and could not do

it is no longer

the body of a god

or anything with power over my life

Next year it would have been 20 years

and you are wastefully dead

who might have made the leap

we talked, too late, of making

which I live now

not as a leap

but a succession of brief, amazing movements

each one making possible the next

NAZIM HIKMET

I

want to die before you.

Do you think the one who follows

finds the one who went first?

I don't think so.

It would be best to have me burned

and put in a jar

            over your fireplace.

Make the jar

clear glass,

            so you can watch me inside . . .

You see my sacrifice:

I give up being earth,

I give up being a flower,

                                    just to stay near you.

And I become dust

to live with you.

Then, when you die,

you can come into my jar

and we'll live there together,

your ashes with mine,

until some dizzy bride

or wayward grandson

tosses us out . . .

But

by then

we'll be

so mixed

together

that even at the dump our atoms

                            will fall side by side.

We'll dive into the earth together.

And if one day a wild flower

finds water and springs up from that piece of earth,

its stem will have

two blooms for sure:

                            one will be you,

                            the other me.

I'm

not about to die yet.

I want to bear another child.

I'm brimming with life.

My blood is hot.

I'm going to live a long, long time—

and with you.

Death doesn't scare me,

I just don't find our funeral arrangements

                            too attractive.

But everything could change

before I die.

Any chance you'll get out of prison soon?

Something inside me says:

                            
Maybe.

W. S. MERWIN

Let me imagine that we will come again

when we want to and it will be spring

we will be no older than we ever were

the worn griefs will have eased like the early cloud

through which the morning slowly comes to itself

and the ancient defenses against the dead

will be done with and left to the dead at last

the light will be as it is now in the garden

that we have made here these years together

of our long evenings and astonishment

VIETNAMESE FOLK POEM

The twelfth moon for potato growing,

the first for beans, the second for eggplant.

In the third, we break the land

to plant rice in the fourth while the rains are strong.

The man ploughs, the woman plants,

and in the fifth: the harvest, and the gods are good—

an acre yields five full baskets this year.

I grind and pound the paddy, strew husks to cover the manure,

and feed the hogs with bran.

Next year, if the land is extravagant,

I shall pay the taxes for you.

In plenty or in want, there will still be you and me,

always the two of us.

Isn't that better than always prospering, alone?

L
OVE POETRY IS
the greatest poetry in the English language. Women have always been at its center. We are its inspiration, we are its readers, and increasingly, women are its authors. And how many men like to read poetry anyway?

It's hard to say anything new about something as all-encompassing, as infinite, complex, and mysterious, as intricate and detailed, as abstract and powerful as love. Many of these poems will be familiar. The most famous among them have entered our subconscious and help define how our society thinks about love. Less well-known poems bring new insight and metaphor. There are a few things more pleasurable than reading love poetry. I think you can guess what they are, but until then, I hope you enjoy reading these poems as much as I do.

CHRISTINA ROSSETTI

My heart is like a singing bird

Whose nest is in a watered shoot;

My heart is like an appletree

Whose boughs are bent with thickset fruit;

My heart is like a rainbow shell

That paddles in a halcyon sea;

My heart is gladder than all these

Because my love is come to me.

Raise me a dais of silk and down;

Hang it with vair and purple dyes;

Carve it in doves, and pomegranates,

And peacocks with a hundred eyes;

Work it in gold and silver grapes,

In leaves, and silver fleurs-de-lys;

Because the birthday of my life

Is come, my love is come to me.

RICHARD WILBUR

Your voice, with clear location of June days,

Called me—outside the window. You were there,

Light yet composed, as in the just soft stare

Of uncontested summer all things raise

Plainly their seeming into seamless air.

Then your love looked as simple and entire

As that picked pear you tossed me, and your face

As legible as pearskin's fleck and trace,

Which promise always wine, by mottled fire

More fatal fleshed than ever human grace.

And your gay gift—Oh when I saw it fall

Into my hands, through all that naïve light,

It seemed as blessed with truth and new delight

As must have been the first great gift of all.

VIKRAM SETH

What can I say to you? How can I now retract

All that that fool, my voice, has spoken—

Now that the facts are plain, the placid surface cracked,

The protocols of friendship broken?

I cannot walk by day as now I walk at dawn

Past the still house where you lie sleeping.

May the sun burn away these footprints on the lawn

And hold you in its warmth and keeping.

THOM GUNN

Their relationship consisted

In discussing if it existed.

ANTONIO MACHADO

The language of love

was never the worse

for some overstatement.

ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.

I love thee to the depth and breadth and height

My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight

For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.

I love thee to the level of every day's

Most quiet need, by sun and candlelight.

I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;

I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.

I love thee with the passion put to use

In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith.

I love thee with a love I seemed to lose

With my lost saints,—I love thee with the breath,

Smiles, tears, of all my life!—and if God choose,

I shall but love thee better after death.

PABLO NERUDA

You must know that I do not love
and
that I love you,

because everything alive has its two sides;

a word is one wing of the silence,

fire has its cold half.

I love you in order to begin to love you,

to start infinity again

and never to stop loving you:

that's why I do not love you yet.

I love you, and I do not love you, as if I held

keys in my hand: to a future of joy—

a wretched, muddled fate—

My love has two lives, in order to love you:

that's why I love you when I do not love you,

and also why I love you when I do.

LEO MARKS

The life that I have is all that I have,

And the life that I have is yours.

The love that I have of the life that I have

Is yours and yours and yours.

A sleep I shall have

A rest I shall have,

Yet death will be but a pause,

For the peace of my years in the long green grass

Will be yours and yours and yours.