Favourite love poems...

[mountaingal]

Re: Favourite love poems...

And three poems from Sappho (i was curious)

Because you love me
Stand with me face to face
And unveil the softness in your eyes...

**************************************

I have not had one word from her

Frankly I wish I were dead
When she left, she wept

a great deal; she said to me, "This parting must be
endured, Sappho. I go unwillingly."

I said, "Go, and be happy
but remember (you know
well) whom you leave shackled by love

"If you forget me, think
of our gifts to Aphrodite
and all the loveliness that we shared

"all the violet tiaras,
braided rosebuds, dill and
crocus twined around your young neck

"myrrh poured on your head
and on soft mats girls with
all that they most wished for beside them

"while no voices chanted
choruses without ours,
no woodlot bloomed in spring without song..."

*********************
Softer than the hill-fog to the forest
Are the loving hands of my dear lover,
When she sleeps beside me in the starlight
And her beauty drenches me with rest.

As the quiet mist enfolds the beech-trees,
Even as she dreams her arms enfold me,
Half awakening with a hundred kisses
On the scarlet lily of her mouth.

[Ephratahe]

Re: Favourite love poems...

When He Went Away by Peggy Carr (taken from a book of Caribbean poetry. Just thought it was a little profound [img]/forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img] )

I packed his cases full of
cotton shirts
and thick warm nights
while he carefully
arranged his promises
in the windows of our future

Reverently I touched that morning
when he left
his farewell trailing
from a plane
and blending with
the chaste white fingers of cooksmoke
which stole upward
through the dew to
wipe the smudges from the sky

How cheerfully our love moved out
to live inside
a cold blue envelope
and like an orphaned street-wise
child
slept easily
between two thin indifferent
lines

Like sheathed claws
atop a taut silk sheet
his first lies probed
the boundaries
of my innocence
then
artfully his words
rehearsed to
a finer edge
until
"winter"
"riots"
"strikes"
and
"Government"
flicked smoothly from his pen
to quiver in my hopes

Carelessly he tried to patch
my still-hot pain
with random ten pound notes
and pictures
of some grey defiant
stranger

My letters drifted into
slow soliloquy
and reassured themselves
like Job

A velvet tongue of
tired midnight breeze
licked the moisture from
my cheeks
then shook an old newsheet
awake
snuggled underneath
and belched the flavour of
too many lonely women
on its breath

Today I forgot tp
tremble
to the rhythm
of the postman's
bell

[coffeegyal]

Re: Favourite love poems...

Originally posted by mountaingal:
[qb]i love the work of Dorothy Parker, but I gather she was often disappointed in love. it's reflected in her poetry - she wrote a LOT about love, but in a cynical and flippant way. I like these three of hers the best.
[/qb]

And, you remind me of yet another movie about a writer: Mrs. Parker and the Viscious Circle. I love this one, about Dorothy and the Algonquin Roundtable. Disappointed in love? You could say that. Such a sharp wit, though. That's what I envy.