Favourite Poems

I can write the saddest verses tonight.
Write, for example: "The night sky is full of stars,
And far away, blue, celestial bodies tremble".
The night wind whirls in the sky and sings.
I can write the saddest verses tonight.
I loved her, and sometimes she also loved me.
Through nights like tonight I held her in my arms.
I kissed her so many times under the infinite sky.
She loved me, and sometimes I also loved her.
How could one not have loved her great still eyes.
I can write the saddest verses tonight.
To think that I do not have her. To feel that I lost her.
To hear the immense night, even more immeasurable without her.
And the verse falls to the soul as dew to the pasture.
It does not matter that my love could not keep her.
The night sky is full of stars, and she is not with me.
This is all. In the distance someone sings. In the distance.
My soul cannot be relieved now that I lost her.
My eyes search for her, trying to bring her close to me.
My heart searches for her, and she is not with me.
The same night, whitening the same trees.
We, of that time, are no longer the same.
I no longer love her, it is true, but how I loved her.
My voice tried to find the wind to caress her hearing.
Another's. She must belong to someone else, just as she belonged to my kisses.
Her voice, her bright body. Her infinite eyes.
I no longer love her, it is true, but maybe I still love her.
Love is so short, and forgetting takes so long.
Because through nights like tonight I held her in my arms,
My soul cannot be relieved now that I lost her.
Even when this is the last pain she causes me
And these are the last verses that I write about her.

Pardon me if I seem to cop an attitude
But the attitude is one of worship
And is, I think, sincere.
My heart swells
against the prison of my ribs
And grows to keep my lungs from seeking air.
Still the breath is not pushed out
By such a simple force as pride
But by the glory of my dreaming
That I might, perhaps, be loved
By you.

Pardon me if I'm moved to endless chatter
But I fear that the beauty of the silence,
As I watch your distant eyes
Caress the words I have arranged
As atonement, on the page, as sacrifice,
Might cause my soul to rise
Above this flesh
And leave inert these hands
With which I spell these prayers
Against your thighs.

Pardon me;
I burden you with too much honour.
I know you are no goddess,
Simply human,
Still alive.
The others who I prayed would love me
Ran,
Or else I was the one to run.
And yet their cracked reflections
Howl to me from pools of molten glass
Within my hidden pantheon.
I know you've missed perfection,
But your quirks and flaws
Are not personal betrayals,
But are the marks left
By the kiss of angels,
Allowing you to live within
This far too real world.

Pardon me if these songs of praise defile you
But I'll try to keep my hosannahs
To a quiet whisper,
And try, as I stroke your face,
Not to inscribe the Holy Name upon your brow,
Not to believe that you are both
Creator and Creation
And that you, therefore,
Must obey my will.
For as I rest
My head upon your shoulder
My lips against your throat,
I read your pulse as the rhythm
Of the rushing of the waves,
Your breaths as the passage
Of clouds against a bright and empty sky,
The gentle motion of your breasts
As the soft processional of continents,
As, within this dark and silent world,
We define
A temporary world of our own.

We are the music-makers,
And we are the dreamers of dreams,
Wandering by lone sea-breakers,
And sitting by desolate streams;
World-losers and world-forsakers,
On whom the pale moon gleams:
Yet we are the movers and shakers
Of the world for ever, it seems.

With wonderful deathless ditties
We build up the world's great cities,
And out of a fabulous story
We fashion an empire's glory:
One man with a dream, at pleasure,
Shall go forth and conquer a crown;
And three with a new song's measure
Can trample an empire down.

We, in the ages lying
In the buried past of the earth,
Built Nineveh with our sighing,
And Babel itself with our mirth;
And o'erthrew them with prophesying
To the old of the new world's worth;
For each age is a dream that is dying,
Or one that is coming to birth.

Love in Fantastic Triumph sat,
Whilst Bleeding Hearts around him flowed,
For whome Fresh pains he did create,
And strange Tyrannic power he showed;
From thy Bright Eyes he took his fire,
Which round about, in sport he hurled;
But 'twas from mine he took desire,
Enough to undo the armorous world

From me he took his sighs and tears,
From thee his Pride and Cruelty;
From me his Languishments and Fears,
And every Killing Dart from thee;
Thus thou and I, the God have armed.
And set him up a Deity;
But my poor Heart alone is harmed,
Whilst thine the Victor is, and free.

"Who told you this would be easy?" she said, eyes glittering like sea-wet stones. A flush, gentle as
rain, rose in her cheeks.

Nobody, nobody, the voice in his head clammered, I'm sorry, sorry, my love, it is blessed, it must be; I
cannot ever deny love.

At that moment he met her eyes and it occured to him that we live only in moments, arranged as it
happens. Someday we shall live entirely in nothing but a single kiss.