by Ana Sampson
Kissing
The young are walking on the riverbank
arms around each other’s waist and shoulders,
pretending to be looking at the waterlilies
and what might be a nest of some kind, over
there, which two who are clamped together
mouth to mouth have forgotten about.
The others, making courteous detours
around them, talk, stop talking, kiss.
They can see no one older than themselves.
It’s their river. They’ve got all day.
Seeing’s not everything. At this very
moment the middle-aged are kissing
in the backs of taxis, on the way
to airports and stations. Their mouths and tongues
are soft and powerful and as moist as ever.
Their hands are not inside each other’s clothes
(because of the driver) but locked so tightly
together that it hurts: it may leave marks
on their not of course youthful skin, which they won’t
notice. They too may have futures.
Fleur Adcock
Renouncement
I must not think of thee; and, tired yet strong,
I shun the thought that lurks in all delight –
The thought of thee – and in the blue heaven’s height,
And in the sweetest passage of a song.
O just beyond the fairest thoughts that throng
This breast, the thought of thee waits, hidden yet bright;
But it must never, never come in sight;
I must stop short of thee the whole day long.
But when sleep comes to close each difficult day,
When night gives pause to the long watch I keep,
And all my bonds I needs must loose apart,
And doff my will as raiment laid away, –
With the first dream that comes with the first sleep,
I run, I run, I am gathered to thy heart.
Alice Meynell
Among His Books
A silent room – grey with a dusty blight
Of loneliness;
A room with not enough of light
Its form to dress.
Books enough though! The groaning sofa bears
A goodly store –
Books on the window-seat, and on the chairs,
And on the floor.
Books of all sorts of soul, all sorts of age,
All sorts of face –
Black-letter, vellum, and the flimsy page
Of commonplace.
All bindings, from the cloth whose hue distracts
One’s weary nerves,
To yellow parchment, binding rare old tracts
It serves – deserves.
Books on the shelves, and in the cupboard books,
Worthless and rare –
Books on the mantelpiece – wheree’er one looks
Books everywhere!
Books! books! the only things in life I find
Not wholly vain.
Books in my hands – books in my heart enshrined –
Books in my brain.
My friends are they: for children and for wife
They serve me too;
For these alone, of all dear things in life,
Have I found true.
They do not flatter, change, deny, deceive –
Ah no – not they!
The same editions which one night you leave
You find next day.
You don’t find railway novels where you left
Your Elzevirs!
Your Aldines don’t betray you – leave bereft
Your lonely years!
And yet this common book of Common Prayer
My heart prefers,
Because the names upon the fly-leaf there
Are mine and hers.
It’s a dead flower that makes it open so –
Forget-me-not –
The Marriage Service . . . well, my dear, you know
Who first forgot.
Those were the days when in the choir we two
Sat – used to sing –
When I believed in God, in love, in you –
In everything.
Through quiet lanes to church we used to come,
Happy and good,
Clasp hands through sermon, and go slowly home
Down through the wood.
Kisses? A certain yellow rose no doubt
That porch still shows,
Whenever I hear kisses talked about
I smell that rose!
No – I don’t blame you – since you only proved
My choice unwise,
And taught me books should trusted be and loved.
Not lips and eyes!
And so I keep your book – your flower – to show
How much I care
For the dear memory of what, you know,
You never were.
Edith Nesbit
Why?
Why did you come, with your enkindled eyes
And mountain-look, across my lower way.
And take the vague dishonour from my day
By luring me from paltry things, to rise
And stand beside you, waiting wistfully
The looming of a larger destiny?
Why did you with strong fingers fling aside
The gates of possibility, and say
With vital voice the words I dream to-day?
Before, I was not much unsatisfied:
But since a god has touched me and departed,
I run through every temple, broken-hearted.
Mary Webb
Love Comes Back
Like your father,
twenty years later with the packet of cigarettes he went out for
Like Monday but this is the nineteenth century
& you’re a monied aristocrat with no conception of the working week
Like a haunted board game
pried from the rubble of an archaeological dig site
You roll the dice & bats come flooding out your heart
like molten grappling hooks
your resolve weakening . . .
like the cord of an antique disco ball . . .
Love like the recurring decimal of some huge, indivisible number
or a well thrown boomerang
coming to rest in the soft curve of your hand
Love comes back . . .
like a murderer returning to the scene of the crime . . .
or not returning . . .
yet still the crime remains . . .
like love . . .
observed or unobserved . . .
written in blood on the walls of some ancient civilisation
in an idiom so old
we have no contemporary vernacular equivalent
Love like Windows 95
The greatest, most user-friendly Windows of them all
Those four little panes of light
Like the stained glass of an ancient church
vibrating in the sunlit rubble
of the twentieth century
Your face comes floating up in my crystal ball . . .
The lights come on at the bottom of the ocean
& here we are alone again . . .
Late November
we ride the black escalator of the mountain
& emerge into the altitude of our last year
The rabbit in the grass gives us something wild to aim for
It twists into spring like a living bell
I have to be here always telling you that
no matter how far I travel beyond you
love will stay tethered
like an evil kite I want to always reel back in
As if we could just turn and wade back
through the ghost of some ancient season
or wake each morning in the heat of a vanished life
Love comes back
like a genetic anomaly waiting to reveal itself
Like spring at the museum, after centuries of silence
the bronze wings of gladiator helmets trembling in their sockets . . .
Grecian urns sprouting new leaves . . .
Love like a hand from the grave
trembling up into the sunlight of the credit sequence
the names of the dead
pouring down the screen
like cool spring rain
Hera Lindsay Bird
heat
I miss you in tiny earthquakes.
In little underground explosions.
My soil is a hot disaster.
Home is burning.
You’re a lost thing.
Yrsa Daley-Ward
One Art
The art of losing isn’t hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.
Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.
Then practise losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.
I lost my mother’s watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.
I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn’t a disaster.
— Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan’t have lied. It’s evident
the art of losing’s not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.
Elizabeth Bishop
Dead Love
Oh never weep for love that’s dead,
Since love is seldom true,
But changes his fashion from blue to red,
From brightest red to blue,
And love was born to an early death
And is so seldom true.
Then harbour no smile on your loving face
To win the deepest sigh;
The fairest words on truest lips
Pass off and surely die;
And you will stand alone, my dear,
When wintry winds draw nigh.
Sweet, never weep for what cannot be,
For this God has not given:
If the merest dream of love were true,
Then, sweet, we should be in heaven;
And this is only earth, my dear,
Where true love is not given.
Elizabeth Siddal
Let It Be Forgotten
Let it be forgotten, as a flower is forgotten,
Forgotten as a fire that once was singing gold,
Let it be forgotten for ever and ever,
Time is a kind friend, he will make us old.
If anyone asks, say it was forgotten
Long and long ago
As a flower, as a fire, as a hushed footfall
In a long forgotten snow.
Sara Teasdale
‘Star-high, heart-deep’ – Nature
Women have written many wonderful poems about the natural world but I discovered fewer than I had expected, especially from earlier times. There have certainly been periods in history when it must have been difficult and unusual for women to tramp around the countryside as men have always done: alone, wearing sensible shoes and seeking inspiration in wild and free places. I also had to wonder whether the many gorgeous moonlit poems I discovered existed because those were the only moments the poet could snatch for herself, as the family lay sleeping.
This is a joyful collection of poems about shell-studded coastlines, deep green woods and – of course – the Brontës’ beloved Yorkshire moors. From the rolling hills of England, to the tiger-haunted Bangladeshi forest and starry New Zealand skies, these verses have the power to transport and delight. Here, too, are beasts brought to vivid life: a wild hare, a shorn sheep and even Thibault the lobster, pet of the poet Gérard de Nerval, who was looped with a blue ribbon and taken for walks through nineteenth-century Paris.
The Awakening River
The gulls are mad-in-love with the river
And the river unveils her face and smiles.
In her sleep-brooding eyes they mirror their shining wings.
She lies on silver pillows: the sun leans over her.
He warms and warms her, he kisses and kisses her.
There are sparks in her hair and she stirs in laughter.
Be careful, my beautiful waking one! you will catch on fire.
Wheeling and flying with the foam of the sea on their breasts
The ineffable mists of the sea clinging to their wild wings
Crying the rapture of the boundless ocean.
The gulls are mad-in-love with the river.
Wake! we are the dream thoughts flying from your heart.
Wake! we are the songs of desire flowing from your bosom.
O, I think the sun will lend her his great wings
And the river will fly away to the sea with the mad-in-love birds.
Katherine Mansfield
High Waving Heather
High waving heather, ’neath stormy blasts bending,
Midnight and moonlight and bright shining stars;
Darkness and glory rejoicingly blending,
Earth rising to heaven and heaven descending,
Man’s spirit away from its drear dongeon sending,
Bursting the fetters and breaking the bars.
All down the mountain sides, wild forest lending
One mighty voice to the life-giving wind;
Rivers their banks in the jubilee rending,
Fast through the valleys a reckless course wending,
Wider and deeper their waters extending,
Leaving a desolate desert behind.
Shining and lowering and swelling and dying,
Changing for ever from midnight to noon;
Roaring like thunder, like soft music sighing,
Shadows on shadows advancing and flying,
Lightning-bright flashes the deep gloom defying,
Coming as swiftly and fading as soon.
Emily Brontë
Address to a Child During a Boisterous Winter Evening
What way does the wind come? What way does he go?
He rides over the water, and over the snow,
Through wood, and through vale; and o’er rocky height,
Which the goat cannot climb, takes his sounding flight;
He tosses about in every bare tree,
As, if you look up, you plainly may see;
But how he will come, and whither he goes,
There’s never a scholar in England knows.
He will suddenly stop in a cunning nook,
And ring a sharp ’larum; but, if you should look,
There’s nothing to see but a cushion of snow,
Round as a pillow, and whiter than milk,
And softer than if it were covered with silk.
Sometimes he’ll hide in the cave of a rock,
Then whistle as shrill as the buzzard cock;
– Yet seek him, and what shall you find in the place?
Nothing but silence and empty space;
Save, in a corner, a heap of dry leaves,
That he’s left, for a bed, to beggars or thieves!
As soon as ’tis daylight tomorrow, with me
You shall go to the orchard, and then you will see
That he has been there, and made a great rout,
And cracked the branches, and strewn them about;
Heaven grant that he spare but that one upright twig
That looked up at the sky so p
roud and big
All last summer, as well you know,
Studded with apples, a beautiful show!
Hark! over the roof he makes a pause,
And growls as if he would fix his claws
Right in the slates, and with a huge rattle
Drive them down, like men in a battle:
– But let him range round; he does us no harm,
We build up the fire, we’re snug and warm;
Untouched by his breath see the candle shines bright,
And burns with a clear and steady light.
Books have we to read, but that half-stifled knell,
Alas! ’tis the sound of the eight o’clock bell.
– Come, now we’ll to bed! and when we are there
He may work his own will, and what shall we care?
He may knock at the door – we’ll not let him in;
May drive at the windows – we’ll laugh at his din;
Let him seek his own home wherever it be;
Here’s a cozie warm house for Edward and me.
Dorothy Wordsworth
Lines Composed in a Wood on a Windy Day
My soul is awakened, my spirit is soaring
And carried aloft on the wings of the breeze;
For above and around me the wild wind is roaring,
Arousing to rapture the earth and the seas.
The long withered grass in the sunshine is glancing,
The bare trees are tossing their branches on high;
The dead leaves beneath them are merrily dancing,
The white clouds are scudding across the blue sky.
I wish I could see how the ocean is lashing
The foam of its billows to whirlwinds of spray;
I wish I could see how its proud waves are dashing,
And hear the wild roar of their thunder to-day!
Anne Brontë
Breakage
I go down to the edge of the sea.
How everything shines in the morning light!
The cusp of the whelk,
the broken cupboard of the clam,
the opened, blue mussels,
moon snails, pale pink and barnacle scarred—
