favourite passages, poetry for infatuated new love. help!

It's all about Neruda, mck.

MARK HALLIDAY
BEFORE

Before you were you,
before your bicycle appeared under the street-lamp,
before you met me at the airport in a corduroy jacket,

before you agreed to hold my five ballpoint pens
while i ran to play touch football,
before your wet hair nearly touched the piano keys

and in advance of how your raincoat was tightly cinched
when you asked about nonviolent anti-war activity
and before you said "Truffaut,"

before your voice supernaturally soft sang
"I aweary wait upon the shore,"
before you suddenly stroked my thigh in the old Volvo,

when you had not yet said "Marcus Aureliius at 11:15"
and before your white shirt on the train,
before Pachelbel and "My Creole Belle"

and before your lips were so cool under that street-lamp
and before Buddy Holly in Vermont on the sofa
and Yeats in the library lounge,

prior to your denim cutoffs on the porch,
prior to my notes and your notes
and before your name became a pulsing star,

before all this
ah safer and smoother and smaller was my heart.

ehi jerry, thank you, this gets me exactly in the same mood as mck...

This probably isn't going to help, but... maybe will give you PERSPECTIVE

First Love

They say
the first love's most important.
That's very romantic
but not my experience.

Something was and wasn't there between us,
something went on and went away.

My hands never tremble,
when I stumble upon silly keepsakes
and a sheaf of letters tied with string—
not even ribbon.

Our only meeting after years:
the conversation of two chairs
at a chilly table.

Other loves
still breathe deep inside me.
This one's too short of breath even to sigh.

Yet, just exactly as it is,
it does what the others still can't manage:
unremembered
not even seen in dreams,
it introduces me to death.

by Wislawa Szymborska
translated by Stanislaw Baranczak

way to kill the springtime love vibe, donald!

thanks Jerry--that one's excellent.

since feeling is first
e.e. cummings

since feeling is first
who pays any attention
to the syntax of things
will never wholly kiss you:

wholly to be a fool
while Spring is in the world
my blood approves,
and kisses are a better fate
than wisdom
lady i swear by all flowers. Don't cry
--the best gesture of my brain is less than
your eyelids' flutter which says

we are for each other: then
laugh, leaning back in my arms
for life's not a paragraph

And death i think is no parenthesis

Brian Patten's love poetry is very good, this is one of my old favourites:

Her Song - Brian Patten

For no other reason than I love him wholly
I am here; for this one night at least
The world has shrunk to a boyish breast
On which my head, brilliant and exhausted, rests.
For this one night at least.

Let the dawn assemble all its guilts, its worries
and small doubts that, but for love, would infect this perfect heart.
I am as far beyond doubt as the sun.
I am as far beyond doubt as is possible.

Aw man, I used to have that Brian Patten poem stuck up on my wall. Turned out neither of our hearts were perfect after all, but what can you expect when you're 18?

Meanwhile, in 19th c. England:
When our two souls stand up erect and strong,
Face to face, silent, drawing nigh and nigher,
Until the lengthening wings break into fire
At either curvèd point,--what bitter wrong
Can the earth do to us, that we should not long
Be here contented? Think. In mounting higher,
The angels would press on us and aspire
To drop some golden orb of perfect song
Into our deep, dear silence. Let us stay
Rather on earth, Belovèd,--where the unfit
Contrarious moods of men recoil away
And isolate pure spirits, and permit
A place to stand and love in for a day,
With darkness and the death-hour rounding it.
- Elizabeth Barrett Browning

wow you sound so cute! Good luck.

this thread is mmmmmm. the Mark Halliday poem is so sexy!

mck, here is one you might want in August:

"This Room and Everything in It"
Li-Young Lee

Lie still now
while I prepare for my future,
certain hard days ahead,
when I'll need what I know so clearly this moment.

I am making use
of the one thing I learned
of all the things my father tried to teach me:
the art of memory.

I am letting this room
and everything in it
stand for my ideas about love
and its difficulties.

I'll let your love-cries,
those spacious notes
of a moment ago,
stand for distance.

Your scent,
that scent
of spice and a wound,
I'll let stand for mystery.

Your sunken belly
is the daily cup
of milk I drank
as a boy before morning prayer.

The sun on the face
of the wall
is God, the face
I can't see, my soul,

and so on, each thing
standing for a separate idea,
and those ideas forming the constellation
of my greater idea.
And one day, when I need
to tell myself something intelligent
about love,

I'll close my eyes
and recall this room and everything in it:
My body is estrangement.
This desire, perfection.
Your closed eyes my extinction.
Now I've forgotten my
idea. The book
on the windowsill, riffled by wind...
the even-numbered pages are
the past, the odd-
numbered pages, the future.
The sun is
God, your body is milk...

useless, useless...
your cries are song, my body's not me...
no good ... my idea
has evaporated...your hair is time, your thighs are song...
it had something to do
with death...it had something
to do with love.

obolmov, you beat me to the post of ee... lovely, lovely poem that...

If all else fails, you can always hold a boombox above your head and stand outside his(or her) window and play Peter Gabriels' "In Your Eyes" at volume ten. (if it's very cold outside, this will be especially effective).

Love is a little thing shaped like a lizzard,
That runs up and down and tickles your gizzard.

(Sorry, that's all that came to mind. I've forgotten what new love feels like.)

Yesabibliophile

I always thought it was a beautiful poem. It captures that initial giddiness of love, a place where logic seems to have no part.

Thanks! What lovely suggestions! I knew I could count on this board to help me out. (That Cummings poem is one that came back to me when I saw a copy of 100 Selected Poems on his bookshelf.)

"Permanently"

One day the Nouns were clustered in the street.
An Adjective walked by, with her dark beauty.
The Nouns were struck, moved, changed.
The next day a Verb drove up, and created the Sentence.

Each Sentence says one thing ­­ for example, "Although it was a dark rainy day when the
Adjective walked by, I shall remember the pure and sweet expression on her face until the day I
perish from the green, effective earth."
Or, "Will you please close the window, Andrew?"
Or, for example, "Thank you, the pink pot of flowers on the window sill has changed color recently
to a light yellow, due to the heat from the boiler factory which exists nearby."

In the springtime the Sentences and the Nouns lay silently on the grass.
A lonely Conjunction here and there would call, "And! But!"
But the Adjective did not emerge.

As the Adjective is lost in the sentence,
So I am lost in your eyes, ears, nose, and throat­­
You have enchanted me with a single kiss
Which can never be undone
Until the destruction of language.

(by Kenneth Koch)

oh god it's wonderful
to get out of bed
and drink too much coffee
and smoke too many cigarettes
and love you so much

from "steps" by frank o'hara. short and to the point.

actually, this all works for old strong loves as well... snif...