🌾 Today’s Poem ~ Tie Your Heart to Mine at Night, Love

Tie Your Heart to Mine at Night, Love

Pablo Neruda

Tie your heart at night to mine, love,
and both will defeat the darkness
like twin drums beating in the forest
against the heavy wall of wet leaves.
Night crossing: black coal of dream
that cuts the thread of earthly orbs
with the punctuality of a headlong train
that pulls cold stone and shadow endlessly.
Love, because of it, tie me to a purer movement,
to the grip on life that beats in your breast,
with the wings of a submerged swan,
So that our dream might reply
to the sky’s questioning stars
with one key, one door closed to shadow.

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🌾 Today’s Poem ~ Language

Language

Nizar Qabbani

When a man is in love
how can he use old words?
Should a woman
desiring her lover
lie down with
grammarians and linguists?

I said nothing
to the woman I loved
but gathered
love’s adjectives into a suitcase
and fled from all languages.

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🌾 Today’s Poem ~ His Confidence

His Confidence

William Butler Yeats

Undying love to buy
I wrote upon
The corners of this eye
All wrongs done.
What payment were enough
For undying love?

I broke my heart in two
So hard I struck.
What matter? for I know
That out of rock,
Out of a desolate source,
Love leaps upon its course.

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🌾 Today’s Poem ~ A Hymn to Love

A Hymn to Love

Robert Herrick

I will confess
With cheerfulness,
Love is a thing so likes me,
That, let her lay
On me all day,
I’ll kiss the hand that strikes me.

I will not, I,
Now blubb’ring cry,
It, ah! too late repents me
That I did fall
To love at all–
Since love so much contents me.

No, no, I’ll be
In fetters free;
While others they sit wringing
Their hands for pain,
I’ll entertain
The wounds of love with singing.

With flowers and wine,
And cakes divine,
To strike me I will tempt thee;
Which done, no more
I’ll come before
Thee and thine altars empty.

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🌾 Today’s Poem ~ Why Do I Love You, Sir?

Why Do I Love You, Sir

Emily Dickinson

“Why do I love” You, Sir?
Because —
The Wind does not require the Grass
To answer — Wherefore when He pass
She cannot keep Her place.

Because He knows — and
Do not You —
And We know not —
Enough for Us
The Wisdom it be so —

The Lightning — never asked an Eye
Wherefore it shut — when He was by —
Because He knows it cannot speak —
And reasons not contained —
— Of Talk —
There be — preferred by Daintier Folk —

The Sunrise — Sire — compelleth Me —
Because He’s Sunrise — and I see —
Therefore — Then —
I love Thee —

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🌾 Today’s Poem ~ you being in love

you being in love

e. e. cummings

you being in love
will tell who softly asks in love,
am i separated from your body smile brain hands merely
to become the jumping puppets of a dream? oh i mean:
entirely having in my careful how
careful arms created this at length
inexcusable, this inexplicable pleasure-you go from several
persons: believe me that strangers arrive
when i have kissed you into a memory
slowly, oh seriously
-that since and if you disappear
solemnly
myselves
ask “life, the question how do i drink dream smile
and how do i prefer this face to another and
why do i weep eat sleep-what does the whole intend”
they wonder. oh and they cry “to be, being, that i am alive
this absurd fraction in its lowest terms
with everything cancelled
but shadows
-what does it all come down to? love? Love
if you like and i like,for the reason that i
hate people and lean out of this window is love,love
and the reason that i laugh and breathe is oh love and the reason
that i do not fall into this street is love.”

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🌾 Today’s Poem ~ I Knew a Woman

I Knew a Woman

Theodore Roethke

I knew a woman, lovely in her bones,
When small birds sighed, she would sigh back at them;
Ah, when she moved, she moved more ways than one:
The shapes a bright container can contain!
Of her choice virtues only gods should speak,
Or English poets who grew up on Greek
(I’d have them sing in chorus, cheek to cheek.)

How well her wishes went! She stroked my chin,
She taught me Turn, and Counter-turn, and stand;
She taught me Touch, that undulant white skin:
I nibbled meekly from her proffered hand;
She was the sickle; I, poor I, the rake,
Coming behind her for her pretty sake
(But what prodigious mowing did we make.)

Love likes a gander, and adores a goose:
Her full lips pursed, the errant note to seize;
She played it quick, she played it light and loose;
My eyes, they dazzled at her flowing knees;
Her several parts could keep a pure repose,
Or one hip quiver with a mobile nose
(She moved in circles, and those circles moved.)

Let seed be grass, and grass turn into hay:
I’m martyr to a motion not my own;
What’s freedom for? To know eternity.
I swear she cast a shadow white as stone.
But who would count eternity in days?
These old bones live to learn her wanton ways:
(I measure time by how a body sways.)

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🌾 Today’s Poem ~ A Lover’s Quarrel

A Lover’s Quarrel

Ella Wheeler Wilcox

We two were lovers, the Sea and I;
We plighted our troth ‘neath a summer sky.
And all through the riotous, ardent weather
We dreamed, and loved, and rejoiced together.
At times my lover would rage and storm.
I said: ‘No matter, his heart is warm.’
Whatever his humour, I loved his ways,
And so we lived through the golden days.
I know not the manner it came about,
But in the autumn we two fell out.
Yet this I know-’twas the fault of the Sea,
And was not my fault, that he changed to me.
I lingered as long as a woman may
To find what her lover will do or say.
But he met my smiles with a sullen frown,
And so I turned to the wooing Town.
Oh, bold was this suitor, and blithe as bold!
His look was as bright as the Sea’s was cold.
As the Sea was sullen, the Town was gay;
He made me forget for a winter day.
For a winter day and a winter night
He laughed my sorrow away from sight.
And yet, in spite of his mirth and cheer,
I knew full well he was insincere.
And when the young buds burst on the tree,
The old love woke in my heart for the Sea.
Pride was forgotten-I knew, I knew,
That the soul of the Sea, like my own, was true.
I heard him calling, and lo! I came,
To find him waiting, for ever the same.
And when he saw me, with murmurs sweet
He ran to meet me, and fell at my feet.
And so again ‘neath a summer sky
We have plighted our troth, the Sea and I.

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🌾 Today’s Poem ~ To My Wife

To My Wife

Oscar Wilde

I can write no stately poem
As a prelude to my lay;
From a poet to a poem
I would dare to say.
For if of these fallen petals
One to you seem fair,
Love will waft it till it settles
On your hair.
And when wind and winter harden
All the loveless land,
It will whisper of the garden,
You will understand.

And there is nothing left to do
But to kiss once again, and part,
Nay, there is nothing we should rue,
I have my beauty,-you your Art,
Nay, do not start,
One world was not enough for two
Like me and you.

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🌾 Today’s Poem ~ The Presence of Love

The Presence of Love

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

And in Life’s noisiest hour,
There whispers still the ceaseless Love of Thee,
The heart’s Self-solace and soliloquy.

You mould my Hopes, you fashion me within;
And to the leading Love-throb in the Heart
Thro’ all my Being, thro’ my pulse’s beat;
You lie in all my many Thoughts, like Light,
Like the fair light of Dawn, or summer Eve
On rippling Stream, or cloud-reflecting Lake.

And looking to the Heaven, that bends above you,
How oft! I bless the Lot that made me love you.

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