Happy St. Valentine's Day, All


wondered if you had a favourite love poem to share?



Lovers by Doretta Bendallin


This is a favourite of mine:



Symptoms of Love

Love is universal migraine,
A bright stain on the vision
Blotting out reason.

Symptoms of true love
Are leanness, jealousy,
Laggard dawns;

Are omens and nightmares -
Listening for a knock,
Waiting for a sign:

For a touch of her fingers
In a darkened room,
For a searching look.

Take courage, lover!
Could you endure such pain
At any hand but hers?


Robert Graves

Lovely poem, Peter. Exactly. I see many quotes online of "Love is a universal migraine", and others that seem perhaps more authoritative, like yours, "Love is universal migraine." Are there two versions from Graves, or just a lot of misquoting going on? Tom

Yes, it's funny I always thought the line was Love is a universal  migraine.  I'll have to dig out the anthology in which I first discovered it and check, but all the online sources use the shortened line.

see many divergent versions online, Lord knows why, but here's one online rendition of beginning of "Asphodel, That Greeny Flower" (all lef jusified, unlike his layout) by William Carlos Williams. Reading it tonight make me think of Rilke elegies too...

Of asphodel, that greeny flower,
like a buttercup
upon its branching stem--
save that it's green and wooden--
I come, my sweet,
to sing to you.
We lived long together
a life filled,
if you will,
with flowers.  So that
I was cheered
when I came first to know
that there were flowers also
in hell.
Today
I'm filled with the fading memory of those flowers
that we both loved,
even to this poor
colorless thing--
I saw it
when I was a child--
little prized among the living
but the dead see,
asking among themselves:
What do I remember
that was shaped
as this thing is shaped?
while our eyes fill
with tears.
Of love, abiding love
it will be telling...

That's beautiful.  More and more comes to me with each reading.  Gonna be coming back to this. 

© Weis Czyzewsk
July 2009

Cooking Stew On Homestead Lane
~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Topography by Sharon Olds


After we flew across the country we
got in bed, laid our bodies
delicately together, like maps laid
face to face, East to West, my
San Francisco against your New York, your
Fire Island against my Sonoma, my
New Orleans deep in your Texas, your Idaho
bright on my Great Lakes, my Kansas
burning against your Kansas your Kansas
burning against my Kansas, your Eastern
Standard Time pressing into my
Pacific Time, my Mountain Time
beating against your Central Time, your
sun rising swiftly from the right my
sun rising swiftly from the left your
moon rising slowly form the left my
moon rising slowly form the right until
all four bodies of the sky
burn above us, sealing us together,
all our cities twin cities,
all our states united, one
nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

and this lovely quote from Anne Finch a 17th century titled lady

This to the crown and blessing of my life
the much loved husband of a happy wife.

Flatulence, always her favorite scent.
Decomposing biological matter, her
only prerequisite in a man. She loved
and he loved her sweetly sick aroma
she'd been saving up for this day, dry,
cold and clammy. Special talent for
the art of perspiration. A person with
a hairy body. More stinky, the better.
A savings account with the local stink
bank and she's the goddamn chair
woman of the board. Assets in gold,
silver, copper, nickel, bronze, zinc
and stink. Two safety deposit boxes
filled brim to brim, around the brim.
Water treatment plants around the
world are putting up signs throughout
their installations DO NOT ACCEPT
FROM (name witheld).

That's what I think of your "holiday." 

 :D ;) :D

That sound like my kind of woman, Joe. Whoever invented anti-perspirant would have been better off with anti-verbalant. Our pheromones far more eloquent than anything else we present the world with! Tom

:)