Once in the 40's

We were alone one night on a long
road in Montana. This was in winter, a big
night, far from the stars. We had hitched,
my wife and I, and left our ride at
a crossing to go on. Tired and cold -- but
brave -- we trudged along. This, we said,
was our life, watched over, allowed to go
where we wanted. We said we'd come back some time
when we got rich. We'd leave the others and find
a night like this, whatever we had to give,
and no matter how far, to be so happy again.

-William Stafford.

HAVING A COKE WITH YOU

is even more fun than going to San Sebastian, Irun, Hendaye, Biarritz, Bayone

or being sick to my stomach on the Travesera de Garcia in Barcelona

partly because in your orange shirt you look like a better happier St. Sebastian

partly because of my love for you, partly because of your love for yoghurt

partly because of the fluorescent orange tulips around the birches

partly because of the secrecy our smiles take on before people and statuary

it is hard to believe when I'm with you that there can be anything as still

as solemn as unpleasantly definitive as statuary when right in front of it

in the warm New York 4 O'clock light we are drifting back and forth

between each other like a tree breathing through its spectables

and the portrait show seems to have no faces in it at all, just paint

you suddenly wonder why in the world anyone ever did them

I look

at you and I would rather look at you than all the portraits in the world

except possibly for the Polish Rider occasionally and anyway it's in the Frick

which thank heavens you haven't gone to yet so we can go together the first time

and the fact that you move so beautifully more or less takes care of futurism

just as at home I never think of the Nude Descending a Staircase or

at a rehearsal a single drawing of Leonardo or Michelangelo that used to wow me

and what good does all the research of the Impressionists do them

when they never got the right person to stand near the tree when the sun sank

or for that matter Marion Marini when he didn't pick the rider as carefully

as the horse

it seems they were all cheated of some marvellous experience

which is not going to go wasted on me which is why I'm telling you about it

-Frank O'Hara

When You Go

When you go,

if you go,

And I should want to die,

there's nothing I'd be saved by

more than the time

you fell asleep in my arms

in a trust so gentle

I let the darkening room

drink up the evening, till

rest, or the new rain

lightly roused you awake.

I asked if you heard the rain in your dream

and half dreaming still you only said, I love you.

-Edwin Morgan (RIP)

One Cigarette

No smoke without you, my fire

After you left,

your cigarette glowed on in my ashtray

and sent up a long thread of such quiet grey

I smiled to wonder who would believe its signal

of so much love. One cigarette

in the non-smoker's tray.

As the last spire

trembles up, a sudden draught

blows it winding into my face.

Is it smell, is it taste?

You are here again, and I am drunk on you tobacco lips.

Out with the light.

Let the smoke lie back in the dark.

Till I hear the very ash

sigh down among the flowers of brass

I'll breathe, and long past midnight, you last kiss.

-Edwin Morgan (RIP)

Old Song

I'm feeling ok still in some small way

I've come too far to just go away

I wish I could stay here some way.

So that what now comes wouldn't only be more

of what's to be lost. What's left would still leave more

to come if one didn't rush to get there.

What's still to say? Your eyes, your hair, your smile,

your body sweet as fresh air, your voice in the clear morning

after another night, another night, we lay together, sleeping?

If that has to go, it was never here.

If I know still you're here, then I'm here too

and love you, and love you.

-Robert Creeley

To His Coy Mistress

Had we but world enough, and time,

This coyness, lady, were no crime.

We would sit down, and think which way

To walk, and pass our long love's day.

Thou by the Indian Ganges' side

Shoudst rubies find; I by the tide

Of Humber would complain. I would

Love you ten years before the flood,

And you should, if you please, refuse

Till the conversion of the Jews.

My vegetable love should grow

Vaster than empires and more slow;

An hundred years should go to praise

Thine eyes, and on thy forehead gaze;

Two hundred to adore each breast,

But thirty thousand to the rest;

An age at least to every part

And the last age should show your heart.

For, lady, you deserve this state,

Nor would I love at a lower rate.

But at my back I always hear

Time's winged chariot hurrying near;

And yonder all before us lie

Deserts of vast eternity.

Thy beauty shall no more be found;

Nor, in thy marble vault, shall sound

My echoing song; then worms shall try

That long-preserved virginity,

And your quaint honor turn to dust,

And into ashes all my lust:

The grave's a fine and private place,

But none, I think, do there embrace

Now therefore, while the youthful hue

Sits on thy skin like morning dew,

And while thy willing soul transpires

At every pore with instant fires,

Now let us sport us while we may,

And now, like amorous birds of prey,

Rather at once our time devour

Than languish in his slow-chapped power.

Let us roll all our strength and all

Our sweetness up into one ball,

And tear our pleasures with rough strife

Through the iron gates of life:

Thus, though we cannot make our sun

Stand still, yet we will make him run.

-Andrew Marvell

The Descent

The descent beckons

as the ascent beckoned

Memory is a kind

of accomplishment

a sort of renewal

even

an initiation, since the spaces it opens are new

places

inhabited by hordes

heretofore unrealized,

of new kinds-

since their movements

are towards new objectives

(even though formerly they were abandoned)

No defeat is made up entirely of defeat-since

the world it opens is always a place

formerly

unsuspected. A

world lost,

a world unsuspected

beckons to new places

and no whiteness (lost) is so white as the memory

of whiteness .

With evening, love wakens

though its shadows

which are alive by reason

of the sun shining

grow sleepy now and drop away

from desire .

Love without shadows stirs now

beginning to waken

as night

advances.

The descent

made up of despairs

and without accomplishment

realizes a new awakening :

which is a reversal

of despair.

For what we cannot accomplish, what

is denied to love,

what we have lost in the anticipation-

a descent follows,

endless and indestructible.

-William Carlos Williams