Love poems
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New Year's Morning
© Helen Hunt Jackson
Only a night from old to new!
Never a night such changes brought.
The Old Year had its work to do;
No New Year miracles are wrought.
Death
© Helen Hunt Jackson
My body, eh? Friend Death, how now?
Why all this tedious pomp of writ?
Thou hast reclaimed it sure and slow
For half a century bit by bit.
A Calendar of Sonnets: May
© Helen Hunt Jackson
O Month when they who love must love and wed!
Were one to go to worlds where May is naught,
And seek to tell the memories he had brought
From earth of thee, what were most fitly said?
A Calendar of Sonnets: June
© Helen Hunt Jackson
O month whose promise and fulfilment blend,
And burst in one! it seems the earth can store
In all her roomy house no treasure more;
Of all her wealth no farthing have to spend
A Calendar of Sonnets: January
© Helen Hunt Jackson
O Winter! frozen pulse and heart of fire,
What loss is theirs who from thy kingdom turn
Dismayed, and think thy snow a sculptured urn
Of death! Far sooner in midsummer tire
A Calendar of Sonnets: April
© Helen Hunt Jackson
No days such honored days as these! While yet
Fair Aphrodite reigned, men seeking wide
For some fair thing which should forever bide
On earth, her beauteous memory to set
Mad Day In March
© Philip Levine
Beaten like an old hound
Whimpering by the stove,
I complicate the pain
That smarts with promised love.
The Distant Winter
© Philip Levine
The sour daylight cracks through my sleep-caked lids.
"Stephan! Stephan!" The rattling orderly
Comes on a trot, the cold tray in his hands:
Toast whitening with oleo, brown tea,
Gangrene
© Philip Levine
Vous êtes sorti sain et sauf des basses
calomnies, vous avey conquis les coeurs. Zola, J'accuse
One was kicked in the stomach
until he vomited, then
Green Thumb
© Philip Levine
Shake out my pockets! Harken to the call
Of that calm voice that makes no sound at all!
Take of me all you can; my average weight
May make amends for this, my low estate.
Then
© Philip Levine
A solitary apartment house, the last one
before the boulevard ends and a dusty road
winds its slow way out of town. On the third floor
through the dusty windows Karen beholds
Passing Out
© Philip Levine
The doctor fingers my bruise.
"Magnificent," he says, "black
at the edges and purple
cored." Seated, he spies for clues,
gingerly probing the slack
flesh, while I, standing, fazed, pull
Magpiety
© Philip Levine
You pull over to the shoulder
of the two-lane
road and sit for a moment wondering
where you were going
The Drunkard
© Philip Levine
He fears the tiger standing in his way.
The tiger takes its time, it smiles and growls.
Like moons, the two blank eyes tug at his bowels.
"God help me now," is all that he can say.
On The Meeting Of García Lorca And Hart Crane
© Philip Levine
Brooklyn, 1929. Of course Crane's
been drinking and has no idea who
this curious Andalusian is, unable
even to speak the language of poetry.
Sierra Kid
© Philip Levine
I passed Slimgullion, Morgan Mine,
Camp Seco, and the rotting Lode.
Dark walls of sugar pine --,
And where I left the road
The Water's Chant
© Philip Levine
Seven years ago I went into
the High Sierras stunned by the desire
to die. For hours I stared into a clear
mountain stream that fell down
Wisteria
© Philip Levine
The first purple wisteria
I recall from boyhood hung
on a wire outside the windows
of the breakfast room next door
The Whole Soul
© Philip Levine
Is it long as a noodle
or fat as an egg? Is it
lumpy like a potato or
ringed like an oak or an
