Collected Love Poems
Brian Patten
Of all the poets writing today, Brian Patten is perhaps the most accessible and popular. Now his love poems, old and new, are collected together in his single volume.Widely acknowledged as one of Europe’s foremost writers, Brian Patten’s love poems have earned him recognition far and wide. Truthful and tender, profoundly aware of the possibility of magic and the miraculous, these poems are beautiful, informed and, even at their darkest moments, filled with courage and hope.Alongside old favourites, this edition will contain a selection of new and hitherto unpublished poems. A must for lovers and poetry lovers everywhere this February.
Collected Love Poems
BRIAN PATTEN
Table of Contents
Cover Page
Title Page (#u5880e07c-ed11-5563-b3d7-f62b42182639)
Not Only (#uac4a3cad-687b-5ca9-af34-9c3ec42dd895)
Into My Mirror Has Walked (#ub094b54c-8dcf-50a8-be08-b22a2991acd0)
These Songs Were Begun One Winter (#u108359f0-685b-5c79-a5be-99a6e441d1c4)
The Ambush (#u8d62a758-ad06-5f76-ba05-76f16b19a467)
A Blade of Grass (#ud7eb6dab-5ef9-56ad-ae2e-70c9c0d60c11)
What I Need for the Present (#u7d4f331b-67b4-5296-9389-7db55afe8ee5)
Through All Your Abstract Reasoning (#uff2654eb-79fc-5dda-95a1-f25265e5fea1)
Song for Last Year’s Wife (#u921200c7-4385-5de4-8bda-7f0462f6f019)
On Time for Once (#udaf24f84-9c32-571f-89dc-12358ea12c31)
A Small Dragon (#u609f2a2f-eb18-57d0-9b8d-b39c79fac755)
Doubt Shall Not Make an End of You (#u53a4b1e6-f574-5800-a22d-9a3e3b78d8aa)
First Love (#u639dc0bd-8a73-5b44-b053-18a3e3bc679b)
After Rimbaud’s Première Soirée (#u63d5d4c9-3254-5bef-b620-7a33053b7420)
Now They Will Either Sleep, Lie Still, or Dress Again (#u60e3eede-bc8a-59b1-8c39-d7ffd63c8eaf)
Party Piece (#u4b4ec3ce-6877-5163-a8c7-4a6f428c7310)
Nor the Sun Its Selling Power (#u505d24d0-85fe-517f-aed2-e04d983ab18d)
When She Wakes Drenched from Her Sleep (#uf998fa4d-14f6-5931-8d4c-0b8e61abe8a2)
Dressed (#uf73f1676-261b-50d1-879f-43a2079dd77a)
The Transformation (#u1bb9ea10-d8cd-53fe-8ecf-d58032461efc)
Leavetaking (#u6f908f7b-d2bc-543d-9aab-8d1d80e0098a)
The Poor Fools (#u8bacdd2a-3318-5c8d-aabf-1069afc69423)
Tonight I Will Not Bother You (#ub69281b2-c894-5b3c-94e5-92a39889c0bf)
It is Time to Tidy Up Your Life (#u74077f02-5e7d-54d9-970f-56fc8c04a5a0)
Remembering (#uc7bb1768-fd4f-5c5e-8cda-530f58b06c49)
Love Lesson (#u4c2cdbcd-047f-5cd2-9613-1485034f23e4)
The Innocence of Any Flesh Sleeping (#uf6d55420-c0dc-553d-a25a-0fba4d84fcfe)
Someone Coming Back (#u5933a54f-03cf-5bee-bce2-29e363f63bdb)
Mindless Now (#u18876b7b-469c-5ac2-88bf-4fc3f40c94a9)
In Your Turning Against Walls (#u6710ceb7-6468-531f-8791-60d7b568eb5e)
The Confession (#ud5fe68fe-703c-5413-9043-d455c7d3c207)
She Complicates Her Life (#u57002150-57bf-516e-afb9-5b32979ef970)
Perhaps (#u94f83907-60ed-58c8-ae15-8ecd7e7e6e8d)
The Assassination of the Morning (#u0ab0844c-8688-5a09-9c73-03c73c77a114)
A Creature to Tell the Time By (#u3d86a7ba-edd5-5d60-92bc-adb0a6e173de)
A Suitcase Full of Dust (#u5be9a4ac-b2d2-5200-82aa-7b1d58037930)
The Mistake (#u53e6fdbf-be2a-5037-b383-f806d1e4f5b7)
In Someplace Further On (#ufadee59a-7443-55ad-b7ff-1628f941ac3d)
And Nothing is Ever as Perfect as You Want It to Be (#ubc643050-1550-5fbd-93f7-ada1c4aaa846)
Simple Lyric (#u12f889e9-54af-5218-b3bc-e51584d32f5b)
Seascape (#u67158fc5-9b9d-5a37-a637-df7101014e9d)
Waves (#u639c9746-4c9f-5604-9020-d5ee7fc71967)
In the Dying of Anything (#uf3f001d7-a497-593a-b5db-b2087bfac458)
Angel Wings (#u14a5d966-1088-5014-9bfc-8d0e9f01d522)
Burning Genius (#u7da4d637-7762-532e-b937-5f32db64eb3c)
Somewhere Between Heaven and Woolworth’s (#u43d99505-b8f3-5a8f-899f-426b74c589f3)
The Unicorn (#ua7a9c200-fc15-5993-a1fb-1ad5c881ed1c)
Her Song (#u1bee939c-6773-5586-ac0d-605269c791e5)
When into Sudden Beds (#u9ba6d6b2-9e4b-5013-bcec-6a493b4f18ca)
Horror Story (#u8ff98ff4-8c17-5038-b052-0f19dbc9c59d)
Rauin (#u74382b99-1b22-5af2-8b26-d872b9d34894)
Park Note (#ufdfacbe9-17ca-5bae-b086-cd1df0d95fa5)
At Four O’Clock in the Morning (#u50c47a39-ecfd-5237-95cf-be0ed54cad6a)
Early in the Evening (#u8bc06995-f409-5b53-91ae-c148f0b3aefe)
Lethargy (#u33f6db31-8891-59ac-99ee-09d4c3f6134a)
One Another’s Light (#u4b043ca3-ceb6-552f-8142-71251e221b75)
Our Lives Had Grown So Empty (#u4c197103-45bb-5447-be60-3e0c49522fa7)
No Taxis Available (#ufc47f0ad-3711-59bd-81d3-d5a108554f45)
On a Horse Called Autumn (#ue041c40f-ed71-5a49-9bfc-ee57fc55c6da)
Apart Together in Her Bed We Lay (#u0cef457a-06ac-5df6-9968-4eb55872e0d8)
The Heroine Bitches (#uc843bd80-a4fd-5626-b4f6-e62149436acb)
Vanishing Trick (#u433323f9-d552-5a9a-9057-a6687e4551f3)
Towards Evening and Tired of the Place (#u47cea316-b93a-54ca-8b27-16c3e1f0b092)
A Few Questions about Romeo (#uc75ce1de-8cdd-5c2b-80d6-2e5c4b9df795)
The Wife (#ud9a70650-f50b-5add-84e3-2a7808b32d05)
The Outgoing Song (#u7d5df574-45af-50eb-8806-7a60a451418f)
News from the Gladland (#u1b4a73c0-df93-5e36-92b7-1340107c3a24)
The Morning’s Got a Sleepy Head (#ueaaa6baa-b79d-5c9e-b6c2-9baefd152f75)
The Ice Maiden (#u1988f726-646e-5cd2-b60f-615f68781635)
You Come to Me Quiet as Rain Not Yet Fallen (#ucaaa798b-8831-577d-8847-0c2edd02aa68)
The Tragedy (#uf5aec99d-4c2a-55a5-a897-c5ad2070da90)
The Cynic’s Only Love Poem (#u5f663592-2740-54d6-9c2b-fa6d6c5fbb16)
You Missed the Sunflowers at Their Height (#u10d26b7c-91cd-5fe0-9fb8-bb9d1df829ae)
The Want (#uab2428c2-4692-576e-8bc6-2a4d0d1e7cb0)
Waiting (#uac62a875-8079-5e93-a7cd-9ce60d54751c)
Amour (#ucf3f105f-9825-5a17-8214-69e056b4e86c)
Probably It Is Too Early in the Morning (#ue7c63698-5615-50c9-b792-5948f24f1952)
Forgetmeknot (#u15bf9d3d-9cb1-5463-b4c2-9eda9168e66e)
Reading Between Graffiti (#u2d7477c8-4065-52a0-bb0e-65ba24108907)
Embroidered Butterflies (#u8cf2a311-bd1c-5b36-90c3-9175b4ccff91)
Near the Factory Where They Make the Lilac Perfume (#u02a5f92e-2f12-5149-a90a-1b7a3a5c236f)
January Gladsong (#u7d3cfead-dad0-5fc9-954e-fc4c433507f2)
A Drop of Unclouded Blood (#ufbdb72e4-87cb-5b15-9686-89515b00c991)
You Have Gone to Sleep (#u9f3f0a8d-b98c-5963-bbc7-0b334428a6d4)
A Valentine (#u1219cc7a-baba-573c-ac34-31be29357523)
Because There Were No Revelations at Hand (#ue38b90bb-a520-52d6-9f1d-6b7d281b292b)
End of Story (#u24708263-2907-5e92-85a3-69a45411ff99)
The Likelihood (#u6ce63f7d-a263-54cb-868c-f87504c347bd)
Inessential Things (#u470244b6-bc26-5c2c-b6cd-b323c9cbe0ee)
The Recognition (#udff890cc-6879-5ff9-aad8-4781aede6824)
I Caught a Train that Passed the Town Where You Lived (#u1617b16e-8e6a-57af-ad63-d2e5ed3a4ba4)
The Bee’s Last Journey to the Rose (#u6ee92def-7d78-5970-90c8-beb988fbd1e9)
Letting Go (#u7c201cd8-c81e-5957-b8d1-e99819659313)
I Tried to Find My Voice (#ufb35026a-b3f6-581d-a950-8f2037c3e0dc)
And Heart is Daft (#ub4e02738-3cfd-5cf1-860c-92940f0af3ca)
If Words Were More Her Medium than Touch (#u15572839-c67c-5e14-a23a-2e0aaa779741)
Her Advice (#uba83f89b-8a6e-599b-80ed-927110efc6e4)
Bare Necessity (#u56bc5612-54b7-588b-a19f-90b13aec0008)
Sometimes it Happens (#u18143b85-f0d5-51fa-8af9-e839a4c7535d)
Meeting Again (#u076f56b8-44a3-5839-abd9-954cf4e803bd)
The Understudies (#u9232c9d8-a13e-51cc-beed-fde6cade8428)
Yes (#uab2b4031-ae52-5337-b971-f7a3f07336af)
So Late in the Evening (#uf78d5b13-f38d-53ed-bd47-7291861be84c)
Autumn Joke (#u96db5307-2869-5f6a-9577-202d3f67e54c)
Wound Cream (#u28b1d73f-7a8f-5315-8b1d-3b22444f7cff)
When You Wake Tomorrow (#u9f516726-4341-5574-a199-5d0f63143463)
The Stolen Orange (#u785d5cbf-eada-5aa0-a88c-55de490b9c02)
Hesitant (#u20d4bad1-4b96-5822-9dd2-8768fbc59289)
Dear Thief (#u76e00dae-1d92-5394-8beb-5802890d896a)
I Have Changed the Numbers on My Watch (#u799299a8-1ed1-55c0-98a4-a812a25c375d)
An Obsession (#uce865097-c48a-54a9-b73b-207a1767c7ba)
You Go into Town (#ub19ab14a-d3c5-5cbc-8d5b-a5d39141d09f)
Whose Body Has Opened (#ubb32f715-8fec-55e7-9d03-cdd69b389f12)
Her Coldness Explained (#ue75093d2-94dc-551c-a8ef-29ed70950329)
Road Song (#ucbd71106-e3e1-5aad-839a-193512d9ed6f)
The Word (#u38235380-3b04-584b-9e91-c4b051e2d6a2)
Tristan, Waking in His Wood, Panics (#ua5174b8d-2ca5-5a37-8d05-35a2efce3981)
Survivor (#u35f9e229-04c5-5755-b44a-62a4d0465787)
Sleepy (#u2ca9d2d3-f5c6-51aa-83de-350a771fbeaf)
Don’t Ask (#uf86d273e-8d09-5aa7-a715-29e3e426a40c)
Over All We Are a Shadow Falls (#u3b3bb10f-ade9-525a-a35b-3ea0e4de8e65)
The Shadow-Puppet’s Lament (#u64000b15-7ab0-585e-afcb-e5ce91ce6fab)
They’ve Heard about You (#u01b665c4-5cab-5abd-9549-5ff479c90cca)
April Morning Walk (#u9c63b9b4-88ac-5c48-9e9a-85d662d48845)
Fingers Have Bruised Your Skin the Way a Fallen Peach is Bruised (#uedc04944-3c42-56e0-8324-3864e245e165)
Poem Written in the Street on a Rainy Evening (#u836629a4-4893-544f-8fce-53d39f204f9c)
That Dress, This Shirt (#ub8cb3b11-0db5-50dd-a408-44576b0a91a9)
These Boys Have Never Really Grown into Men (#ub2b211ba-0a28-50d3-bc9c-4ad3283008f9)
A Few Sentences about Beauty (#ue898bb33-81af-5300-8f7e-fcb06194d282)
Her Ghost (#ubb72a1ba-d3e1-555f-94b6-dbe824cdb1c0)
Love Poem in February (#u4c8e53fd-7ed8-51ca-8bfe-c7aee5af2f15)
INDEX OF FIRST LINES (#ue0d622b9-01f9-5f71-97cd-cf0eca064422)
About the Author (#u0470a993-27e5-568d-acff-cb354184fe61)
Other Books By (#u8fcf1aa1-8ee4-5e6e-b4c4-49a3f6f7c92e)
Copyright (#u693a0469-e88e-52ea-92fd-0eaf3213e19a)
About the Publisher (#u3da6dacf-5d73-59ad-a4c4-b6658f232b8d)
Not Only (#ulink_ad8e8a1a-4c5f-54ca-a11d-29796f50718d)
Not only the leaf shivering with delight
No,
Not only the grass shrugging off the weight of frost
No,
Not only the taste of your skin
No,
Not only steam rising from the morning river
No,
Not only the heart on fire
No,
Not only the sound of the sunflower roaring
No,
Not only love’s resurrection
No,
Not only the cathedral window deep in the raindrop
No,
Not only the sky as blue and smooth as an egg
No,
Not only the fairytale of forever
No,
Not only the wings of the crane fly consumed by fire
No,
Not only these things
No,
But without you none of these things
Into My Mirror Has Walked (#ulink_444128de-7684-53a4-8d0c-4bd410f6e7ef)
Into my mirror has walked
A woman who will not talk
Of love or of its subsidiaries,
But who stands there,
Pleased by her own silence.
The weather has worn into her
All seasons known to me.
In one breast she holds
Evidence of forests,
In the other, of seas.
I will ask her nothing yet
Would ask so much
If she gave a sign—
Her shape is common enough,
Enough shape to love.
But what keeps me here
Is what glows beyond her.
I think at times
A boy’s body
Would be as easy
To read light into,
I think sometimes
My own might do.
These Songs Were Begun One Winter (#ulink_3286b122-cac6-54d0-ba07-e935a58f2fe1)
These songs were begun one winter
When on a window thick with frost
Her finger drew
A map of all possible directions,
When her body was one possibility among
Arbitrary encounters
And loneliness sufficient to warrant
A meeting of opposites.
How easily forgotten then
What was first felt—
An anchor lifted from the blood,
Sensations intense as any lunatic’s,
Ruined by unaccustomary events,
Let drop because of weariness.
The Ambush (#ulink_ec8f6811-339e-530a-9fad-2b31b5b6f59f)
When the face you swore never to forget
Can no longer be remembered,
When a list of regrets is torn up and thrown away
Then the hurt fades,
And you think you’ve grown strong.
You sit in bars and boast to yourself,
‘Never again will I be vulnerable.
It was an aberration to be so open,
A folly, never to be repeated.’
How absurd and fragile such promises.
Hidden from you, crouched
Among the longings you have suppressed
And the desires you imagine tamed,
A sweet pain waits in ambush.
And there will come a day when in a field
Heaven’s mouth gapes open,
And on a web the shadow
Of a marigold will smoulder.
Then without warning,
Without a shred of comfort,
Emotions you thought had been put aside
Will flare up within you and bleed you of reason.
The routines which comforted you,
And the habits in which you sought refuge
Will bend like sunlight under water,
And go astray.
Once again your body will become a banquet,
Falling heavenwards.
You will loll in spring’s sweet avalanche
Without the burden of memory,
And once again
Monstrous love will swallow you.
A Blade of Grass (#ulink_f6fcbc1f-4aea-5d81-829f-976589a861e9)
You ask for a poem.
I offer you a blade of grass.
You say it is not good enough.
You ask for a poem.
I say this blade of grass will do.
It has dressed itself in frost,
It is more immediate
Than any image of my making.
You say it is not a poem,
It is a blade of grass and grass
Is not quite good enough.
I offer you a blade of grass.
You are indignant.
You say it is too easy to offer grass.
It is absurd.
Anyone can offer a blade of grass.
You ask for a poem.
And so I write you a tragedy about
How a blade of grass
Becomes more and more difficult to offer,
And about how as you grow older
A blade of grass
Becomes more difficult to accept.
What I Need for the Present (#ulink_fa302c3c-d073-5903-bd7f-4da153a60e76)
Thanks, but please take back
the trinket box, the picture
made from butterfly wings and
the crystal glass.
Please take back the books,
the postcards, the beeswax candles,
the potted plant, the Hockney print
and the expensive pen.
Ungracious of me to say it, but
so many gifts that are given
are given in lieu of what
cannot be given.
Ungracious to say it, but
wherever I move in this room
it’s not these gifts I see, but your absense
that accumulates on them like dust.
Forgive me. Your intentions
were so very kind, but here’s
your box of fetters back. It’s not
what I need for the present.
Through All Your Abstract Reasoning (#ulink_40f82f2a-5a27-5014-9e5d-b26764fc70b0)
Coming back one evening through deserted fields
when the birds, drowsy with sleep,
have all but forgotten you,
you stop, and for one moment jerk alive.
Something has passed through you
that alters and enlightens: O
realization of what has gone and was real.
A bleak and uncoded message whispers
down all the nerves:
‘You cared for her! For love you cared!’
Something has passed a finger through
all your abstract reasoning.
From love you sheltered outside of love but still
the human bit leaked in,
stunned and off-balanced you.
Unprepared, struck so suddenly by another’s identity,
how can you hold on to any revelation?
You have moved too carefully through your life.
Always the light within you is hooded by
your own protecting fingers!
Song for Last Year’s Wife (#ulink_1010cdf6-c954-56c2-b6d0-dd92c131fc34)
Alice, this is my first winter of waking without you, of knowing that you, dressed in familiar clothes, are elsewhere, perhaps not even conscious of our anniversary. Have you noticed? The earth’s still as hard, the same empty gardens exist? It is as if nothing special had changed. I wake with another mouth feeding from me, but still feel as if love had not the right to walk out of me. A year now. So what? you say. I send out my spies to find who you are living with, what you are doing. They return, smile and tell me your body’s as firm, you are as alive, as warm and inviting as when they knew you first.
Perhaps it is the winter, its isolation from other seasons, that sends me your ghost to witness when I wake. Somebody came here today, asked how you were keeping, what you were doing. I imagine you, waking in another city, enclosed by this same hour. So ordinary a thing as loss comes now and touches me.
On Time for Once (#ulink_b0767e32-38b8-580c-98b4-6e764239508a)
I was sitting thinking of our future
and of how friendship had overcome
so many nights bloated with pain;
I was sitting in a room that looked on to a garden
and a stillness filled me,
bitterness drifted from me.
I was as near paradise as I am likely to get again.
I was sitting thinking of the chaos
we had caused in one another
and was amazed we had survived it.
I was thinking of our future
and of what we would do together,
and where we would go and how,
when night came
burying me bit by bit,
and you entered the room
trembling and solemn-faced,
on time for once.
A Small Dragon (#ulink_584c7e36-fd97-56ba-9750-96b80cf9793d)
I’ve found a small dragon in the woodshed.
Think it must have come from deep inside a forest
because it’s damp and green and leaves
are still reflecting in its eyes.
I fed it on many things, tried grass,
the roots of stars, hazel-nut and dandelion,
but it stared up at me as if to say, I need
food you can’t provide.
It made a nest among the coal,
not unlike a bird’s but larger.
It is out of place here
and is quite silent.
If you believed in it I would come
hurrying to your house to let you share my wonder,
but I want instead to see
if you yourself will pass this way.
Doubt Shall Not Make an End of You (#ulink_1873eb6c-61f6-577a-8b47-602d7820ade1)
Doubt shall not make an end of you
Nor closing eyes lose your shape
When the retina’s light fades;
What dawns inside me will light you.
In our public lives we may confine ourselves to darkness,
Our nowhere mouths explain away our dreams,
But alone we are incorruptible creatures,
Our light sunk too deep to be of any public use
We wander free and perfect without moving,
Or love on hard carpets
Where couples revolving round the room
End found at its centre—
I reach into you to reach all mankind,
And the deeper into you I reach
The deeper glows elsewhere the world
And sings of you. It says,
To love is the one common miracle.
Our love like a whale from its deepest ocean rises—
I offer this and a multitude of images,
From party rooms to oceans,
The single star and all its reflections;
Being completed we include all
And nothing wishes to escape us.
Feel nothing separate then—
We have translated each other into love
And into light go streaming.
First Love (#ulink_b5e26f12-33a9-5273-9a78-87068c58edb1)
Falling in love was like falling down the stairs
Each stair had her name on it
And he went bouncing down each one like a tongue-tied lunatic
One day of loving her was an ordinary year
He transformed her into what he wanted
And the scent from her
Was the best scent in the world
Fifteen he was fifteen
Each night he dreamed of her
Each day he telephoned her
Each day was unfamiliar
Scary even
And the fear of her going weighed on him like a stone
And when he could not see her for two nights running
It seemed a century had passed
And meeting her and staring at her face
He knew he would feel as he did forever
Hopelessly in love
Sick with it
And not even knowing her second name yet
It was the first time
The best time
A time that would last forever
Because it was new
Because he was ignorant it could ever end
It was endless
After Rimbaud’s Première Soirée (#ulink_a6d4739a-b0fe-5905-954d-9b5a95e6d8d5)
Sitting half naked in my chair
she clasped her hands to her mouth
trembling with pleasure
The shadows of the cypress trees leaned into the window
to gawp at us
Her breasts were so tiny
and her hair cropped so short
she could have been a boy
but we were beyond such trifling considerations
I licked her small ankles
kissed each fragile bone
as her stomach flipped over and over
Things she had imagined so furtively and for so long
yet had dared share with no one
were coming true at last!
It is how she wanted things to be
Her feet shivered on the cool floor of the room
beating out a rhythm of pure pleasure
Now They Will Either Sleep, Lie Still, or Dress Again (#ulink_6e8ea415-08f3-5d30-9b99-41562afb589a)
It’s evening,
Over the room’s silence other voices and sounds.
For them the world is a distant planet.
And lying here they are naked,
Her blonde hair falling is spread out across him.
Around her throat her mother’s necklace adds
Sophistication to her clumsiness.
Let their touchings be open—
They no longer belong to a race of pale children
Whose bodies are hardly born,
Nor among the virgins hung still inside their sadness,
But waking together their world is perfect.
Littered about the room still
Are the clothes they used for meeting in.
Evening, and the sun has moved across the room.
Now they will either sleep, lie still, or dress again.
Party Piece (#ulink_894f193c-aab1-5157-9809-60950c979420)
He said:
‘Let’s stay here
Now this place has emptied
And make gentle pornography with one another,
While the partygoers go out
And the dawn creeps in,
Like a stranger.
Let us not hesitate
Over what we know
Or over how cold this place has become,
But let’s unclip our minds
And let tumble free
The mad, mangled crocodile of love.’
So they did,
There among the cigarettes and guinness stains,
And later he caught a bus and she a train
And all there was between them then
Was rain.
Nor the Sun Its Selling Power (#ulink_8735bffe-bbe9-5cb7-8876-4634d7cd247c)
They said her words were like balloons
with strings I could not hold,
that her love was something in a shop
cheap and far too quickly sold.
But the tree does not price its apples
nor the sun its selling power,
the rain does not gossip
or speak of where it goes.
When She Wakes Drenched from Her Sleep (#ulink_093b1f8d-4d0e-5231-a947-74504f7beb34)
When she wakes drenched from her sleep
She will not ask to be saluted by the light
Nor carolled by morning’s squabbling birds,
Nor lying in his arms wish him repeat
The polite conversations already heard;
She’ll not be loved by roses but by men,
She will glide free of sweet beauty’s net
And all her senses open out
To receive each sensation for herself.
If I could be that real, that open now,
And not by half a light half lit
I would not gossip of what is beauty and what is not
Nor reduce love to a freak poem in the dark.
Dressed (#ulink_59801fb1-e316-55e5-b732-abcf54040176)
Dressed you are a different creature.
Dressed you are polite, are discreet and full of friendships,
Dressed you are almost serious.
You talk of the world and of all its disasters
As if they really moved you.
Dressed you hold on to illusions.
The wardrobes are full of your disguises.
The dress to be unbuttoned only in darkness,
The dress that seems always about to fall from you,
The touch-me-not dress, the how-expensive dress,
The dress slung on without caring.
Dressed you are a different creature.
You are indignant of the eyes upon you,
The eyes that crawl over you,
That feed on the bits you’ve allowed
To be naked.
Dressed you are imprisoned in labels,
You are cocooned in fashions,
Dressed you are a different creature.
As easily as in the bedrooms
In the fields littered with rubble
The dresses fall from you,
In the spare room the party never reaches
The dresses fall from you.
Aided or unaided, clumsily or easily,
The dresses fall from you and then
From you falls all the cheap blossom.
Undressed you are a different creature.
The Transformation (#ulink_468f986a-9686-5ce7-80ab-ba851a2ff255)
You are no longer afraid.
You watch, still half asleep,
How dawn ignites a room;
His rough head and body curled
In awkward fashion can but please.
His face is puffed with sleep;
His body once distant from your own
Has by the dawn been changed,
And what little care you had at first
Within this one night has grown.
You smile at how those things that troubled you
Were quick to leave,
At how in their place has come a peace,
A rest once beyond imagining.
Your bodies linked, you hardly dare to move;
A new thought has now obsessed your brain:
‘Come the light,
He might again have changed.’
And what you feel
You are quick to name,
And what you feel
You are quick to cage.
You watch, still half asleep,
How dawn misshapes a room;
And all your confidence by the light is drained
And still his face,
His face is still transformed.
Leavetaking (#ulink_62bfa6d3-5753-5e8d-bad5-12ee36262bd5)
She grew careless with her mouth.
Her lips came home in the evening numbed.
Excuses festered among her words.
She said one thing, her body said another.
Her body, exhausted, spoke the truth.
She grew careless, or became without care,
Or panicked between both.
Too logical to suffer, imagining
Love short-lived and ‘forever’
A lie fostered on the mass to light
Blank days with hope,
What she meant to him was soon diminished.
He too had grown careless with his mouth.
Habit wrecked them both, and wrecked
They left the fragments untouched, and left.
The Poor Fools (#ulink_d0fd392f-caa8-5cbb-992f-ee6d514dfabf)
You ask why poets speak so often
In the language of goodbyes.
It’s because beginnings take them by surprise.
Love comes and hammers them,
And then the poor fools are lost for words.
They abandon their pens, and their fingers
Itch for other things: buttons, nipples, zips—
For everything but the poor abandoned pen.
Tonight I Will Not Bother You (#ulink_a9a76ea1-2952-5d9d-83f5-a73aaff38477)
Tonight I will not bother you with telephones
Or voices speaking their cold and regular lines;
I’ll write no more notes in crowded living rooms
Saying what and how much has changed,
But fall instead to silence and things known.
When through exhaustion you scream, throw up
Sorrow that’s become a physical pain,
I’ll not try and comfort you with words
That add little but darkness to ourselves
But with the body speak, its senses known.
There is no frantic hurry to love
Or press on another one’s own dream.
This much I know has changed,
What was once wild is calmed,
And quieter now behind the brain
May throw more light on things;
And what starved for love survives
Whatever shadow it hunted down.
Taking what love comes makes
All that comes much easier;
Something buried deep selects what our shapes need;
The smaller habits it allows to breathe then fade,
Leaving the centre clean.
Tonight I will not bother you with excuses.
If owning separate worlds means pain
Comes more easily, and hurt
Remains a common part of us,
The silence is best; it will allow
All doubts to strip themselves.
Then whatever’s seen will surely
Be seen in its own light,
And whatever is wanted be wanted
For more than wanting’s sake.
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