Shall I compare thee to
somewhere I have never travelled,gladly beyond
any experience,your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which I cannot touch because they are too
like the night,
Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all that’s best of dark and bright
Meet in
red signals across your absent eyes
that move like the sea near
the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of being
without knowing how, or when, or from where.
(i who have died am alive again
the price we have to pay;
If I could tell you I would let you know.
I have loved flowers that fade,
Within whose magic
will easily unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
I have loved airs that die
Before their charm is writ
my life will shut very beautifully ,suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;
.
nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility:
straightforwardly, without complexities or pride;
so I love you because I know no other way
than this: where
In my old griefs, and with my childhood’s faith,
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints - I
breathing from any -- lifted from the no
of all nothing -- human merely being
nothing but I told you so.
I love you more than I can say,
If I could tell you I would let you know.
Leaning into the afternoons I fling my sad nets
to that tender light
Which Heaven to gaudy day denies.
One shade the more, one ray the less
I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life; and, if God choose,
die like a breath
And wither as a bloom;
Fear not a
mind at peace with all below,
A heart whose love is
unimaginable You
(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens; only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes
so long lives this and this gives life
May 14, 2014
May 14, 2014 at 11:23 AM UTC
Shall I compare thee to
somewhere I have never travelled,gladly beyond
any experience,your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which I cannot touch because they are too
like the night,
Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all that’s best of dark and bright
Meet in
red signals across your absent eyes
that move like the sea near
the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of being
without knowing how, or when, or from where.
(i who have died am alive again
the price we have to pay;
If I could tell you I would let you know.
I have loved flowers that fade,
Within whose magic
will easily unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
I have loved airs that die
Before their charm is writ
my life will shut very beautifully ,suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;
.
nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility:
straightforwardly, without complexities or pride;
so I love you because I know no other way
than this: where
In my old griefs, and with my childhood’s faith,
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints - I
breathing from any -- lifted from the no
of all nothing -- human merely being
nothing but I told you so.
I love you more than I can say,
If I could tell you I would let you know.
Leaning into the afternoons I fling my sad nets
to that tender light
Which Heaven to gaudy day denies.
One shade the more, one ray the less
I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life; and, if God choose,
die like a breath
And wither as a bloom;
Fear not a
mind at peace with all below,
A heart whose love is
unimaginable You
(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens; only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes
so long lives this and this gives life
Exploring the idea of a poetry mash-up. Poems used are If I Could Tell You by W.H. Auden, "I have loved flowers that fade" by Robert Bridges, Sonnet XLII by Elizabeth Browning, "She walks in beauty, like the night" by Lord Byron, "i thank You God for this most amazing" and "somewhere i have never traveled,gladly beyond" by e.e. cummings, Leaning Into the Afternoons and Sonnet XVII by Pablo Neruda, and Sonnet 18 by William Shakespeare. Phew.