Love stopped before it began
It would have been love, I am sure of it,
And I held her hand torn between concern and pride
Whilst she cried and cried on her first day at school.
We walked to where her brother mowed the lawns
With many others, racing with their mowers
At manic speed in tight formation. Fascination
Dared me join their frenzied rush, a madness
So inviting that I ran amongst the madmen dicing
At each other’s heels and tempting death or injury.
The crying stopped. Before I could explain I had
The Head’s disapprobation pained upon my hands.
I’ve tried to write this poem but a dozen times,
I had the lines impressed, and even rhymes,
But pain of the strap delivered with dispassionate
Venom cooled my ardour and instilled a lingering distress
For love stopped before it began.
Related poetry:
- Modern Love X: But Where Began the Change But where began the change; and what’s my crime? The wretch condemned, who has not been arraigned, Chafes at his sentence. Shall I, unsustained, Drag on Love’s nerveless body thro’ all time? I must have slept, since now I wake. Prepare, You lovers, to know Love a thing of moods: Not like hard life, of […]...
- The Sunset stopped on Cottages The Sunset stopped on Cottages Where Sunset hence must be For treason not of His, but Life’s, Gone Westerly, Today The Sunset stopped on Cottages Where Morning just begun What difference, after all, Thou mak’st Thou supercilious Sun?...
- A Clock stopped A Clock stopped Not the Mantel’s Geneva’s farthest skill Can’t put the puppet bowing That just now dangled still An awe came on the Trinket! The Figures hunched, with pain Then quivered out of Decimals Into Degreeless Noon It will not stir for Doctors This Pendulum of snow This Shopman importunes it While cool concernless […]...
- I'm ceded I've stopped being Theirs I’m ceded I’ve stopped being Theirs The name They dropped upon my face With water, in the country church Is finished using, now, And They can put it with my Dolls, My childhood, and the string of spools, I’ve finished threading too Baptized, before, without the choice, But this time, consciously, of Grace Unto supremest […]...
- Unlyric Love Song It is time to give that-of-myself which I could not at first: To offer you now at last my least and my worst: Minor, absurd preserves, The shell’s end-curves, A document kept at the back of a drawer, A tin hidden under the floor, Recalcitrant prides and hesitations: To pile them carefully in a desparate […]...
- Acquainted With the Night I have been one acquainted with the night. I have walked out in rain and back in rain. I have outwalked the furthest city light. I have looked down the saddest city lane. I have passed by the watchman on his beat And dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain. I have stood still and stopped […]...
- The School Of Metaphysics Executioner happy to explain How his wristwatch works As he shadows me on the street. I call him that because he is grim and officious And wears black. The clock on the church tower Had stopped at five to eleven. The morning newspapers had no date. The gray building on the corner Could’ve been a […]...
- Modern Love XLVI: At Last We Parley At last we parley: we so strangely dumb In such a close communion! It befell About the sounding of the Matin-bell, And lo! her place was vacant, and the hum Of loneliness was round me. Then I rose, And my disordered brain did guide my foot To that old wood where our first love-salute Was […]...
- "I Love You Sweatheart" A man risked his life to write the words. A man hung upside down (an idiot friend Holding his legs?) with spray paint To write the words on a girder fifty feet above A highway. And his beloved, The next morning driving to work…? His words are not (meant to be) so unique. Does she […]...
- When my love did what I would not, what I would not When my love did what I would not, what I would not, I could hear his merry voice upon the wind, Crying, “e;Fairest, shut your eyes, for see you should not. Love is blind!” When my love said what I say not, what I say not, With a joyous laugh he quieted my fears, Whispering, […]...
- Love (I) Immortal love, authour of this great frame, Sprung from that beautie which can never fade; How hath man parcel’d out thy glorious name, And thrown it on that dust which thou hast made, While mortall love doth all the title gain! Which siding with invention, they together Bear all the sway, possessing heart and brain, […]...
- Sonnet 43 – How do I love thee? Let me count the ways How do I love thee? Let me count the ways. I love thee to the depth and breadth and height My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight For the ends of Being and ideal Grace. I love thee to the level of everyday’s Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light. I love thee […]...
- Other Lives And Dimensions And Finally A Love Poem My left hand will live longer than my right. The rivers of my palms tell me so. Never argue with rivers. Never expect your lives to finish at the same time. I think Praying, I think clapping is how hands mourn. I think staying up and waiting For paintings to sigh is science. In another […]...
- Petropolis From a fearful height, a wandering light, But does a star glitter like this, crying? Transparent star, wandering light Your brother, Petropolis, is dying. From a fearful height, earthly dreams are alight, And a green star is crying. Oh star, if you are the brother of water and light, Your brother, Petropolis, is dying. A […]...
- Love Love is a breach in the walls, a broken gate, Where that comes in that shall not go again; Love sells the proud heart’s citadel to Fate. They have known shame, who love unloved. Even then, When two mouths, thirsty each for each, find slaking, And agony’s forgot, and hushed the crying Of credulous hearts, […]...
- Our Bog Is Dood Our Bog is dood, our Bog is dood, They lisped in accents mild, But when I asked them to explain They grew a little wild. How do you know your Bog is dood My darling little child? We know because we wish it so That is enough, they cried, And straight within each infant eye […]...
- Mirabeau Bridge Under Mirabeau Bridge runs the Seine And our loves Must I remember them Joy came always after pain Let arriving night explain Days fade I remain Arm in arm let us stay face to face While below The bridge at our hands passes With eternal regards the wave so slow Let arriving night explain Days […]...
- You love the Lord you cannot see You love the Lord you cannot see You write Him every day A little note when you awake And further in the Day. An Ample Letter How you miss And would delight to see But then His House is but a Step And Mine’s in Heaven You see....
- The Loss of Love All through an empty place I go, And find her not in any room; The candles and the lamps I light Go down before a wind of gloom. Thick-spraddled lies the dust about, A fit, sad place to write her name Or draw her face the way she looked That legendary night she came. The […]...
- Love is Enough Love is enough. Let us not ask for gold. Wealth breeds false aims, and pride and selfishness; In those serene, Arcadian days of old Men gave no thought to princely homes and dress. The gods who dwelt on fair Olympia’s height Lived only for dear love and love’s delight. Love is enough. Love is enough. […]...
- Talk to me of love Talk to me of love with wonder in your eyes, Of limber magic flying through the veiling air And soft-edged silks trailing in a vintage plume, The bloom of fragrant lavender intimate in your hair – and I will recline there in the sweetest ease. Talk to me of love in honeyed tones, in whispered […]...
- Sonnet XXXVIII: Sitting Alone, Love Sitting alone, Love bids me go and write; Reason plucks back, commanding me to stay, Boasting that she doth still direct the way, Or else Love were unable to endite. Love, growing angry, vexed at the spleen And scorning Reason’s maimed argument, Straight taxeth Reason, wanting to invent, Where she with Love conversing hath not […]...
- Love's Deity I long to talk with some old lover’s ghost, Who died before the God of Love was born: I cannot think that he, who then loved most, Sunk so low as to love one which did scorn. But since this god produced a destiny, And that vice-nature, Custom, lets it be, I must love her […]...
- In Love For Long I’ve been in love for long With what I cannot tell And will contrive a song For the intangible That has no mould or shape, From which there’s no escape. It is not even a name, Yet is all constancy; Tried or untried, the same, It cannot part from me; A breath, yet as still […]...
- At leisure is the Soul At leisure is the Soul That gets a Staggering Blow The Width of Life before it spreads Without a thing to do It begs you give it Work But just the placing Pins Or humblest Patchwork Children do To Help its Vacant Hands...
- Among the Red Guns After waking at dawn one morning when the wind sang Low among dry leaves in an elm AMONG the red guns, In the hearts of soldiers Running free blood In the long, long campaign: Dreams go on. Among the leather saddles, In the heads of soldiers Heavy in the wracks and kills Of all straight […]...
- Love, What Is Love LOVE – what is love? A great and aching heart; Wrung hands; and silence; and a long despair. Life – what is life? Upon a moorland bare To see love coming and see love depart....
- Sonnet 10 – Yet, love, mere love, is beautiful indeed Yet, love, mere love, is beautiful indeed And worthy of acceptation. Fire is bright, Let temple burn, or flax; an equal light Leaps in the flame from cedar-plank or weed: And love is fire. And when I say at need I love thee. . . mark! . . . I love thee-in thy sight I […]...
- The White Mans Burden Lost in the forest, I broke off a dark twig And lifted its whisper to my thirsty lips: Maybe it was the voice of the rain crying, A cracked bell, or a torn heart. Something from far off it seemed Deep and secret to me, hidden by the earth, A shout muffled by huge autumns, […]...
- An Almost Made Up Poem I see you drinking at a fountain with tiny Blue hands, no, your hands are not tiny They are small, and the fountain is in France Where you wrote me that last letter and I answered and never heard from you again. You used to write insane poems about ANGELS AND GOD, all in upper […]...
- Initial Love Venus, when her son was lost, Cried him up and down the coast, In hamlets, palaces, and parks, And told the truant by his marks, Golden curls, and quiver, and bow;- This befell long ago. Time and tide are strangely changed, Men and manners much deranged; None will now find Cupid latent By this foolish […]...
- At The Other End Of The Telescope the people are very small and shrink, Dwarves on the way to netsuke hell Bound for a flea circus in full Retreat toward sub-atomic particles difficult to keep in focus, the figures At that end are nearly indistinguishable, Generals at the heads of minute armies Differing little from fishwives, Emperors the same as eskimos Huddled […]...
- Carbonara eyes Nicky said I couldn’t write, she’s got a charming Sense of social etiquette – given she’s a bitch (the canine sort, can’t spell for shit or even write A word) but then she has the most expressive eyes. So what she said was no surprise, she’d heard My lamentations, licked my hands, rested forepaws On […]...
- I Love The Naked Ages Long Ago I love the naked ages long ago When statues were gilded by Apollo, When men and women of agility Could play without lies and anxiety, And the sky lovingly caressed their spines, As it exercised its noble machine. Fertile Cybele, mother of nature, then, Would not place on her daughters a burden, But, she-wolf sharing […]...
- Greater Love Red lips are not so red As the stained stones kissed by the English dead. Kindness of wooed and wooer Seems shame to their love pure. O Love, your eyes lose lure When I behold eyes blinded in my stead! Your slender attitude Trembles not exquisite like limbs knife-skewed, Rolling and rolling there Where God […]...
- At A Vacation Exercise In The Colledge, Part Latin, Part English. The Latin Speeches Ended, The English Thus Began Hail native Language, that by sinews weak Didst move my first endeavouring tongue to speak, And mad’st imperfect words with childish tripps, Half unpronounc’t, slide through my infant-lipps, Driving dum silence from the portal dore, Where he had mutely sate two years before: Here I salute thee and thy pardon ask, That now I use […]...
- Sonnet 112: Your love and pity doth th' impression fill Your love and pity doth th’ impression fill Which vulgar scandal stamped upon my brow; For what care I who calls me well or ill, So you o’ergreen my bad, my good allow? You are my all the world, and I must strive To know my shames and praises from your tongue; None else to […]...
- Ordinary Love Indescribable our love and still we say With eyes averted, turning out the light, “I love you,” in the ordinary way And tug the coverlet where once we lay, All suntanned limbs entangled, shivering, white… Indescribably in love. Or so we say. Your hair’s blonde thicket now is tangle-gray; You turn your back; you murmur […]...
- 379. Song-Fragment-Love for love ITHERS seek they ken na what, Features, carriage, and a’ that; Gie me love in her I court, Love to love maks a’ the sport. Let love sparkle in her e’e; Let her lo’e nae man but me; That’s the tocher-gude I prize, There the luver’s treasure lies....
- A HYMN TO LOVE I will confess With cheerfulness, Love is a thing so likes me, That, let her lay On me all day, I’ll kiss the hand that strikes me. I will not, I, Now blubb’ring cry, It, ah! too late repents me That I did fall To love at all Since love so much contents me. No, […]...