love poems

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My Hands Clasped (1911)

My hands clasped under a veil, dim and hazy…
"Why are you so pale and upset?"
That’s because I today made him crazy
With the sour wine of regret.

Can't forget! He got out, astound,
With his mouth distorted by pain...
I, not touching the railing, ran down,
I was running to him till the lane.

Fully choked, I cried, “That's a joke --
All that was. You get out, I'll die."
And he smiled very calmly, like stroke:
"It is windy right here -- pass by."

Anna Akhmatova
Transl.: Yevgeny Bonver , ed. by Orit Bonver, 2000

In the Evening (1913)

The garden's music ranged to me
With dole that's beyond expression.
The frozen oysters smelled with freshness
And sharpness of the northern sea.

He told me, "I'm the best of friends!",
And gently touched my gown's laces.
Oh, how differs from embraces
The easy touching of these hands.

Like that they pet a cat, a bird...
Or watch the girls that run the horses....
And just a quiet laughter poses
Under his lashes' easy gold.

And the distressing fiddles' voice
Sings me from haze that's low flowed,
"Thank holly heaven and rejoice --
You are first time with your beloved."

Anna Akhmatova
Transl.: Yevgeny Bonver , ed. by Orit Bonver, 2000

Along the Hard Crust (1917)

Along the hard crust of deep snows,
To the secret, white house of yours,
So gentle and quiet – we both
Are walking, in silence half-lost.
And sweeter than all songs, sung ever,
Are this dream, becoming the truth,
Entwined twigs’ a-nodding with favor,
The light ring of your silver spurs...

Anna Akhmatova
Transl.: Yevgeny Bonver , ed. by Tatiana Piotroff, 2002

To Wang Lun

Li Po takes a boat and is about to depart
when suddenly he hears the sound of footsteps
and singing on the shore.
The water in the Peach Blossom pool is
a thousand feet deep
but not as deep as Wang Lun's parting love for me

Li Bai
transl..:Liu Wu-Chi

Alone Looking at the Mountain

All the birds have flown up and gone;
A lonely cloud floats leisurely by.
We never tire of looking at each other -
Only the mountain and I.

Li Bai

Happiness

So early it's still almost dark out.
I'm near the window with coffee,
and the usual early morning stuff
that passes for thought.

When I see the boy and his friend
walking up the road
to deliver the newspaper.

They wear caps and sweaters,
and one boy has a bag over his shoulder.
They are so happy
they aren't saying anything, these boys.

I think if they could, they would take
each other's arm.
It's early in the morning,
and they are doing this thing together.

They come on, slowly.
The sky is taking on light,
though the moon still hangs pale over the water.

Such beauty that for a minute
death and ambition, even love,
doesn't enter into this.

Happiness. It comes on
unexpectedly. And goes beyond, really,
any early morning talk about it.

Raymond Carver

Layla

What'll you do when you get lonely
And nobody's waiting by your side?
You've been running and hiding much too long.
You know it's just your foolish pride.

Layla, you've got me on my knees.
Layla, I'm begging, darling please.
Layla, darling won't you ease my worried mind.

I tried to give you consolation
When your old man had let you down.
Like a fool, I fell in love with you,
Turned my whole world upside down.

Chorus

Let's make the best of the situation
Before I finally go insane.
Please don't say we'll never find a way
And tell me all my love's in vain.

Eric Clapton

Naked

The air is a-twitter.
The sun shines through birch
Illuminating everywhere
Flight-paths of the fruit-search.

And all the birds express
In heady soliloquy
Aromas of the mind
Endlessly, obsessively.

Oh to lie upon her.
– And no one can recall
A time it wasn’t summer –
Her nakedness is all.

Luke Davies
From: Totem, Allen and Unwin, Sydney 2004

Supple

And the sun is everywhere
And the air is filled with pollen
And all the bees weighed down with light
Are golden where the leaves have fallen.

The sidewalk soft with petals.
The air is wet with blossom;
It was frankly hard to comprehend
How all your youth and grace, so lissome,

So supple, could gather in the one body.
The light comes through your hair
As if your hair were light and nothing but:
You shake it to set fire to the air.

Luke Davies
From: Totem, Allen and Unwin, Sydney 2004

Women

Women, beautiful and ripe,
Weighed down by the burden of love,
Every fiber quivering with exotic longings,
With your eyes painting dreams and prayers
For yourselves and haughty fools--
Secretly pairing with penniless poets
In dim alleys astray from the boulevards
With full passion and piety you spoke
In metaphor and jest--
But being possessed the heart will burst in your breast,
Oh women, all burdens are heavy
But that of love is heaviest.
When teeth are sharper than reason,
And blood is truer than chastity.
With what honeyed splendor and fanfare
Is played for you that first time
The colorful song of bold seducer.
And afterwards, late, the comforting pity of God,
The shield against further temptation
Till the hair grays
And the last flute-note of autumn plays...

Alter Esselin, transl. Joseph Esselin

Even The Last Flower Withers

To Becky (1922)

Under wet, heavy copper weep the trees,
In a delicate swoon bends the grass,
The rain has drenched the heart of the earth.
It is autumn, and I remind you, beloved,
That I hold the glowing light of my spirit
Ready for you, beautiful, dear one.

My light is fading.
Dust am I without you.
I wither in the darkness.
I am autumn sick.
Lighter of stars, bring me your healing potion--
I die of longing.

Leaden sky, fall on my head.
Why does one need a heart?

Alter Esselin, transl. Joseph Esselin

Blind Love

When Hitler married Eva Braun
just days before committing suicide,
the war now lost, the Allies advancing,
all of Berlin reduced to rubble,
was it blind love that drove him on
to marry Eva while defying his generals
who wanted nothing more than to surrender
ten-year-old boys still left to defend
Blut, Boden and Reich for their Führer
trapped in a bunker, no way out
but to marry the woman who loved him
and sought the blessing of God her maker?

In Otto Weidt’s workshop for the blind
one can still see the machines they used
for brooms and brushes wound in the dark
insidious days before the deportations,
Weidt’s own secretary, Alice Licht,
landing in Auschwitz, where, because
of his love, he made them an offer
on brooms and brushes in order to find
Alice alive and in a neighboring camp,
though he didn’t see her but only heard
she’d received the packages he’d sent
without knowing if he’d ever see her again.

III

Could it be true Frau Goebbels played
a game of solitaire after having killed
all five of her children as they slept,
cyanide preferable to what she imagined
the Russians would do once they arrived,
the children depending on her to help
soothe them asleep as the bombing continued
to pummel the air above the game
that she laid out, snapping crisply
each card on the table she had just used
to mix the doses the children drank
gladly before bedtime, could it, could it?

“If only things could remain the same,”
Alice wrote to Otto on a card
thrown desperately from a passing train
and mailed anonymously by someone
who read, “Whoever finds this drop it
in a mailbox,” or “no trace of Ulkus,”
or “greetings Pappi!... heading to Birkenau”
and knew, despite the fact that Alice
would survive, come back to Berlin and leave
for America, where she would then marry,
ignoring Otto’s dying plea for her to return,
this was a message of hope for the future.

And so each night the prisoners played
scales and arpeggios, a Dvořák quartet,
secretly in the hold of the pathology lab
where by day the bodies were dissected
in search of abnormalities, the delicate
instruments filling the room with music
played from a score laid out on the table,
for all they knew this being their last
performance together while sawing away
at the hopeless, shattering grief contained
in the second movement of Schubert’s Eighth,
haunting and beautiful, and unfinished forever..

Peter Filkins

The Senses of Love (Revealings)

To see you
reveals the eternal beauty that is love.

To touch you
reveals the softness, the tenderness that is love.

To smell you
reveals the sweet enticeing aroma that is love

To hear your voice
reveals the captivating and delicate music that is love.

To kiss your lips
reveals the desire and passion that is love.

But, without you,
the heart that is love reveals only lonliness, only sadness and despair.
You Are Love

Peter Holmes

Song

I long to find you
in the uncertain silence
of my evenings
when darkness comes
and when the streets
are desolately empty
when nothing speaks
only my need of you.

Antigone Kefala
From: Absence: New and Selected Poems, Hale & Iremonger, Sydney 1998

I loved you once…

I loved you once: perhaps that love has yet
To die down thoroughly within my soul;
But let it not dismay you any longer;
I have no wish to cause you any sorrow.
I loved you wordlessly, without a hope,
By shyness tortured, or by jealousy.
I loved you with such tenderness and candor
And pray God grants you to be loved that way again.

A.S. Pushkin (1799-1837)

The lovers

I awake in a land where the lovers have seized power. They have introduced laws decreeing that no one will ever again have to look away, and that orgasms need never come to an end. Roses function as currency, the insane are worshipped as gods, and the gods are considered insane. The postal service has been reinstated and the words ‘you’ and ‘I’ are now synonymous. After the revolution it was decided that broken-hearted lovers should be eliminated for the safety of those happy in love. When they track me down I immediately surrender. The executioner is a woman and it is quickly done. It is winter and I have not met you yet.

Morten Søndergaard
From: At holde havet tilbage med en kost, publisher: Borgens Forlag, Kopenhagen, 2004
Translation: Barbara Haveland and John Irons

You who loved me with the falseness… (1923)

You who loved me with the falseness
Of truth - and the truth of lies.
You who loved me-beyond
Anything!-Over the edge!
You who loved me beyond
Time-Right hand, wave!
You love me no more:
The truth in five words.

M.I. Tsvetaeva (1892-1939)

One of our primary goals at Cedar Gallery is to provide a public forum for both unknown and established poets to showcase their works. We particularly encourage contributions from unpublished aspiring artists, but are happy to consider all submissions.

Please, send your contributions to: cedars.letters@live.nl