"Wait for Me"
Konstantin Simonov

Wait for me and I'll come back,
But wait with might and main,
Wait throughout the gloom and rack
Of autumn's yellow rain.
Wait when snowstorms fill the way,
Wait in summer's heat,
Wait when, false to yesterday,
Others do not wait.
Wait though from that far off place
No letters come to you.
Wait when all the others cease
To wait, who waited too.
Wait for me and I'll come back.
Do not lightly let
Those who know so well the knack
Teach you to forget.
Let my mother and my son
Believe that I have died;
Let my friends, their waiting done,
At the fireside,
Lift the wine of grief and clink
To my departed soul.
Wait, and make no haste to drink
Alone amongst them all.
Wait for me and I'll come back,
Defying death. When he
Who could not wait shall call it luck
Only, let it be.
They cannot know, who did not wait,
How in the midst of fire
Your waiting saved me from my fate.
Your waiting and desire.
Why I still am living, we
Shall know, just I and you:
You knew how to wait for me
As no other knew.

I have not seen that before, and it is very lovely. Is it a translation? If so it is a good one I think. Maybe we could have some more favourite 'pomes' in here.

Thanks that is lovely indeed. Anyone have a favourite love poem (and please save me from Elizabeth Barrett Browning and the Portuguese!)?

Ooh I love poetry! I have many favourites.. here is one of them by Christina Rossetti.

I wish I could remember that first day,
First hour, first moment of your meeting me,
If bright or dim the season, it might be
Summer or Winter for aught that I can say;
So unrecorded did it slip away,
So blind was I to see and to foresee,
So dull to mark the budding of my tree
That would not blossom yet for many a May.
If only I could recollect it, such
A day of days! I let it come and go
As traceless as a thaw of bygone snow;
It seemed to mean so little, meant so much;
If only now I could recall that touch,
First touch of hand in hand.--Did one but know!

If You Forget Me
~ Pablo Neruda


I want you to know
one thing.

You know how this is:
if I look
at the crystal moon, at the red branch
of the slow autumn at my window,
if I touch
near the fire
the impalpable ash
or the wrinkled body of the log,
everything carries me to you,
as if everything that exists:
aromas, light, metals,
were little boats that sail
toward those isles of yours that wait for me.


Well, now,
if little by little you stop loving me
I shall stop loving you little by little.

If suddenly
you forget me
do not look for me,
for I shall already have forgotten you.

If you think it long and mad,
the wind of banners
that passes through my life,
and you decide
to leave me at the shore
of the heart where I have roots,
remember
that on that day,
at that hour,
I shall lift my arms
and my roots will set off
to seek another land.

But
if each day,
each hour,
you feel that you are destined for me
with implacable sweetness,
if each day a flower
climbs up to your lips to seek me,
ah my love, ah my own,
in me all that fire is repeated,
in me nothing is extinguished or forgotten,
my love feeds on your love, beloved,
and as long as you live it will be in your arms
without leaving mine.

I have two favourites.

First favourite piece of love poetry is Sonnet 141 by Shakespeare. Corny, but beautiful.

"In faith, I do not love thee with mine eyes,
For they in thee a thousand errors note;
But 'tis my heart that loves what they despise,
Who in despite of view is pleased to dote;
Nor are mine ears with thy tongue's tune delighted,
Nor tender feeling, to base touches prone,
Nor taste, nor smell, desire to be invited
To any sensual feast* with thee alone*:
But my five wits* nor my five senses can
Dissuade one foolish heart from serving thee,
Who leaves unsway'd the likeness of a man,
Thy proud hearts slave and vassal wretch to be:
Only my plague thus far I count my gain,
That she that makes me sin awards me pain."

My second favourite is W H Auden's "Funeral Blues." It's really sad, but shows how much the poet loved whomever they were writing about. The last two stanzas are patricularly lovely for me.

"Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message He is Dead.
Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now; put out every one,
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun,
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the woods;
For nothing now can ever come to any good."

I was considering posting 'Funeral Blues' . It really is lovely.

Oh...Shakespeare is one of my favorites...He always makes me longing for true love...a mood of melancholy descend me...
Thanks for sharing “Funeral Blues”, I never have had heard...it’s sad but breathtaking

Warm regards
Jordan

Pablo Neruda wrote some of the most beautiful love poems. He was a wonderful poet.

I like ee cumming's poem "i carry your heart with me"

i carry your heart with me(i carry it in
my heart)i am never without it(anywhere
i go you go,my dear; and whatever is done
by only me is your doing,my darling)
i fear
no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want
no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)
and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows
higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)

The sun rises above the hillcrest,
As does the joy of my heart;
Rays of warmth and love,
From her I will never depart.

Fresh dew upon the grass,
Young birds chirp in their nests;
I watch her gently sleep,
My love to her I silently profess.

I enjoy the stillness and calm,
Watching as she smiles and dreams;
She brings me to stillness and peace,
Like that of a slow flowing stream.

My heart and soul flow with love,
And I smile as I quietly reflect;
I’ve been handed a sweet princess,
A sweet princess to love and to protect.

A vow to myself I make,
As she quietly sleeps away;
To love and always cherish her,
Until my last breath... until my last day.

- Michael Brieck -

Maya Angelou

Touched by an Angel


We, unaccustomed to courage
exiles from delight
live coiled in shells of loneliness
until love leaves its high holy temple
and comes into our sight
to liberate us into life.

Love arrives
and in its train come ecstasies
old memories of pleasure
ancient histories of pain.
Yet if we are bold,
love strikes away the chains of fear
from our souls.

We are weaned from our timidity
In the flush of love's light
we dare be brave
And suddenly we see
that love costs all we are
and will ever be.
Yet it is only love
which sets us free.

PASSION
tabitha spanos

Passion, it lies in all of us sleeping,
waiting and though unwanted, unbidden,
it will stir.Open it's jaws and howl.
It speaks to us,guides us.
Passion rules us all and we obey.
What other choice do we have?
Passion is the source of our finest momments.
The joy of love, the clarity of hatred, and the ecstasy of grief.
It hurts sometimes, more than we can bear.
If we could live without passion, maybe we would know some kind of peace.
But we would be hollow, empty rooms shuddered and dank.
Without passion we would be truly dead!!!

To "Em"

I hold a love,
a love so true.
With all my heart,
I worship you.

My thoughts are hard
to put in rhyme,
but they are with you
all the time.

Each day is a lifetime
when you are far away,
But I will love you
for ever and a day.

Please don't ever leave me
don't ever leave my side.
My love for you is eternal
and soon you'll be my bride.

Author - ME

"Midwestern Villanelle"
...by Robin Behn

Lately, where my body ends, yours begins.
Or so I keep thinking, although you are far.
It's hard to say, sometimes, just what has been.

To reconstruct the feel of it, give me some men
- all strangers, please - to synchronize the bar
stools' twirling: when the one called me winds down you begin

to stir the afternoon. A fifth of gin,
too, please, to symbolize how clear we were
each to each. I know just what has been

between us; it still is. My body here, lupine,
hungry to hear you say how far
it is to where this wanting ends and you begin

the drive back over red, real miles again.
Come back: Galesburg, known for trains, Star-
lite Motel where giant neon lips flash What's Been

Can Be Again. There's a compass in
your body. Your open legs? Your two-point star
that lights up where our one body ends. Or else begins:
beneficient, hard to hold, just what's always been...

Love Song

By: Dorothy Parker


My own dear love, he is strong and bold
And he cares not what comes after.
His words ring sweet as a chime of gold,
And his eyes are lit with laughter.
He is jubilant as a flag unfurled--
Oh, a girl, she'd not forget him.
My own true love, he is all my world,--
And I wish I'd never met him.

My love, he's mad, and my love, he's fleet,
And a wild young wood-thing bore him!
The ways are fair to his roaming feet,
And the skies are sunlit for him.
As sharply sweet to my heart he seems
As the fragrance of acacia.
My own dear love, he is all my dreams--
And I wish he were in Asia.

My love runs by like a day in June,
And he makes no friends of sorrows.
He'll tread his galloping rigadoon
In the pathway of the morrows.
He'll live his days where the sunbeams start,
Nor could storm or wind uproot him.
My own dear love, he is all my heart--
And I wish somebody'd shoot him.

Here are three of my favorites.

From Rumi, these are some of my favorite love poems:

"This is love: to fly toward a secret sky,
to cause a hundred veils to fall each moment.
First, to let go of life.
In the end, to take a step without feet;
to regard this world as invisible,
and to disregard what appears to be the self."

And this one also from Rumi (trans. Coleman Barks):

"Those who don't feel this Love
pulling them like a river,
those who don't drink dawn
like a cup of spring water
or take in sunset like supper,
those who don't want to change,

let them sleep.

This Love is beyond the study of theology,
that old trickery and hypocrisy.
If you want to improve your mind that way,

sleep on.

I've given up on my brain.
I've torn the cloth to shreds
and thrown it away.

If you're not completely naked,
wrap your beautiful robe of words
around you,

and sleep."

And from John Donne, "The Good-Morrow":

I wonder by my troth, what thou and I
Did, till we loved ? were we not wean'd till then ?
But suck'd on country pleasures, childishly ?
Or snorted we in the Seven Sleepers' den ?
'Twas so ; but this, all pleasures fancies be ;
If ever any beauty I did see,
Which I desired, and got, 'twas but a dream of thee.

And now good-morrow to our waking souls,
Which watch not one another out of fear ;
For love all love of other sights controls,
And makes one little room an everywhere.
Let sea-discoverers to new worlds have gone ;
Let maps to other, worlds on worlds have shown ;
Let us possess one world ; each hath one, and is one.

My face in thine eye, thine in mine appears,
And true plain hearts do in the faces rest ;
Where can we find two better hemispheres
Without sharp north, without declining west ?
Whatever dies, was not mix'd equally ;
If our two loves be one, or thou and I
Love so alike that none can slacken, none can die.

My favourite is quite rarely seen and I doubt that many of you will have heard it. It's really sad and shows what happens when you lose the person whom you love. It is called the Hollow Man and is written by Keith Osborne.

"This hard facade hides in anguish so unreal,
an unrelenting torment you'd never want to feel.
Look here, here past my eyes,
to find where pain forever lies.
A fate so much worse than death,
misery lingers on my every breath.
Now with all loves energy spent,
my heart is left twisted and bent.
Your heart, your love eluded me,
mine is a love, you could never see.
Yes, I'm the one, the one who cares,
and I'm the one who will be there.
I'll carry you over stormy tides,
but I'm left hollow here inside.
Cursed to a sad loveless existence,
still driven by passion so intense.
My strength is drained, I'm left helpless,
I'm drowning in darkened emptiness.
I can't see past tomorrow,
without you I'm left hollow.
I am hollow
I am the hollow man
Here before you I stand
Yes, I am the hollow man"

I really like that, Daniel, thanks

Like thegogga, I love Funeral Blues. My best friend gave me a copy after my husband's death, and i still read it often.
Another one i like is WB Yeats:
He wishes for the Cloths of Heaven
Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half-light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread upon my dreams.
There are some lovely poems being posted - thank you all.

Here's a love poem from Herman Melville!

The Lover and the Syringa Bush

Like a lit-up Christmas tree,
Like a grotto pranked with spars,
Like white corals in green sea,
Like night's sky of crowded stars,

To me like these you show, Syringa
Such heightening power has Love, believe,
While here by Eden's gate I linger,
Love's tryst to keep, with truant Eve.

Syringa is the botanical name for lilac, by the way.

tjoeb};>

An oddly moving and perfect thought from Rod McKuen -


I wanted to write you some words you'd remember
words so alert they'd leap off the paper
and crawl up your shoulder and lie by your ears
and be there to comfort you down through the years.
But it was cloudy that day and I was lazy
and so I stayed in bed just thinking about it.

I wanted to write you and tell you that maybe
love songs from lovers are unnecessary.
We are what we feel and writing it down
seems foolish sometimes without sound.
But I spent the day drinking coffee, smoking cigarettes
and looking in the mirror practicing my smile.

I wanted to write you one last, long love song
that said what I felt one final time.
Not comparing your eyes and mouth to the stars
but telling you only how like yourself you are.
But by the time I thought of it, found a pen,
put the pen to ink, the ink to paper,
you were gone.

That is lovely Kate. I never saw it before. Thanks.

Yes, it is amazing, isn't it?
By the way - thank you for the lovely card, Miss Sara.

Too close to the fire.

I came from the East with a small band of travelers.

The constant chirping of those who would save me and those who would sell me.

Talisman, Talisman, show me your secrets.
Helmsman, Helmsman, turn me for home.

Lying naked where blue whales swim.

She wished him steaming trains that left from winter stations.

Before I became a man, I was an arrow-long time ago.

Unnamed.
Robert James Waller-Bridges of Madison County is the work it is from.