Poem Hunter: Poems - Poets - Poetry

YES, I know that you once were my lover,
But that sort of thing has an end,
And though love and its transports are over,
You know you can still be--my friend:
I was young, too, and foolish, remember;
(Did you ever hear John Hardy sing?)
It was then, the fifteenth of November,
And this is the end of the spring!

You complain that you are not well-treated
By my suddenly altering so;
Can I help it?--you're very conceited,
If you think yourself equal to Joe.
Don't kneel at my feet, I implore you;
Don't write on the drawings you bring;
Don't ask me to say, 'I adore you,'
For, indeed, it is now no such thing.

I confess, when at Bognor we parted,
I swore that I worshipped you then--
That I was a maid broken-hearted,
And you the most charming of men.
I confess, when I read your first letter,
I blotted your name with a tear--
But, oh! I was young--knew no better,
Could I tell that I'd meet Hardy here?

How dull you are grown! how you worry,
Repeating my vows to be true--
If I said so, I told you a story,

...

It may be that when we no longer know what to do
we have come our real work,

and that when we no longer know which way to go
we have come to our real journey.

The mind that is not baffled is not employed.

The impeded stream is the one that sings.
...

My love,

I feel our love story to become
As ancient mythology
It will live on and on
And linger in memories

And yet, it's not an ordinary
Love story, it's epic, unique
It faced the odds of the odds

...

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove.
O no, it is an ever-fixèd mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wand'ring bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.
...

I am only leaving you
for a handful of days
but it feels as thought
i will be gone forever
the way the door closes
behind me with such solidity
the way my suitcase
carries everything
i'd need for an eternity
of traveling light

...

After living these many years alone
For companionship I no longer moan.
I have my family and my pals
So, I don't need any more gals.
I need no woman to take care of me
I need no woman to bring me tea,
All that I need is to stay happy and healthy
That of course will make me very wealthy.
Why do I need a girlfriend or a wife
I don't need another woman in my life,

...

Loveliest of trees, the cherry now
Is hung with bloom along the bough,
And stands about the woodland ride
Wearing white for Eastertide.

Now, of my threescore years and ten,
Twenty will not come again,
And take from seventy springs a score,
It only leaves me fifty more.

And since to look at things in bloom
Fifty springs are little room,
About the woodlands I will go
To see the cherry hung with snow.
...

Here on the Hard, you're welcome to pull up and stay;
there's a flat fee of a quid for parking all day.

And wandering over the dunes, who wouldn't die
for the view: an endless estate of beach, the sea

kept out of the bay by the dam-wall of the sky.
Notice the sign, with details of last year's high tides.

Walk on, drawn to the shipwreck, a mirage of masts

...

Saturday afternoon

The wind blew hard this afternoon in Cascais
whirls of dry soil, the dust, smarted eyes
Not much fun walking around doing nothing
looking into shop windows of expensive dresses
A barber shop was still open, and a barber with
scissors in his hand looked haughty, challenging
me to enter, oh, no, my man, my wife cuts my hair
I hate having a haircut, a few strands of hair left

...