Love’s True End

When hearts meet and lips touch

And soft and supple bodies blend,

When in joy you give me your all,

Then will I sing of love’s true end.

WHB . . . 1956

Pictures by Sir Edward Burne-Jones (1833 – 1898) . . . ‘The Heart of the Rose’
Tapestry design, inspired by Chaucer’s adaptation of the medieval French
‘Le Romaunt de la Rose’

A Vision Of Love

Do you remember the first time we met? 
A long time ago but hard to forget. 

Still so alive in my memory, 
The feed to my every reverie. 

Do you remember that first ever kiss, 
When soft lips touched in newfound bliss? 

Raw hearts first bled in ecstasy, 
The thrill of our conjoined energy. 

Do  you remember that first night of obsession
Love fully felt, all fervour, all passion

The need for each other at last fulfilled 
The essence of joy in conjunction distilled. 

All those memories now, facing reality,
Time and circumstance have brought finality. 

The last test awaits, giving pause for decision, 
Oh, let it be you who completes the Vision.

 

 

 

Pleasure in a WORD

THROB

 

As I woke
a word arrived in my consciousness
unasked
unaided

… THROB …

short word
tripped from my dreams
tumbled through my lips
to spill its delight into the morning air

Dug
pleasurably
from my waking consciousness
as my tongue savoured its existence
rolled itself around both lips
and my mouth accommodated itself
to its cadence

Measuring Its measure
against my throat’s resonance
thrusting the sound
up and out
into the waiting
wondering
world
pleased to be out in the morning air
a thrill to emit
listening as it cuts
sensuously
with a flautist ‘s thrust 
through the sensuous surrounding air

The poet’s morning chorus
a sound to be repeated
joyously
with fervour
pleasurably
savouring its cadence

Repeated
it resounds in the room
lingering as it ends 
lingering as I make 
that final occlusion
voicing its
bilabial stop
strong
sensuous
evocative 
voluptuous in its warmth
flirtatious in its coquettishness

Onomatopoeic pleasure
so soulfully satisfying
in its sound-print

Its exultant cry of existence

‘First Fig’ – Edna St.Vincent Millay

[  # 80 of My Favourite Short Poems  ]

Edna St. Vincent Millay was an American poet and playwright who was born in Rockland, Maine, in 1892.  I have used a short poem of  hers before in this series – in November of 2017, q.v. . . .    ‘What Lips My Lips Have Kissed’ .

This poem is even shorter, but I find that it does have a  lot to say, about her own lifestyle and about the times and the milieu which she inhabited in her heyday in 1920s New York.   Millay titled the book in which this poem was published A Few Figs From Thistles, and this poem was the first one in the book, hence ‘First Fig’.

The poem is highly symbolic and the opening line plunges the reader into that arresting metaphor which she uses to describe her wild, bohemian, certainly unorthodox spirit.   The second line, however, recognises the ephemeral nature of such an existence with the bitter-sweet ‘It will not last the night’.  She is acknowledging that brightness is not all, a candle burning simultaneously from both ends will burn twice as quickly and such hedonistic times will not last.

Figs from Thistles: First Fig

 

My candle burns at both ends;

   It will not last the night;

But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends—

   It gives a lovely light!

 

 

Edna St. Vincent Millay – ‘“What lips my lips have kissed’

(No.60 of my favourite short poems)

This Sonnet is by Edna St. Vincent Millay, an American poet and playwright who was born in Rockland, Maine, in 1892.  I find it a moving and poignant poem looking back on her more youthful days with regret and intense longing.  Her sonnet is written in the Italian form, divided into two parts – an eight-lined octet, followed by a six-line sestet, here presented as just two sentences.  It is both reflective and filled with remorse.

Millay’s first published poem, ‘Renascence‘ was particularly well received and launched her on her writing career.  For a large part of her life Millay lived and worked among her Bohemian friends in New York’s Greenwich Village milieu.  Known to her friends as Vincent, she was openly bisexual, and gradually accrued both fame and some notoriety.   In 1923, she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for ‘The Ballad of the Harp-Weaver’.   Edna St Vincent Millay died in 1950.

 

“What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why”

By Edna St. Vincent Millay

 

What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why,

I have forgotten, and what arms have lain

Under my head till morning; but the rain

Is full of ghosts tonight, that tap and sigh

Upon the glass and listen for reply,

And in my heart there stirs a quiet pain

For unremembered lads that not again

Will turn to me at midnight with a cry.

 

Thus in the winter stands the lonely tree,

Nor knows what birds have vanished one by one,

Yet knows its boughs more silent than before:

I cannot say what loves have come and gone,

I only know that summer sang in me

A little while, that in me sings no more.

 

 

Love’s True End

 

When hearts meet and lips touch

And soft and supple bodies blend,

When in joy you give your all,

Then will I sing of love’s true end.

 

Pictures by Sir Edward Burne-Jones (1833 – 1898) . . . ‘The Heart of the Rose’
Tapestry design, inspired by Chaucer’s adaptation of the medieval French
‘Le Romaunt de la Rose’