Collected Love Poems. Brian Patten
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rel="nofollow" href="#litres_trial_promo">These Boys Have Never Really Grown into Men
Not only the leaf shivering with delight
No,
Not only the grass shrugging off the weight of frost
No,
Not only the taste of your skin
No,
Not only steam rising from the morning river
No,
Not only the heart on fire
No,
Not only the sound of the sunflower roaring
No,
Not only love’s resurrection
No,
Not only the cathedral window deep in the raindrop
No,
Not only the sky as blue and smooth as an egg
No,
Not only the fairytale of forever
No,
Not only the wings of the crane fly consumed by fire
No,
Not only these things
No,
But without you none of these things
Into my mirror has walked
A woman who will not talk
Of love or of its subsidiaries,
But who stands there,
Pleased by her own silence.
The weather has worn into her
All seasons known to me.
In one breast she holds
Evidence of forests,
In the other, of seas.
I will ask her nothing yet
Would ask so much
If she gave a sign—
Her shape is common enough,
Enough shape to love.
But what keeps me here
Is what glows beyond her.
I think at times
A boy’s body
Would be as easy
To read light into,
I think sometimes
My own might do.
These Songs Were Begun One Winter
These songs were begun one winter
When on a window thick with frost
Her finger drew
A map of all possible directions,
When her body was one possibility among
Arbitrary encounters
And loneliness sufficient to warrant
A meeting of opposites.
How easily forgotten then
What was first felt—
An anchor lifted from the blood,
Sensations intense as any lunatic’s,
Ruined by unaccustomary events,
Let drop because of weariness.
When the face you swore never to forget
Can no longer be remembered,
When a list of regrets is torn up and thrown away
Then the hurt fades,
And you think you’ve grown strong.
You sit in bars and boast to yourself,
‘Never again will I be vulnerable.
It was an aberration to be so open,
A folly, never to be repeated.’
How absurd and fragile such promises.
Hidden from you, crouched
Among the longings you have suppressed
And the desires you imagine tamed,
A sweet pain waits in ambush.
And there will come a day when in a field
Heaven’s mouth gapes open,
And on a web the shadow
Of a marigold will smoulder.
Then without warning,
Without a shred of comfort,
Emotions you thought had been put aside
Will flare up within you and bleed you of reason.
The routines which comforted you,
And the habits in which you sought refuge
Will bend like sunlight under water,
And go astray.
Once again your body will become a banquet,
Falling heavenwards.
You will loll in spring’s sweet avalanche
Without the burden of memory,
And once again
Monstrous love will swallow you.
You ask for a poem.
I offer you a blade of grass.
You say it is not good enough.
You ask for a poem.
I say this blade of grass will do.
It has dressed