Let me celebrate you. I
Have never known anyone
More beautiful than you. I
Walking beside you, watching
You move beside me, watching
That still grace of hand and thigh,
Watching your face change with words
You do not say, watching your
Solemn eyes as they turn to me,
Or turn inward, full of knowing,
Slow or quick, watching your full
Lips part and smile or turn grave,
Watching your narrow waist, your
Proud buttocks in their grace, like
A sailing swan, an animal,
Free, your own, and never
To be subjugated, but
Abandoned, as I am to you,
Overhearing your perfect
Speech of motion, of love and
Trust and security as
You feed or play with our children.
I have never known any
One more beautiful than you.
— Kenneth Rexroth
Before I laughed with him
nightly,
the slow waves beating
on his wide shores
and the palmyra
bringing forth heron-like flowers
near the waters,
my eyes were like the lotus
my arms had the grace of the bamboo
my forehead was mistaken for the moon.
But now.
— Maturai Eruttalan Centamputan
What wondrous life is this I lead!
Ripe apples drop about my head;
The luscious clusters of the vine
Upon my mouth do crush their wine;
The nectarine and curious peach
Into my hands themselves do reach;
Stumbling on melons, as I pass,
Ensnared with flowers, I fall on grass.
Meanwhile the mind from pleasure less
Withdraws into its happiness;
The mind, that Ocean where each kind
Does straight its own resemblance find;
Yet it creates, transcending these,
Far other worlds, and other seas;
Annihilating all that’s made
To a green thought in a green shade.
— Andrew Marvell
Since there’s no help, come let us kiss and part —
Nay, I have done, you get no more of me;
And I am glad, yea, glad with all my heart,
That thus so cleanly I myself can free;
Shake hands forever, cancel all our vows,
And when we meet at any time again,
Be it not seen in either of our brows
That we one jot of former love retain.
Now at the last gasp of Love’s latest breath,
When, his pulse failing, Passion speechless lies,
When Faith is kneeling by his bed of death,
And Innocence is closing up his eyes,
— Now if thou would’st when all have given him over,
From death to life thou might’st him yet recover.
— Michael Drayton
Cosmetics do no good:
no shadow, rouge, mascara, lipstick —
nothing helps.
However artfully I comb my hair,
embellishing my throat & wrists with jewels,
it is no use — there is no
semblance of the beautiful young girl
I was
& long for still.
My loveliness is past.
& no one could be more aware than I am
that coquettishness at this age
only renders me ridiculous.
I know it. Nonetheless,
I primp myself before the glass
like an infatuated schoolgirl
fussing over every detail,
practicing whatever subtlety
may please him.
I cannot help myself.
The God of Passion has his will of me
& I am tossed about
between humiliation & desire,
rectitude & lust,
disintegration & renewal,
ruin & salvation.
— Steve Kowit
2 little girls who live next door
to this house are on the trampoline.
the window is closed, so they are soundless.
the sun slants, it is going away:
but now it hits full on the trampoline
and the small figure on each end.
alternately they fly up to the sun,
fly, and rebound, fly, are shot
up, fly, are shot up up.
one comes down in the lotus
position. the other, outdone,
somersaults in air. their hair
flies too. nothing, nothing, noth
ing can keep them down. the air
sucks them up by the hair of their heads.
i know all about what is
happening in this city at just
this moment, every last
grain of dark, i conceive.
but what i see now is
the 2 little girls flung up
flung up, the sun snatch
ing them, their mouths rounded
in gasps. they are there, they fly up.
— Josephine Jacobsen
