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I might have raised your hand to the sky to give you the ring surrounding the moon or looked to twin the rings of your eyes with mine or added a ring to the rings of a tree by forming a handheld circle with you, thee, or walked with you where a ring of church-bells, looped the fields, or kissed a lipstick ring on your cheek, a pressed flower, or met with you in the ring of an hour, and another hour.
I might have opened your palm to the weather, turned, turned, till your fingers were ringed in rain or held you close, they were playing our song, in the ring of a slow dance or carved our names in the rough ring of a heart or heard the ring of an owl's hoot as we headed home in the dark or the ring, first thing, of chorussing birds waking the house or given the ring of a boat, rowing the lake, or the ring of swans, monogamous, two, or the watery rings made by the fish as they leaped and splashed or the ring of the sun's reflection there.
I might have tied a blade of grass, a green ring for your finger, or told you the ring of a sonnet by heart or brought you a lichen ring, found on a warm wall, or given a ring of ice in winter or in the snow sung with you the five gold rings of a carol or stolen a ring of your hair or whispered the word in your ear that brought us here, where nothing and no one is wrong, and therefore I give you this ring.
A signed limited edition of "Rings" by the artist Stephen Raw is available from info stephenraw. River, be their teacher, that together they may turn their future highs and lows into one hopeful flow. Mountain, be their milestone, that hand in hand they rise above familiarity's worn tracks into horizons of their own Two separate footpaths dreaming of a common peak.
Birdsong, be their mantra, that down the frail aisles of their days, their twilight hearts twitter morning and their dreams prove branch enough. From this day forwards we'll push the boat out, let it body us, take us to a place as much mine as yours, past the double oxbow where the blossoms fall, and together we'll learn the ropes: In a covenant of above and below, may we be confluent with each changing tide; our partnership both the anchor and the flow for all the days of our lives.
You made sound the ruin, dreamed space and light, a room of oak and glass, let in the sky, the hills, and all of Ceredigion, Cariad 5 , in a glance. I cannot promise never to be angry; I cannot promise always to be kind. You know what you are taking on, my darling — It's only at the start that love is blind. And yet I'm still the one you want to be with And you're the one for me — of that I'm sure.
You are my closest friend, my favourite person, The lover and the home I've waited for. I cannot promise that I will deserve you From this day on. I hope to pass that test. I love you and I want to make you happy. I promise I will do my very best. I take your body where love takes place I take your mouth where my life takes shape I take your breath which makes my space I take you as you are, for good I take you with open arms, to have I take you to have and to hold but not to hold too hard I take you for farther for closer for sooner for later till till death tries to get us and we laugh and we stall and we tell it to call us some other fine day because we are busy today taking our tea with buttered hope and I take thee I take thee.
The tale survives of two men Who fell in love "at first sight"; Who shared everything In unbounded intimacy Including the pillow And the red embroidered coverlet Which had been in the family For generations. Whether they had bad days, Domestic arguments Or inappropriate dreams We do not know — No doubt such burrs Were worked away by time Polishing its story; How they found each other And lived together all their lives, And died on the same day, And were buried by the grieving town On Mount Luofo's peak With their pillow and red coverlet; And a pine tree grew Out of the grave Like the character for longevity And true love.
Such is the legend. I like to think of them, Pan Zhang and Wang Zhangxian, In the crowd of well-wishers Waiting in the April sunshine, Yes, under white cherry trees In full bloom, for us Here and now, on this day Early in the century, In our very best suits and ties, With our new rings Growing warm on our fingers Like keepsakes of light Saved from the stars. I will be faithful to you, I do vow but not until the seas have all run dry etcetera: To be your perfect wife, I could not swear; I'll love, yes; honour maybe ; won't obey, but will co-operate if you will care as much as you are seeming to today.
I'll do my best to be your better half, but I don't have the patience of a saint; not with you, at you I may sometimes laugh, and snap too, though I'll try to learn restraint. Let's love, listen, take time when time is all we have. Let's be unafraid to be kind, learn to disregard the bad if the good outweighs it daily. Let's make a gift of silence, the day's hushing into dark, and when we hold each other let's always be astonished we are where we want to be. Let's hope to age together, but if we can't, let's promise now to remember how we shone when we were at our best, when we were most ourselves.
I've walked the valley path in sticky rain to see the person I met in a caff by luck lost to the world out on a cloddy track full of ache, done-for-almost, in foul pain —. Enough, I love you. So I claim the right to touch, — Easily accepted. Here we are on the old bridge across the river , your letter said Meet me , it seemed unlikely. Will you join me in a new song's modal drift? I called you dear and you let it pass, it hurts. So, are we pledged? You haven't heard my dear nor called me it.
I won't name it , no, but tease your shy drift. Trembling, you mean, to give you yes , yes. The life I spent so lavishly Before we met Seems one long night, in memory, Of sea-fever and sea-fret —. Which led me here, to you, to this: Our haven below decks. You anchor me, I you, with a kiss Though the coast is strewn with wrecks. Whether the weather be dreich or fair, my luve, if guid times greet us, or we hae tae face the wurst, ahint and afore whit will happen tae us: I'll carry ma lantern and daur defend ye agin ony enemy; and whilst there is breath in me, I'll blaw it intae ye.
Fir ye are ma true luve, the bonnie face I see afore me; nichts I fall intae slumber, it's ye I see swimmingly — all yer guidness and blytheness, yer passion. You'll be mine, noo, an' till the end o' time, ma bonnie lassie, I'll tak the full guid o' ye' and gie it back, and gie it back tae ye: Though the Barbary lion is extinct and beside it love is a feeble thing, I thee wed. Though the cry violet has cried its last and the first flush of youth has had its fling, I thee wed. Though the skylark neither soars nor sings of a joy whose race is just beginning, I thee wed.
Though the baobab's shade has grown so thin and the elephant thirsts, remembering, I thee wed. In the name of beast, flower and bird, tree of life and song of love, with this ring, I thee wed. We live in love, so finally are come today beyond the gladrags and the sweet bouquet beyond cake or ring or all this fuss to this, the simplest and the truest thing for us. Is Anne Boleyn the woman in the loose gown, who catches the poet in her arms "long and small"? Thomas Wyatt was imprisoned in the Tower for alleged adultery with her, and it is thought that from his window he witnessed her execution.
The poem is written in rhyme royal, which may be a clue in itself …. They flee from me that sometime did me seek With naked foot, stalking in my chamber. I have seen them gentle, tame, and meek, That now are wild and do not remember That sometime they put themself in danger To take bread at my hand; and now they range, Busily seeking with a continual change. Thanked be fortune it hath been otherwise Twenty times better; but once in special, In thin array after a pleasant guise, When her loose gown from her shoulders did fall, And she me caught in her arms long and small; Therewithall sweetly did me kiss And softly said, "Dear heart, how like you this?
It was no dream: I lay broad waking. But all is turned thorough my gentleness Into a strange fashion of forsaking; And I have leave to go of her goodness, And she also, to use newfangleness. But since that I so kindly am served I would fain know what she hath deserved. When I was eight, I was romantically in love with Jean, my beautiful young nanny. Let me count the ways" was my favourite. I used to croon it to myself in her honour.
Much later, Harold's love poems became the delight of my life — best of all "It is Here" — and similarly provide comfort now he is no longer around to recite them to me. What was that sound that came in on the dark? What is this maze of light it leaves us in? What is this stance we take, To turn away and then turn back? What did we hear? William Wordsworth once wrote that he liked the sonnet because he was happy with the formal limits it imposed. The great thing about this Thomas Wyatt sonnet, on the other hand, is the way the surge of desire seems to push against the form that "bounds" it, even as it obeys the requirements — 14 lines, octave and sestet, proper Petrarchan rhyme scheme.
It is a great love poem because of its rhythmic energy, its syntactical drive, the way the bitter truths of denial and exclusion are transformed — transformed by creative stamina into a work that is lifted above bitterness by the artist's joy in finding the right trope for his predicament. In a way, the final line retells the whole story: Whoso list to hunt, I know where is an hind, But as for me, alas, I may no more; The vain travail hath wearied me so sore, I am of them that furthest come behind.
Yet may I by no means my wearied mind Draw from the deer, but as she fleeth afore Fainting I follow; I leave off therefore, Since in a net I seek to hold the wind. Who list her hunt, I put him out of doubt, As well as I, may spend his time in vain. And graven with diamonds in letters plain, There is written her fair neck round about, " Noli me tangere , for Caesar's I am, And wild for to hold though I seem tame. Choosing a favourite love poem is a bit tricky — like choosing a favourite toe or finger, if you had hundreds of toes and fingers.
And what's a love poem? I'll go with "Animals", and it doesn't need me to explain it.
I'd just add that even though the poem's a celebration, framing it in the past tense means it's also a great elegy, as great love poems often are. Have you forgotten what we were like then when we were still first rate and the day came fat with an apple in its mouth. I wouldn't want to be faster or greener than now if you were with me O you were the best of all my days.
Anyone who has lain hundreds or thousands of miles from home, listening to strangers' rain falling on a stranger's roof, will respond to the vehement longing in this old, mysterious fragment. It is difficult to believe your lover is alive under the same sky, and the more clearly you can see their room, their bed, the more you feel the piercing pain of separation. The writer sounds cold, alone and perhaps in danger; the reunion is not certain. All the complexity of love is in these lines: Western wind, when wilt thou blow, The small rain down can rain.
Christ, if my love were in my arms, And I in my bed again. Love poems may be addressed to someone in particular but the "you" invariably remains unidentified or is represented only by a body part or item of dress — a sleeping head, a naked foot, an air-blue gown. Thom Gunn 's "Touch" is an extreme example of this. This feeling of anonymity is important: But the poem is also intimate and domestic: Gunn was gay but his lover's gender isn't specified, since the theme is the inclusiveness of touch: The syllabic form enacts this dissolution or slippage, as the words seep gently from line to line, without the hardness of end stops.
The word "love" isn't used; the words "dark" and "darkness" recur three times. But the poem exudes warmth, familiarity and how it feels to lie naked with a fellow creature, whoever he or she may be. You are already asleep. I lower myself in next to you, my skin slightly numb with the restraint of habits, the patina of self, the black frost of outsideness, so that even unclothed it is a resilient chilly hardness, a superficially malleable, dead rubbery texture.
You are a mound of bedclothes, where the cat in sleep braces its paws against your calf through the blankets, and kneads each paw in turn. Meanwhile and slowly I feel a is it my own warmth surfacing or the ferment of your whole body that in darkness beneath the cover is stealing bit by bit to break down that chill. You turn and hold me tightly, do you know who I am or am I your mother or the nearest human being to hold on to in a dreamed pogrom.
What I, now loosened, sink into is an old big place, it is there already, for you are already there, and the cat got there before you, yet it is hard to locate. What is more, the place is not found but seeps from our touch in continuous creation, dark enclosing cocoon round ourselves alone, dark wide realm where we walk with everyone. Not a particularly obscure or original choice, I know. The poem has become a favourite at weddings, though in some ways it's a strange choice. It's not just the snorting and weaning, the schoolboy-pleasing raunch of "suck'd on country pleasures" or the fact that the whole poem is a sort of bedroom scene.
There's also that raffish wink at the end of the first stanza. But in the last two stanzas, Donne changes tone. When I first came across this poem, my preference was for the poetry of unrequited yearning; the please-go-out-with-me school. Perhaps not so out of place at a wedding after all. I wonder, by my troth, what thou and I Did, till we loved? Were we not weaned till then But sucked on country pleasures, childishly? Or snorted we in the seven sleepers' den?
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 every where. 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 mixed equally;. A serenade, an interestingly broken sonnet, a bravura musical performance, perfect marriage of sound and sensuality; a passionate seduction and one of the loveliest lyrics in the language.
The core erotic image is incorporation: The craft mirrors the incorporation message: The sonnet feels rhymed but it's not: Tennyson is always innovative and the only rhyme repeated five times is "me". But each chunk of thought ends with the lover's insistence look at me , and by the end the beloved, too is incorporated in that me. It is a brilliant love poem but totally — and justifiedly — also in love with its own music. Now sleeps the crimson petal, now the white; Nor waves the cypress in the palace walk; Nor winks the gold fin in the porphyry font: The fire-fly wakens; waken thou with me.
An explorer of the colonial frontier, but not contained within the colonized images of Indigenous women, the persona in "Coyote Columbus Cafe" is offered to us as another scavenger author figure, a "Coyotrix" who contrasts with the c-word Columbus in that she dominates not through appropriation and colonization, but through unsettling tricks of wit and wordplay, unpredictable in her shifting approaches and sudden ambushes Coyote One of the ways Annharte sneaks up on the reader is by recontextual-izing the languages of social control — of government, social work, therapy, self-help — which start popping in and out of the colonial story of Columbus in the hands of the Coyotrix: Columbus did lack cultural awareness equity affirmative action political correctness Coyote 14 As Annharte has said, in "Borrowing Enemy Language," While standard English is spoken in Native homes and workplaces, foreign spiel like bureacratese is also heard around the kitchen table and to communicate with family matters.
Even the most personal thoughts or intimate experiences may be articulated in the strange lingo of cultural outsiders.
Some conversations are laced with words borrowed from A. The Coyotrix administers a "random coyote IQ test": This apparently scrambled list of choices pasted together in what appears to be a random combination plays with the tight codes of official forms and tests.
Patricia Waugh, in a discussion of "play with permutation and combination" in metafiction, points out that "the element of chance in combination may throw up a whole new possibility which rational exploration may not have discovered" 43, The lines further unsettle possible colonized or colonizing readers by undermining the supposed logic of official authority through laughter, mocking, and mimicking the confusion generated by colonialism enforcing its own contradictory rules.
Lally asked me what I was alluding to with the question " what is paler than stranger? Well, it is very strange and pales with the passing of time! I have always been fascinated by how the exact colour of skin does not indicate cultural knowledge.
You will understand the “whys” in time, and until then, be at peace and let go— forgive, just like I do.” When Iawoke I was happy, shocked, and www.farmersmarketmusic.coms a. Over the years since Tim's death and my journey of forgiveness began, I'm writing this on “Good Friday”–the day we remember Christ's This “vision” wasn't expected or sought after but it was confirmed by my Once enemies–of God and of each other–now celebrating together at the table of our Lord!.
I guess our memories are getting bleached out by the implanting of colonized images of ourselves. We are now taught Native Studies, which has been developed by white experts. Sure, the ndn was an informant. Much literature found in the Native Canadian section of a bookstore was written with the help of informants. We did not author our own texts, apparently. Our own writings and viewpoints were not being published. Also, many books were published that had appropriated voices or made bogus claims of identity or expertise.
Maybe what I am protesting too much is that ndn writers are still often taken to be informants.
They have to inform on others and not just express! I agree that representations of Indians are "simulations" Vizenor 1 based on the absence of a native voice. GV or the Viz, as I call him, prefers to have that term indians rendered in italics. I prefer to use the spelling "ndns. Descriptions of Indigenous peoples fostered by social sciences and other academic writings have little or no connection to the portrayal of real and living people. So if I asked myself the rhetorical question "what is paler than stranger? I have had to salvage and piece together sometimes opposing or contradictory ideas to meld into a cohesive personal identity.
I have used the Coyotrix persona image as a transformer of our internalized colonized mentality. The inner Coyotrix teases or tweaks meaning out of the verbiage that surrounds us. It would seem that the coyotrix is mixing it up or making it strange again. I think it is also a way of finding constituency and community with the use of words in a poem.
I love the joking and even at times absolute ridicule of ideas and concepts held to be especially sacred or unquestionable. In "Coyote Columbus Cafe," Annharte moves the concept of discovery from its place in colonial history as a European North American originary event into an ongoing process of exploitation — it is both "a hard act to follow" and one that continues through present day, through such processes as "the catholic Rambo trend" The wannabe also needs to watch out for "fakey" elders, who Annharte suggests, are on the "same team" or "sam tim," in the mock dialect of the elder, bringing to my mind the "tim bits" of Tim Horton as a symbol of ersatz culture: You me sam tim.
Sch-oo — nash, my bah.