Some of my
Favorite Poems
I need to know I am loved
Far beyond coffee in the morning
and a favorite meal
I need eyes looking at me
as if there is no other left on earth
Words to tell me why I have been chosen
from all the rest
I need caresses, love notes,
an arm locked in mine
Fingers on my face,
hands brushing back my hair
I am strong only in my capacity to endure pain
In my determination not to be overwhelmed
by shadows that appear without permission
and endure without reason
I am strong in confronting the fears
that match each decade of my life
In not looking back with guilt and regrets
In my persistant reassurance
that all my dreams will be realized
I am strong when it is essential to someone that I live
Unthinkable that I die,
unbearable that I disappear
A love that goes all out
without reservation or calculation
A love of total trust and total loyalty
A love that can last until I breathe my last breath
and gaze my last glance--at you
When I am finally glad that I have lived
Because I know how much I have been loved.
.............James Kavanaugh


I stood long where you left me
Night was all around me
and the stars pecked at it
with fierce acetylene silver beaks
A thin little moon scarred the sky
Then I walked..
my arm around the emptiness
of you beside me
And because you were total in my eyes
like a sudden blindness
I saw only you
You were my purpose and my way,
you were the bright articulate lights
and the dark lonely streets
you were each door and window..
and every passing face.
And because you were indelible
in my blood and brain
in infinite copies - without drink or delirium
my mind conceived you...
my senses registered you dimensionally
And it was beautiful..
O then it was beautiful
in a high, beautiful city..
in a tall lighted beautiful world -
the moon was young
and the stars winked like fireflies in tall grass:
night was a jewelled tent around us
and were were wonderfully alone
and sleepy as we always are just after love
..................Walter Benton

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
Write, for example "The night is starry
and the stars are blue
and siver in the distance
The night wind revolves in the sky and sings
Tonight I write the saddest lines
I loved her,
and sometimes she loved me too
Through nights like this
one I held her in my arms
I kissed her again and again
under the endless sky
She loved me, sometimes I loved her too
How could one not have loved
her great still eyes
Tonight I can write the saddest lines
To think that I do no have her
To feel that I have lost her
To hear the immense night,
still more immense without her
And the verse falls to the soul
like dew to the pasture
What does it matter
that my love could not keep her
The night is starry and she is not with me
This is all.
In the distance someone is singing.
In the distance.
My soul is not satisfied that it has lost her
My sight tries to find her
as though to bring her closer
My heart looks for her,
and she is not with me
The same night, whitening the same trees
We, of that time, are no longer the same
I no longer love her, that's certain,
but how I loved her
My voice tried to find
the wind to touch her hearing
Another's. She will be another's.
As she was before my kisses
Her voice, her bright body.
Her infinite eyes.
I no longer love her, that's certain,
but maybe I love her
Love is so short, forgetting is so long
Because through nights like this one
I held her in my arms
my soul is not satisfied
that is has lost her
Though this be the last pain
she makes me suffer
and these the last verses
that I write for her.
................Pablo Neruda

I don't love you
as if you were the salt-rose, topaz
or arrow of carnations
that propagate fire:
I love you as
certain dark things are loved,
secretly, between the shadow and the soul.
I love you
as the plant that doesn't bloom and carries
hidden within itself
the light of those flowers,
and thanks to your love, darkly in my body
lives the dense fragrance
that rises from the earth.
I love you without knowing how,
or when, or from where,
I love you simply,
without problems or pride:
I love you this way
because I don't know
any other way of loving
but this, in which there is no I or you,
so intimate
that your hand upon my chest is my hand
so intimate that when I fall asleep
it is your eyes that close.
..............Pablo Neruda

Come to me in the night
we shall sleep closely together
I am so tired,
lonely from being awake
A strange bird
already sang in the dark early morning
As my dream
still wrestled with itself and me
Flowers open before all the springs
Taking on the color of your eyes
Come to me in the night
on seven starred shoes
And love shall be wrapped up
until late in my tent
Moons rise from the dusty trunk of heaven
We shall make love quietly
like two rare animals
In the high reeds behind this world


WHEN YOU ARE OLD

When you are old and gray
and full of sleep,
And nodding by the fire,
take down this book,
And slowly read,
and dream of the soft look,
Your eyes had once,
and of their shadows deep;

How many loved
your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty
with love false or true,
But one man loved
the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows
of your changing face;

And bending down
beside the glowing bars,
Murmur, a little sadly,
how love fled
And paced among the mountains overhead
And hid his face
among a crowd of stars.

................William Butler Yeats