AFTER READING OLD UNREQUITED LOVE POEMS - Cristin O'Keefe Aptowicz

If I didn’t think it’d make me appear crazy still,

I’d apologize to you for having been so crazy then.

Reading the poems I had written about “us”

resurrected all that nervous heat, reminded me

of the insistent stutter of my longing,

how I could never just lay it out there for you.

The answer, clearly, would have been

no, thank you. But perhaps that tough line

would have been enough to salvage

all that was good and woolly about us:

your laugh, the golden ring I’d always

stretch a story for; the pair of mittens

we’d split in the cold so we’d each have

a hand to gesture with; how even now,

the paths we took are filled with starry wonder

and all that bright limitless air. I’m sorry

I could never see myself out

of the twitching fever of my heartache,

that I traded everything we had for

something that never ended up being.

But if I could take anything back, it wouldn’t be

the glittering hope I stuck in the amber of your eyes,

or the sweet eager of our conversations.

No, it would be that last stony path

to nothing, when we both gave up without

telling the other. How silence arrived

like a returned valentine on that morning

we finally taught our phones not to ring.

I Am Afraid - Nizar Kabbani (translated by B.K. Frangieh & C.R. Brown)

I am afraid

To express my love to you

Wine loses its fragrance

When poured into a goblet.

TRUE LOVE - Wisława Szymborska (Translation in Unknown Edition)

True love. Is it normal,
is it serious, is it practical?
What does the world get from two people
who exist in a world of their own?

 

Placed on the same pedestal for no good reason,
drawn randomly from millions, but convinced
it had to happen this way— in reward for what?

    For nothing.

The light descends from nowhere.
Why on these two and not on others?
Doesn’t this outrage justice? Yes it does.
Doesn’t it disrupt our painstakingly erected principles,
and cast the moral from the peak? Yes on both accounts.

 

Look at the happy couple.
Couldn’t they at least try to hide it,
fake a little depression for their friends’ sake?
Listen to them laughing— it’s an insult.
The language they use— deceptively clear.
And their little celebrations, rituals,
the elaborate mutual routines—
it’s obviously a plot behind the human race’s back!

 

It’s hard even to guess how far things might go
if people start to follow their example.
What could religion and poetry count on?
What would be remembered? What renounced?
Who’d want to stay within bounds?

 

True love. Is it really necessary?
Tact and common sense tell us to pass over it in silence,
like a scandal in Life’s highest circles.
Perfectly good children are born without its help.
It couldn’t populate the planet in a million years,
it comes along so rarely.

 

Let the people who never find true love
keep saying that there’s no such thing.

 

Their faith will make it easier for them to live and die.

TO A STRANGER. - Walt Whitman

PASSING stranger! you do not know how longingly I

look upon you,
You must be he I was seeking, or she I was seeking,

(it comes to me, as of a dream,)
I have somewhere surely lived a life of joy with you,
All is recall’d as we flit by each other, fluid, affection-

ate, chaste, matured,
You grew up with me, were a boy with me or a girl

with me,
I ate with you, and slept with you— your body has

become not yours only, nor left my body mine

only,
You give me the pleasure of your eyes, face, flesh, as

we pass— you take of my beard, breast, hands,

in return,
I am not to speak to you—I am to think of you when

I sit alone, or wake at night alone,
I am to wait— I do not doubt I am to meet you again,
I am to see to it that I do not lose you.

SURVIVORMAN - Sherman Alexie

Here’s a fact: Some people want to live more

Than others do. Some can withstand any horror

 

While others will easily surrender

To thirst, hunger, and extremes of weather.

 

In Utah, one man carried another

Man on his back like a conjoined brother

 

And crossed twenty-five miles of desert

To safety. Can you imagine the hurt?

 

Do you think you could be that good and strong?

Yes, yes, you think, but you’re probably wrong.

FOR SOME A MOUNTAIN - Stephen Dunn

For some a mountain, say an Everest or a Kilimanjaro,

exists to be conquered, the kind of obvious big thing

my father, that valley dweller, would casually diminish.

What’s wrong with life in the lowlands, he’d say,

why not just look up, enjoy imagining

how you’d feel at the top? And interesting people,

if you need them, are everywhere. They can be found

in a glade or a clearing, even in a suburb.

 

My father is dead; he only has the words I remember

and choose to give him.

 

If I were to say my need to define myself

involves breathing air not many have taken in,

and the excitement of a little danger, I’d hear him say

Do some good work, mow the lawn, carry wood

from the woodpile. Don’t confuse the dangerous

with the heroic.

 

But the truth is I’d like to be a mountainizer,

someone who earns the pleasure of his reputation.

When it comes to women, I desire them married

to their own sense of accomplishment, each of us

going our own way, coming together when we can.

 

Not enough, he says. If they lack generosity

they take back what they give. If they have it

they remind you, ever so gently, that a man

who climbs mountains leaves behind his beloved.

 

It is impossible to win arguments with the dead.

 

Everywhere you go there’s danger of being a no one,

my father insists. Is he changing his position,

or is that willful me changing it for my sake?

The grave was always his destination, the modesty

of his ambition obscured now by lichen and moss.

Comes the mountain before the reputation, I say.

Comes the unsure footing, the likely fall, he says.