Poetry Day - The Love Poem

I thought I would bring back the poetry in 2013, with a poem of poems. If you know a few of the classic love poems, you will recognise some phrases in this one.

Picture of the Pride and Prejudice Cozy Classics.

The Love Poem

Till love exhausts itself, longs

for the sleep of words ⎯

                                    my mistress' eyes

to lie on a white sheet, at rest

in the language ⎯

            let me count the ways ⎯

or shrink to a phrase like an epitaph ⎯

                                                         come live

with me ⎯

or fall from its own high cloud as syllables

in a pool of verse ⎯

                                one hour with thee.

Till love gives in and speaks

in the whisper of art ⎯

                                    dear heart,

how like you this? ⎯

love's lips pursed to quotation marks

kissing a line ⎯

                         look in thy heart

and write ⎯

love's light fading, darkening,

black as ink on a page ⎯

                                     there is a garden

in her face.

Till love is all in the mind ⎯

                                           O my America

my new-found land ⎯

or all in the pen

in the writer's hand ⎯

                                 behold, thou art fair ⎯

not there, except in a poem,

known by heart like a prayer,

both near and far,

near and far ⎯

                       the desire of the moth

for the star.

Carol Ann Duffy