Alison Doherty Jan 19, 2018
Roses are red, Violets are…I guess I should leave the love poems to the experts. And there are so many experts to choose from. Since there’s been poetry, there’s been love poems. Whether it’s the love of friendship described between Gilgamesh and Enkidu or the romantic love Homer describes between Penelope and Odysseus or Paris and…himself, poets have been writing about love for a long time. Since the days of epic poetry, poets have used sonnets, free verse, villanelles, slam poetry, short poems, and even instagram poetry to describe love. These love poems I’ve collected vary widely. Some are classic love poems. Some love poems were posted on social media this year. Some rhyme. Others don’t. Most are romantic. A few are sad or angry. All of them are beautiful. All of them are about love. 1. “ANY LIT” BY HARRYETTE MULLEN You are a ukulele beyond my microphone You are a Yukon beyond my Micronesia You are a union beyond my meiosis You are a unicycle beyond my migration You are a universe beyond my mitochondria You are a Eucharist beyond my Miles Davis You are a euphony beyond my myocardiogram You are a unicorn beyond my Minotaur You are a eureka beyond my maitai You are a Yuletide beyond my minesweeper You are a euphemism beyond my myna bird 2. “TO THE GIRL WHO WORKS AT STARBUCKS” BY RUDY FRANCISCO CHECK YOUR SHELF NEWSLETTER Sign up to receive Check Your Shelf, the Librarian's One-Stop Shop For News, Book Lists, And More. By signing up you agree to our terms of use 3. “ATLAS” BY U.A. FANTHORPE There is a kind of love called maintenance Which stores the WD40 and knows when to use it Which checks the insurance, and doesnt forget The milkman; which remembers to plant bulbs; Which answers letters; which knows the way The money goes; which deals with dentists And Road Fund Tax and meeting trains, And postcards to the lonely; which upholds The permanently rickety elaborate Structures of living, which is Atlas. And maintenance is the sensible side of love, Which knows what time and weather are doing To my brickwork; insulates my faulty wiring; Laughs at my dryrotten jokes; remembers My need for gloss and grouting; which keeps My suspect edifice upright in air, As Atlas did the sky. 4. “WHEN A BOY TELLS YOU HE LOVES YOU” BY EDWIN BODNEY 5. “WHEN YOU COME” BY MAYA ANGELOU When you come to me, unbidden, Beckoning me To long-ago rooms, Where memories lie. Offering me, as to a child, an attic, Gatherings of days too few. Baubles of stolen kisses. Trinkets of borrowed loves. Trunks of secret words, I CRY. 6. “SONNET 29” BY WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE When, in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes, I all alone beweep my outcast state, And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries, And look upon myself and curse my fate, Wishing me like to one more rich in hope, Featured like him, like him with friends possessed, Desiring this man’s art and that man’s scope With what I most enjoy contented least; Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising, Haply I think on thee, and then my state, (Like to the lark at break of day arising From sullen earth) sings hymns at heaven’s gate; For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings That then I scorn to change my state with kings. 7. “SONNET 116” BY WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 8. “UNTITLED” BY CHRISTOPHER POINDEXTER 9. “IT IS HERE” BY HAROLD PINTER (for A) What sound was that? I turn away, into the shaking room. 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? It was the breath we took when we first met. Listen. It is here. 10. “VALENTINE” BY JOHN FULLER 11. “ECHO” BY CAROL ANN DUFFY I think I was searching for treasures or stones in the clearest of pools when your face… when your face, like the moon in a well where I might wish… might well wish for the iced fire of your kiss; only on water my lips, where your face… where your face was reflected, lovely, not really there when I turned to look behind at the emptying air… the emptying air. 12. “IT’S ALL I HAVE TO BRING TODAY” BY EMILY DICKINSON It’s all I have to bring today— This, and my heart beside— This, and my heart, and all the fields— And all the meadows wide— Be sure you count—should I forget Some one the sum could tell— This, and my heart, and all the Bees Which in the Clover dwell. 13. “UNTITLED” BY PAVANA 14. “TO THE DESERT” BY BENJAMIN ALIRE SÁENZ I came to you one rainless August night. You taught me how to live without the rain. You are thirst and thirst is all I know. You are sand, wind, sun, and burning sky, The hottest blue. You blow a breeze and brand Your breath into my mouth. You reach—then bend Your force, to break, blow, burn, and make me new. You wrap your name tight around my ribs And keep me warm. I was born for you. Above, below, by you, by you surrounded. I wake to you at dawn. Never break your Knot. Reach, rise, blow, Sálvame, mi dios, Trágame, mi tierra. Salva, traga, Break me, I am bread. I will be the water for your thirst. 15. “A GLIMPSE” BY WALT WHITMAN A glimpse through an interstice caught, Of a crowd of workmen and drivers in a bar-room around the stove late of a winter night, and I unremark’d seated in a corner, Of a youth who loves me and whom I love, silently approaching and seating himself near, that he may hold me by the hand, A long while amid the noises of coming and going, of drinking and oath and smutty jest, There we two, content, happy in being together, speaking little, perhaps not a word. 16. “I WANNA BE YOURS” BY JOHN COOPER CLARKE 17. “I WANTED TO MAKE MYSELF LIKE THE RAVINE” BY HANNAH GAMBLE I wanted to make myself like the ravine so that all good things would flow into me. Because the ravine is lowly, it receives an abundance. This sounds wonderful to everyone who suffers from lacking, but consider, too, that a ravine keeps nothing out: in flows a peach with only one bite taken out of it, but in flows, too, the body of a stiff mouse half cooked by the heat of the stove it was toughening under. I have an easygoing way about me. I’ve been an inviting host — meaning to, not meaning to. Oops — he’s approaching with his tongue already out and moving. Analyze the risks of becoming a ravine. Compare those with the risks of becoming a well with a well-bolted lid. Which I’d prefer depends largely on which kinds of animals were inside me when the lid went on and how likely they’d be to enjoy the water, vs. drown, freeze, or starve. The lesson: close yourself off at exactly the right time. On the day that you wake up under some yellow curtains with a smile on your face, lock the door. Live out your days untroubled like that. 18. “QUEEN ANNE’S LACE” BY WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS Her body is not so white as anemone petals nor so smooth—nor so remote a thing. It is a field of the wild carrot taking thefield by force; the grass does not raise above it. Here is no question of whiteness, white as can be, with a purple mole at the center of each flower. Each flower is a hand’s span of her whiteness. Wherever his hand has lain there is a tiny purple blossom under his touch to which the fibres of her being stem one by one, each to its end, until the whole field is a white desire, empty, a single stem, a cluster, flower by flower, a pious wish to whiteness gone over— or nothing. 19. “WHEN LOVE ARRIVES” BY SARAH KAY & PHIL KAYE 20. “TO YOU” BY KENNETH KOCH I love you as a sheriff searches for a walnut That will solve a murder case unsolved for years Because the murderer left it in the snow beside a window Through which he saw her head, connecting with Her shoulders by a neck, and laid a red Roof in her heart. For this we live a thousand years; For this we love, and we live because we love, we are not Inside a bottle, thank goodness! I love you as a Kid searches for a goat; I am crazier than shirttails In the wind, when you’re near, a wind that blows from The big blue sea, so shiny so deep and so unlike us; I think I am bicycling across an Africa of green and white fields Always, to be near you, even in my heart When I’m awake, which swims, and also I believe that you Are trustworthy as the sidewalk which leads me to The place where I again think of you, a new Harmony of thoughts! I love you as the sunlight leads the prow Of a ship which sails From Hartford to Miami, and I love you Best at dawn, when even before I am awake the sun Receives me in the questions which you always pose. 21. “POLARITIES” BY KENNETH SIESSOR Sometimes she is like sherry, like the sun through a vessel of glass, Like light through an oriel window in a room of yellow wood; Sometimes she is the colour of lions, of sand in the fire of noon, Sometimes as bruised with shadows as the afternoon. Sometimes she moves like rivers, sometimes like trees; Or tranced and fixed like South Pole silences; Sometimes she is beauty, sometimes fury, sometimes neither, Sometimes nothing, drained of meaning, null as water. Sometimes, when she makes me pea-soup or plays me Schumann, I love her one way; sometimes I love her another More disturbing way when she opens her mouth in the dark; Sometimes I like her with camellias, sometimes with a parsley-stalk, Sometimes I like her swimming in a mirror on the wall; Sometimes I don’t like her at all. 22. “UNTITLED” BY AMANDA LOVELACE 23. “WHEN WE ARE OLD AND THESE REJOICING VEINS” BY EDNA ST. VINCENT MILLAY When we are old and these rejoicing veins Are frosty channels to a muted stream, And out of all our burning their remains No feeblest spark to fire us, even in dream, This be our solace: that it was not said When we were young and warm and in our prime, Upon our couch we lay as lie the dead, Sleeping away the unreturning time. O sweet, O heavy-lidded, O my love, When morning strikes her spear upon the land, And we must rise and arm us and reprove The insolent daylight with a steady hand, Be not discountenanced if the knowing know We rose from rapture but an hour ago. 24. “WITCH WIFE” BY EDNA ST. VINCENT MILLAY She is neither pink nor pale, And she never will be all mine; She learned her hands in a fairy-tale, And her mouth on a valentine. She has more hair than she needs; In the sun ’tis a woe to me! And her voice is a string of coloured beads, Or steps leading into the sea. She loves me all that she can, And her ways to my ways resign; But she was not made for any man, And she never will be all mine. 25. “TYPEWRITER SERIES #2091” BY TYLER KNOTT GREGSON 26. “RONDEL OF MERCILESS BEAUTY” BY GEOFFREY CHAUCER Your two great eyes will slay me suddenly; Their beauty shakes me who was once serene; Straight through my heart the wound is quick and keen.Only your word will heal the injury To my hurt heart, while yet the wound is clean— Your two great eyes will slay me suddenly; Their beauty shakes me who was once serene.Upon my word, I tell you faithfully Through life and after death you are my queen; For with my death the whole truth shall be seen. Your two great eyes will slay me suddenly; Their beauty shakes me who was once serene; Straight through my heart the wound is quick and keen. 27. “TO AN ARMY WIFE IN SARDIS” FROM SAPPHO TRANSLATED BY MARY BARNARD To an army wife, in Sardis: Some say a cavalry corps, some infantry, some, again, will maintain that the swift oars of our fleet are the finest sight on dark earth; but I say that whatever one loves, is. This is easily proved: did not Helen—she who had scanned the flower of the world’s manhood— choose as first among men one who laid Troy’s honor in ruin? warped to his will, forgetting love due her own blood, her own child, she wandered far with him. So Anactoria, although you being far away forget us, the dear sound of your footstep and light glancing in your eyes would move me more than glitter of Lydian horse or armored tread of mainland infantry 28. “THE GOOD MORROW” BY JOHN DONNE 29. “A LOVE SONG FOR LUCINDA” BY LANGSTON HUGHES Love Is a ripe plum Growing on a purple tree. Taste it once And the spell of its enchantment Will never let you be. Love Is a bright star Glowing in far Southern skies. Look too hard And its burning flame Will always hurt your eyes. Love Is a high mountain Stark in a windy sky. If you Would never lose your breath Do not climb too high. 30. “TWENTY ONE LOVE POEMS” BY ADRIENNE RICH 31. “I LOVE YOU” BY CARL SANDBERG I love you for what you are, but I love you yet more for what you are going to be. I love you not so much for your realities as for your ideals. I pray for your desires that they may be great, rather than for your satisfactions, which may be so hazardously little. A satisfied flower is one whose petals are about to fall. The most beautiful rose is one hardly more than a bud wherein the pangs and ecstasies of desire are working for a larger and finer growth. Not always shall you be what you are now. You are going forward toward something great. I am on the way with you and therefore I love you. 32. “FOR HIM” BY RUPI KAUR 33. “UNTITLED” BY RUPI KAUR 34. “SONNET XLIII”” BY ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING How do I love thee? Let me count the ways. I love thee to the depth and breadth and height My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight For the ends of being and ideal grace. I love thee to the level of every day’s Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light. I love thee freely, as men strive for right; I love thee purely, as they turn from praise. I love thee with the passion put to use In my old griefs, and with my childhood’s faith. I love thee with a love I seemed to lose With my lost saints. I love thee with the breath, Smiles, tears, of all my life; and, if God choose, I shall but love thee better after death. 35. “FALLING STARS” BY RAINER MARIA RILKE Do you remember still the falling stars that like swift horses through the heavens raced and suddenly leaped across the hurdles of our wishes—do you recall? And we did make so many! For there were countless numbers of stars: each time we looked above we were astounded by the swiftness of their daring play, while in our hearts we felt safe and secure watching these brilliant bodies disintegrate, knowing somehow we had survived their fall. 36. “PHOTOGRAPH” BY ANDREA GIBSON 37. “LITANY” BY BILLY COLLINS 38. “LOVE POEM” BY AUDRE LORDE Speak earth and bless me with what is richest make sky flow honey out of my hips rigis mountains spread over a valley carved out by the mouth of rain. And I knew when I entered her I was high wind in her forests hollow fingers whispering sound honey flowed from the split cup impaled on a lance of tongues on the tips of her breasts on her navel and my breath howling into her entrances through lungs of pain. Greedy as herring-gulls or a child I swing out over the earth over and over again. 39. “DEFEATED BY LOVE” BY RUMI The sky was lit by the splendor of the moon So powerful I fell to the ground Your love has made me sure I am ready to forsake this worldly life and surrender to the magnificence of your Being 40. “HABITATION” BY MARGARET ATWOOD Marriage is not a house, or even a tent it is before that, and colder: the edge of the forest, the edge of the desert the unpainted stairs at the back, where we squat outdoors, eating popcorn where painfully and with wonder at having survived this far we are learning to make fire 41. “DESIRE” BY ALICE WALKER My desire is always the same; wherever Life deposits me: I want to stick my toe & soon my whole body into the water. I want to shake out a fat broom & sweep dried leaves bruised blossoms dead insects & dust. I want to grow something. It seems impossible that desire can sometimes transform into devotion; but this has happened. And that is how I’ve survived: how the hole I carefully tended in the garden of my heart grew a heart to fill it. 42. “MAD GIRL’S LOVE SONG” BY SYLVIA PLATH “I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead; I lift my lids and all is born again. (I think I made you up inside my head.) The stars go waltzing out in blue and red, And arbitrary blackness gallops in: I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead. I dreamed that you bewitched me into bed And sung me moon-struck, kissed me quite insane. (I think I made you up inside my head.) God topples from the sky, hell’s fires fade: Exit seraphim and Satan’s men: I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead. I fancied you’d return the way you said, But I grow old and I forget your name. (I think I made you up inside my head.) I should have loved a thunderbird instead; At least when spring comes they roar back again. I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead. (I think I made you up inside my head.)” 43. “SOMEWHERE I HAVE NEVER TRAVELED” BY E.E. CUMMINGS 44. “LOVE IS A PLACE” BY E.E. CUMMINGS love is a place & through this place of love move (with brightness of peace) all places yes is a world & in this world of yes live (skilfully curled) all worlds 45. “UNTITLED” BY AMAN BATRA https://www.instagram.com/p/BTpRE7QDT-0/?taken-by=amankbatra 46. “YOUR FEET” BY PABLO NERUDA When I cannot look at your face I look at your feet. Your feet of arched bone, your hard little feet. I know that they support you, and that your sweet weight rises upon them. Your waist and your breasts, the doubled purple of your nipples, the sockets of your eyes that have just flown away, your wide fruit mouth, your red tresses, my little tower. But I love your feet only because they walked upon the earth and upon the wind and upon the waters, until they found me. 47. “THE WORLD AS MEDITATION” BY WALLACE STEVENS 48. “BLUEBIRD TYPEWRITER POETRY #7” BY SEAN BATES 49. “MARRIED LOVE” BY KUAN TAO-SHENG, TRANSLATED BY KENNETH REXROTH AND LING CHUNG You and I Have so much love, That it Burns like a fire, In which we bake a lump of clay Molded into a figure of you And a figure of me. Then we take both of them, And break them into pieces, And mix the pieces with water, And mold again a figure of you, And a figure of me. I am in your clay. You are in my clay. In life we share a single quilt. In death we will share one bed. 50. “HOW FALLING IN LOVE IS LIKE OWNING A DOG” BY TAYLOR MALI 51. “LOVE IS A FIRE THAT BURNS UNSEEN” BY LUÍS VAZ DE CAMÕES, TRANSLATED BY RICHARD ZENITH Love is a fire that burns unseen, a wound that aches yet isn’t felt, an always discontent contentment, a pain that rages without hurting, a longing for nothing but to long, a loneliness in the midst of people, a never feeling pleased when pleased, a passion that gains when lost in thought. It’s being enslaved of your own free will; it’s counting your defeat a victory; it’s staying loyal to your killer. But if it’s so self-contradictory, how can Love, when Love chooses, bring human hearts into sympathy? 52. “NEVER GIVE ALL THE HEART” BY W.B. YEATS Never give all the heart, for love Will hardly seem worth thinking of To passionate women if it seem Certain, and they never dream That it fades out from kiss to kiss; For everything that’s lovely is But a brief, dreamy, kind delight. O never give the heart outright, For they, for all smooth lips can say, Have given their hearts up to the play. And who could play it well enough If deaf and dumb and blind with love? He that made this knows all the cost, For he gave all his heart and lost. 53. “HOW TO LOVE YOUR INTROVERT” BY KEVIN YANG 54. “SEDUCTION” BY NIKKI GIOVANNI 55. “CAMOMILE TEA” BY KATHERINE MANSFIELD Outside the sky is light with stars; There’s a hollow roaring from the sea. And, alas! for the little almond flowers, The wind is shaking the almond tree. How little I thought, a year ago, In the horrible cottage upon the Lee That he and I should be sitting so And sipping a cup of camomile tea. Light as feathers the witches fly, The horn of the moon is plain to see; By a firefly under a jonquil flower A goblin toasts a bumble-bee. We might be fifty, we might be five, So snug, so compact, so wise are we! Under the kitchen-table leg My knee is pressing against his knee. Our shutters are shut, the fire is low, The tap is dripping peacefully; The saucepan shadows on the wall Are black and round and plain to see. 56. “WILL YOU STILL LOVE ME?” BY ARIELLE WILBURN 57. “NAMING THE HEARTBEATS” BY AIMEE NEZHUKUMATATHIL 58. “WHEN I SAY THAT LOVING ME IS KIND OF LIKE BEING A CHICAGO BULLS FAN” BY HANIF ABDURRAQIB What are your favorite love poems? I’m basically addicted to love poetry now, so let me know what I missed in the comments. Want even more love (like lots of it)? Check out our list of 100 Must-Read Books With ‘Love’ In The Title.