Collected Love Poems - Brian Patten

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      It is more immediate

      Than any image of my making.

      You say it is not a poem,

      It is a blade of grass and grass

      Is not quite good enough.

      I offer you a blade of grass.

      You are indignant.

      You say it is too easy to offer grass.

      It is absurd.

      Anyone can offer a blade of grass.

      You ask for a poem.

      And so I write you a tragedy about

      How a blade of grass

      Becomes more and more difficult to offer,

      And about how as you grow older

      A blade of grass

      Becomes more difficult to accept.

       What I Need for the Present

      Thanks, but please take back

      the trinket box, the picture

      made from butterfly wings and

      the crystal glass.

      Please take back the books,

      the postcards, the beeswax candles,

      the potted plant, the Hockney print

      and the expensive pen.

      Ungracious of me to say it, but

      so many gifts that are given

      are given in lieu of what

      cannot be given.

      Ungracious to say it, but

      wherever I move in this room

      it’s not these gifts I see, but your absense

      that accumulates on them like dust.

      Forgive me. Your intentions

      were so very kind, but here’s

      your box of fetters back. It’s not

      what I need for the present.

       Through All Your Abstract Reasoning

      Coming back one evening through deserted fields

      when the birds, drowsy with sleep,

      have all but forgotten you,

      you stop, and for one moment jerk alive.

      Something has passed through you

      that alters and enlightens: O

      realization of what has gone and was real.

      A bleak and uncoded message whispers

      down all the nerves:

      ‘You cared for her! For love you cared!’

      Something has passed a finger through

      all your abstract reasoning.

      From love you sheltered outside of love but still

      the human bit leaked in,

      stunned and off-balanced you.

      Unprepared, struck so suddenly by another’s identity,

      how can you hold on to any revelation?

      You have moved too carefully through your life.

      Always the light within you is hooded by

      your own protecting fingers!

       Song for Last Year’s Wife

      Alice, this is my first winter of waking without you, of knowing that you, dressed in familiar clothes, are elsewhere, perhaps not even conscious of our anniversary. Have you noticed? The earth’s still as hard, the same empty gardens exist? It is as if nothing special had changed. I wake with another mouth feeding from me, but still feel as if love had not the right to walk out of me. A year now. So what? you say. I send out my spies to find who you are living with, what you are doing. They return, smile and tell me your body’s as firm, you are as alive, as warm and inviting as when they knew you first.

      Perhaps it is the winter, its isolation from other seasons, that sends me your ghost to witness when I wake. Somebody came here today, asked how you were keeping, what you were doing. I imagine you, waking in another city, enclosed by this same hour. So ordinary a thing as loss comes now and touches me.

       On Time for Once

      I was sitting thinking of our future

      and of how friendship had overcome

      so many nights bloated with pain;

      I was sitting in a room that looked on to a garden

      and a stillness filled me,

      bitterness drifted from me.

      I was as near paradise as I am likely to get again.

      I was sitting thinking of the chaos

      we had caused in one another

      and was amazed we had survived it.

      I was thinking of our future

      and of what we would do together,

      and where we would go and how,

      when night came

      burying me bit by bit,

      and you entered the room

      trembling and solemn-faced,

      on time for once.

       A Small Dragon

      I’ve found a small dragon in the woodshed.

      Think it must have come from deep inside a forest

      because it’s damp and green and leaves

      are still reflecting in its eyes.

      I fed it on many things, tried grass,

      the roots of stars, hazel-nut and dandelion,

      but it stared up at me as if to say, I need

      food you can’t provide.

      It made a nest among the coal,

      not unlike a bird’s but larger.

      It is out of place here

      and is quite silent.

      If you believed in it I would come

      hurrying to your house to let you share my wonder,

      but I want instead to see

      if you yourself will pass this way.

       Doubt Shall Not Make an End of You

      Doubt shall not make an end of you

      Nor

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