If Truth in Hearts – A.E. Housman

If truth in hearts that perish
Could move the powers on high,
I think the love I bear you
Should make you not to die.

Sure, sure, if steadfast meaning,
If single thought could save,
The world might end to-morrow,
You should not see the grave.

This long and sure-set liking,
This boundless will to please,
—Oh, you should live for ever,
If there were help in these.

But now, since all is idle,
To this lost heart be kind,
Ere to a town you journey
Where friends are ill to find.

The Mistake – Alicia E. Stallings

The mistake was light and easy in my hand,
A seed meant to be borne upon the wind.
I did not have to bury it or throw,
Just open up my hand and let it go.

The mistake was dry and small and without weight,
A breeze quickly snatched it from my sight,
And even had I wanted to prevent,
Nobody could tell me where it went.

I did not think on the mistake again,
Until the spring came, soft, and full of rain,
And in the yard such dandelions grew
That bloomed and closed, and opened up, and blew.

Unsaid – Dana Gioia

So much of what we live goes on inside—

The diaries of grief, the tongue-tied aches

Of unacknowledged love are no less real

For having passed unsaid. What we conceal

Is always more than what we dare confide.

Think of the letters that we write our dead.

In My Still Woods – Rhina P. Espaillat

In my still woods a flute I found
and laid it to my lips to play;
but my five senses choked the sound
and reason led the tune astray.

Then, for its own delight, the flute
piped all creation’s mournful wail:
piped the Garden and the Fruit,
piped Helen and the Holy Grail.

Love Knocks At The Door – John Hall Wheelock

In the pain, in the loneliness of love,
To the heart of my sweet I fled.
I knocked at the door of her living heart,
“Let in—let in—” I said.

“What seek you here?” the voices cried,
“You seeker among the dead”—
“Herself I seek, herself I seek,
Let in—let in!” I said.

They opened the door of her living heart,
But the core thereof was dead.
They opened the core of her living heart—
A worm at the core there fed.

“Where is my sweet, where is my sweet?”
“She is gone away, she is fled.
Long years ago she fled away,
She will never return,” they said.

I am Not Alone – Gabriela Mistral

The night, it is deserted
from the mountains to the sea.
But I, the one who rocks you,
I am not alone!

The sky, it is deserted
for the moon falls to the sea.
But I, the one who holds you,
I am not alone !

The world, it is deserted.
All flesh is sad you see.
But I, the one who hugs you,
I am not alone!

Lines for an Elderly Ex-Marine, in Remission – Larry Rubin

Radioactive now, you walk beside me
To the beach, every step a fragile
Radiance, as if the birds had settled
In the sun that fills your skin. To touch
You now I need an insulated hand
To turn aside the cobalt arrows darting
Toward my brain. Melting sand, your soles
Shimmer with the light of elements
Missing from my periodic charts.

You wade in oceans where the waves caress
The quivering cancer afloat in light, and I
Take your naked hand in mine, and feel
The rays like bayonets, seagulls piercing
My flesh, with molecules of massive cure.

Ebb Tide – Sara Teasdale

When the long day goes by
And I do not see your face,
The old wild, restless sorrow
Steals from its hiding place.

My day is barren and broken,
Bereft of light and song,
A sea beach bleak and windy
That moans the whole day long.

To the empty beach at ebb tide,
Bare with its rocks and scars,
Come back like the sea with singing,
And light of a million stars.

You Charm’d Me Not With That Fair Face – John Dryden

You charm’d me not with that fair face
Though it was all divine:
To be another’s is the grace,
That makes me wish you mine.

The Gods and Fortune take their part
Who like young monarchs fight;
And boldly dare invade that heart
Which is another’s right.

First mad with hope we undertake
To pull up every bar;
But once possess’d, we faintly make
A dull defensive war.

Now every friend is turn’d a foe
In hope to get our store:
And passion makes us cowards grow,
Which made us brave before.

Between Going And Coming – Octavio Paz

Between going and staying
the day wavers,
in love with its own transparency.
The circular afternoon is now a bay
where the world in stillness rocks.

All is visible and all elusive,
all is near and can’t be touched.

Paper, book, pencil, glass,
rest in the shade of their names.

Time throbbing in my temples repeats
the same unchanging syllable of blood.

The light turns the indifferent wall
into a ghostly theater of reflections.

I find myself in the middle of an eye,
watching myself in its blank stare.

The moment scatters. Motionless,
I stay and go: I am a pause.