request; Jack Gilbert, Failing and Flying

[melomane.livejournal.com]

Hello,

I'm looking for poems on love lost and/or lessons learned, and would love to get some recommendations. I know it's a bit of a broad, well-covered topic, but I'm hoping to discover some new favorites.

In return, a poem on the topic which means a lot to me:



Everyone forgets that Icarus also flew.
It's the same when love comes to an end,
or the marriage fails and people say
they knew it was a mistake, that everybody
said it would never work. That she was
old enough to know better. But anything
worth doing is worth doing badly.
Like being there by that summer ocean
on the other side of the island while
love was fading out of her, the stars
burning so extravagantly those nights that
anyone could tell you they would never last.
Every morning she was asleep in my bed
like a visitation, the gentleness in her
like antelope standing in the dawn mist.
Each afternoon I watched her coming back
through the hot stony field after swimming,
the sea light behind her and the huge sky
on the other side of that. Listened to her
while we ate lunch. How can they say
the marriage failed? Like the people who
came back from Provence (when it was Provence)
and said it was pretty but the food was greasy.
I believe Icarus was not failing as he fell,
but just coming to the end of his triumph.

- Jack Gilbert,
Failing and Flying


Thank you in advance!

Waterfall

[puddleshark.livejournal.com]

I do not ask for youth, nor for delay
in the rising of time's irreversible river
that takes the jewelled arc of the waterfall
in which I glimpse, minute by glinting minute,
all that I have and all I am always losing
as sunlight lights each drop fast, fast falling.

I do not dream that you, young again,
might come to me darkly in love's green darkness
where the dust of the bracken spices the air
moss, crushed, gives out an astringent sweetness
and water holds our reflections
motionless, as if for ever.

It is enough now to come into a room
and find the kindness we have for each other
- calling it love - in eyes that are shrewd
but trustful still, face chastened by years
of careful judgement; to sit in the afternoons
in mild conversation, without nostalgia.

But when you leave me, with your jauntiness
sinewed by resolution more than strength
- suddenly then I love you with a quick
intensity, remembering that water,
however luminous and grand, falls fast
and only once to the dark pool below.

Lauris Dorothy Edmond

The Female of the Species by Rudyard Kipling

[winter156.livejournal.com]

( The Female of the Species )

Ends, by Robert Frost

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

Ends

Loud talk in the overlighted house
That made us stumble past.
Oh, there had once been night the first,
But this was night the last.

Of all the things he might have said,
Sincere or insincere,
He never said she wasn't young,
And hadn't been his dear.

Oh, some as soon would throw it all
As throw a part away.
And some will say all sorts of things,
But some mean what they say.

~by Robert Frost

Lines of poetry with ETERNITY or INFINITY in them

[mm511.livejournal.com]

Hi, folks! A request: I need lines of poetry with the words 'eternity' or 'infinity' in them. I don't care who wrote the poem, when they wrote it, why they wrote it, what the poem means, etc. I just need poetic phrases with either of those words in them.

(The reason: I title my creative fiction after lines of poetry, and I have a series called the ETERNITY saga. There are, so far, two stories in it: ETERNITY IN AN HOUR (from a Blake poem) and A WINK OF ETERNITY (from a Crane poem). I need more!)

In celebration of the idea, I give you the Crane poem. I was going to give you both, but everybody knows the Blake line about eternity in an hour and infinity in the palm of your hand. Enjoy, and thanks for your help!

Also, crossposted this a few places, so sorry if you see it twice!

***

VOYAGES II by HART CRANE

( --And yet )