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!

Comments

[bennybunny.livejournal.com]

One of my favourites.

A Week Later- Sharon Olds

[bennybunny.livejournal.com]

A week later, I said to a friend: I don't
think I could ever write about it.
Maybe in a year I could write something.
There is something in me maybe someday
to be written; now it is folded, and folded,
and folded, like a note in school. And in my dream
someone was playing jacks, and in the air there was a
huge, thrown, tilted jack
on fire. And when I woke up, I found myself
counting the days since I had last seen
my husband-only two years, and some weeks,
and hours. We had signed the papers and come down to the
ground floor of the Chrysler Building,
the intact beauty of its lobby around us
like a king's tomb, on the ceiling the little
painted plane, in the mural, flying. And it
entered my strictured heart, this morning,
slightly, shyly as if warily,
untamed, a greater sense of the sweetness
and plenty of his ongoing life,
unknown to me, unseen by me,
unheard, untouched-but known, seen,
heard, touched. And it came to me,
for moments at a time, moment after moment,
to be glad for him that he is with the one
he feels was meant for him. And I thought of my
mother, minutes from her death, eighty-five
years from her birth, the almost warbler
bones of her shoulder under my hand, the
eggshell skull, as she lay in some peace
in the clean sheets, and I could tell her the best
of my poor, partial love, I could sing her
out with it, I saw the luck
and luxury of that hour.

Re: A Week Later- Sharon Olds

[melomane.livejournal.com]

Thank you, this is beautiful

[skonen-blades.livejournal.com]

Wow what a fantastic poem. I can totally see what it's describing.

[orange-fell.livejournal.com]

This poem isn't explicitly about what you are looking for, but it reminds me of a time of "lost love and lessons learned" that I went through years ago. Maybe it will strike a chord for you as well.

Everything
Srikanth Reddy

She was watching the solar eclipse
through a piece of broken bottle

when he left home.
He found a blue kite in the forest

on the day she lay down
with a sailor. When his name changed,

she stitched a cloud to a quilt
made of rags. They did not meet,

so they could never be parted.
So she finished her prayer,

& he folded his map of the sea

[melomane.livejournal.com]

This gave me chills, thank you so much for sharing