6.

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.

7.

The Day Sky

by Hafiz

Let us be like

Two falling stars in the day sky.

Let no one know of our sublime beauty

As we hold hands with God

And burn

Into a sacred existence that defies—

That surpasses

Every description of ecstasy

And love.

8.

Children Running Through

by Rumi, Translation by Coleman Barks with John Moyne

I used to be shy.

You made me sing.

I used to refuse things at table.

Now I shout for more wine.

In somber dignity, I used to sit

on my mat and pray.

Now children run through

and make faces at me.

9.

I Got Kin

by Hafiz

Plant

So that your own heart

Will grow.

Love

So God will think,

“Ahhhhhh,

I got kin in that body!

I should start inviting that soul over

For coffee and

Rolls.”

Sing

Because this is a food

Our starving world

Needs.

Laugh

Because that is the purest

Sound.

10.

The Wedding Vow

by Sharon Olds

I did not stand at the altar, I stood

at the foot of the chancel steps, with my beloved,

and the minister stood on the top step

holding the open Bible. The church

was wood, painted ivory inside, no people—God’s

stable perfectly cleaned. It was night,

spring—outside, a moat of mud,

and inside, from the rafters, flies

fell onto the open Bible, and the minister

tilted it and brushed them off. We stood

beside each other, crying slightly

with fear and awe. In truth, we had married

that first night, in bed, we had been

married by our bodies, but now we stood

in history—what our bodies had said,

mouth to mouth, we now said publicly,

gathered together, death. We stood

holding each other by the hand, yet I also

stood as if alone, for a moment,

just before the vow, though taken

years before, took. It was a vow

of the present and the future, and yet I felt it

to have some touch on the distant past

or the distant past on it, I felt

the silent, dry, crying ghost of my

parents’ marriage there, somewhere

in the bright space—perhaps one of the

plummeting flies, bouncing slightly

as it hit forsaking all others, then was brushed

away. I felt as if I had come

to claim a promise—the sweetness I’d inferred

from their sourness; and at the same time that I had

come, congenitally unworthy, to beg.

And yet, I had been working toward this hour

all my life. And then it was time

to speak—he was offering me, no matter

what, his life. That is all I had to

do, that evening, to accept the gift

I had longed for—to say I had accepted it,

as if being asked if I breathe. Do I take?

I do. I take as he takes—we have been

practicing this. Do you bear this pleasure? I do.

11.

[i carry your heart with me(i carry it in]

by e.e. cummings

i carry your heart with me(i carry it in

my heart)i am never without it(anywhere

i go you go,my dear;and whatever is done

by only me is your doing,my darling)

i fear

no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want

no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)

and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant

and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows

(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud

and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows

higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)

and this is the wonder that’s keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)

12.

Every Day You Play…

by Pablo Neruda

Every day you play with the light of the universe.

Subtle visitor, you arrive in the flower and the water.

You are more than this white head that I hold tightly

as a cluster of fruit, every day, between my hands.

You are like nobody since I love you.

Let me spread you out among yellow garlands.

Who writes your name in letters of smoke among the stars of the south?

Oh let me remember you as you were before you existed.

Suddenly the wind howls and bangs at my shut window.

The sky is a net crammed with shadowy fish.

Here all the winds let go sooner or later, all of them.

The rain takes off her clothes.

The birds go by, fleeing.

The wind. The wind.

I can contend only against the power of men.

The storm whirls dark leaves

and turns loose all the boats that were moored last night to the sky.

You are here. Oh, you do not run away.

You will answer me to the last cry.

Cling to me as though you were frightened.

Even so, at one time a strange shadow ran through your eyes.

Now, now too, little one, you bring me honeysuckle,

and even your breasts smell of it.

While the sad wind goes slaughtering butterflies

I love you, and my happiness bites the plum of your mouth.

How you must have suffered getting accustomed to me,

my savage, solitary soul, my name that sends them all running.

So many times we have seen the morning star burn, kissing our eyes,

and over our heads the gray light unwind in turning fans.

My words rained over you, stroking you.

A long time I have loved the sunned mother-of-pearl of your body.

I go so far as to think that you own the universe.

I will bring you happy flowers from the mountains, bluebells,

dark hazels, and rustic baskets of kisses.

I want to do with you what spring does with the cherry trees.

13.

The Ache of Marriage

by Denise Levertov

The ache of marriage:

thigh and tongue, beloved,

are heavy with it,

it throbs in the teeth

We look for communion

and are turned away, beloved,

each and each

It is leviathan and we

in its belly

looking for joy, some joy

not to be known outside it

two by two in the ark of

the ache of it.

14.

A Great Need

by Hafiz

Out

Of a great need

We are all holding hands

And climbing.

Not loving is a letting go.

Listen,

The terrain around here

Is

Far too

Dangerous

For

That.

15.

We

by Nayyirah Waheed

we

return to each other in waves.

this is how water

loves.

16.

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

17.

So Much Happiness

by Naomi Shihab Nye

It is difficult to know what to do with so much happiness.

With sadness there is something to rub against,

a wound to tend with lotion and cloth.

When the world falls in around you, you have pieces to pick up,

something to hold in your hands, like ticket stubs or change.

But happiness floats.

It doesn’t need you to hold it down.

It doesn’t need anything.

Happiness lands on the roof of the next house, singing,

and disappears when it wants to.

You are happy either way.

Even the fact that you once lived in a peaceful tree house

and now live over a quarry of noise and dust

cannot make you unhappy.

Everything has a life of its own,

it too could wake up filled with possibilities

of coffee cake and ripe peaches,

and love even the floor which needs to be swept,

the soiled linens and scratched records…..

Since there is no place large enough

to contain so much happiness,

you shrug, you raise your hands, and it flows out of you

into everything you touch. You are not responsible.

You take no credit, as the night sky takes no credit

for the moon, but continues to hold it, and share it,

and in that way, be known.

18.

somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond

by e.e. cummings

somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond

any experience,your eyes have their silence:

in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,

or which i cannot touch because they are too near

your slightest look easily will unclose me

though i have closed myself as fingers,

you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens

(touching skilfully,mysteriously)her first rose

or if your wish be to close me,i and

my life will shut very beautifully,suddenly,

as when the heart of this flower imagines

the snow carefully everywhere descending;

nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals

the power of your intense fragility:whose texture

compels me with the colour of its countries,

rendering death and forever with each breathing

(i do not know what it is about you that closes

and opens;only something in me understands

the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)

nobody,not even the rain,has such small hands

19.

It’s all I have to bring today (26)

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.

20.

Having a Coke with You

by Frank O’Hara

is even more fun than going to San Sebastian, Irún, Hendaye, Biarritz, Bayonne

or being sick to my stomach on the Travesera de Gracia in Barcelona

partly because in your orange shirt you look like a better happier St. Sebastian

partly because of my love for you, partly because of your love for yoghurt

partly because of the fluorescent orange tulips around the birches

partly because of the secrecy our smiles take on before people and statuary

it is hard to believe when I’m with you that there can be anything as still

as solemn as unpleasantly definitive as statuary when right in front of it

in the warm New York 4 o’clock light we are drifting back and forth

between each other like a tree breathing through its spectacles

and the portrait show seems to have no faces in it at all, just paint

you suddenly wonder why in the world anyone ever did them

I look

at you and I would rather look at you than all the portraits in the world

except possibly for the Polish Rider occasionally and anyway it’s in the Frick

which thank heavens you haven’t gone to yet so we can go together the first time

and the fact that you move so beautifully more or less takes care of Futurism

just as at home I never think of the Nude Descending a Staircase or

at a rehearsal a single drawing of Leonardo or Michelangelo that used to wow me

and what good does all the research of the Impressionists do them

when they never got the right person to stand near the tree when the sun sank

or for that matter Marino Marini when he didn’t pick the rider as carefully

as the horse

it seems they were all cheated of some marvelous experience

which is not going to go wasted on me which is why I am telling you about it

21.

[untitled]

by Mindy Nettifee

if a man is only as good as his word,

then I want to marry a man with a vocabulary like yours.

the way you say “dicey” and “delectable” and “octogenarian”

in the same sentence—

that really turns me on,

the way you describe the oranges in your backyard

using “anarchistic” and “intimate” in the same breath.

i would follow the legato and staccato of your tongue

wrapping around your diction

until listening become more like dreaming

and dreaming became more like kissing you.

i want to jump off the cliff of your voice

into the suicide of your stream of consciousness.

i want to visit the place in your heart where the wrong words die.

i want to map it out with a dictionary and points of brilliant light

until it looks more like a star chart than a strategy for communication.

i want to see where your words are born.

i want to find a pattern in the astrology.

i want to memorize the scripts of your seductions.

i want to live in the long-winded epics of your disappointments,

in the haiku of your epiphanies.

i want to know all the names you’ve given your desires.

i want to find my name among them,

‘cause there is nothing more wrecking-sexy than the right word.

i want to thank whoever told you there was no such thing as a synonym.

i want to throw a party for the heartbreak that turned you into a poet.

and if it is true that a man is only as good as his word

then, sweet jesus,

let me be there the first time you are speechless,

and all your explosive wisdom

becomes a burning ball of sun in your throat,

and all you can bring yourself to utter is, oh god,

oh god….

22.

Peanut Butter

by Eileen Myles

I am always hungry

& wanting to have

sex. This is a fact.

If you get right

down to it the new

unprocessed peanut

butter is no damn

good & you should

buy it in a jar as

always in the

largest supermarket

you know. And

I am an enemy

of change, as

you know. All

the things I

embrace as new

are in

fact old things,

re-released: swimming,

the sensation of

being dirty in

body and mind

summer as a

time to do

nothing and make

no money. Prayer

as a last re-

sort. Pleasure

as a means,

and then a

means again

with no ends

in sight. I am

absolutely in opposition

to all kinds of

goals. I have

no desire to know

where this, anything

is getting me.

When the water

boils I get

a cup of tea.

Accidentally I

read all the

works of Proust.

It was summer

I was there

so was he. I

write because

I would like

to be used for

years after

my death. Not

only my body

will be compost

but the thoughts

I left during

my life. During

my life I was

a woman with

hazel eyes. Out

the window

is a crooked

silo. Parts

of your

body I think

of as stripes

which I have

learned to

love along. We

swim naked

in ponds &

I write be-

hind your

back. My thoughts

about you are

not exactly

forbidden, but

exalted because

they are useless,

not intended

to get you

because I have

you & you love

me. It’s more

like a playground

where I play

with my reflection

of you until

you come back

and into the

real you I

get to sink

my teeth. With

you I know how

to relax. &

so I work

behind your

back. Which

is lovely.

Nature

is out of control

you tell me &

that’s what’s so

good about

it. I’m immoderately

in love with you,

knocked out by

all your new

white hair

why shouldn’t

something

I have always

known be the

very best there

is. I love

you from my

childhood,

starting back

there when

one day was

just like the

rest, random

growth and

breezes, constant

love, a sand-

wich in the

middle of

day,

a tiny step

in the vastly

conventional

path of

the Sun. I

squint. I

wink. I

take the

ride.

23.

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

24.

This Marriage

by Rumi

May these vows and this marriage be blessed.

May it be sweet milk,

this marriage, like wine and halvah.

May this marriage offer fruit and shade

like the date palm.

May this marriage be full of laughter,

our every day a day in paradise.

May this marriage be a sign of compassion,

a seal of happiness here and hereafter.

May this marriage have a fair face and a good name,

an omen as welcomes the moon in a clear blue sky.

I am out of words to describe

how spirit mingles in this marriage.

25.

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.

26.

Admonitions To A Special Person

by Anne Sexton

Watch out for power,

for its avalanche can bury you,

snow, snow, snow, smothering your mountain.

Watch out for hate,

it can open its mouth and you’ll fling yourself out

to eat off your leg, an instant leper.

Watch out for friends,

because when you betray them,

as you will,

they will bury their heads in the toilet

and flush themselves away.

Watch out for intellect,

because it knows so much it knows nothing

and leaves you hanging upside down,

mouthing knowledge as your heart

falls out of your mouth.

Watch out for games, the actor’s part,

the speech planned, known, given,

for they will give you away

and you will stand like a naked little boy,

pissing on your own child-bed.

Watch out for love

(unless it is true,

and every part of you says yes including the toes) ,

it will wrap you up like a mummy,

and your scream won’t be heard

and none of your running will end.

Love? Be it man. Be it woman.

It must be a wave you want to glide in on,

give your body to it, give your laugh to it,

give, when the gravelly sand takes you,

your tears to the land. To love another is something

like prayer and can’t be planned, you just fall

into its arms because your belief undoes your disbelief.

Special person,

if I were you I’d pay no attention

to admonitions from me,

made somewhat out of your words

and somewhat out of mine.

A collaboration.

I do not believe a word I have said,

except some, except I think of you like a young tree

with pasted-on leaves and know you’ll root

and the real green thing will come.

Let go. Let go.

Oh special person,

possible leaves,

this typewriter likes you on the way to them,

but wants to break crystal glasses

in celebration,

for you,

when the dark crust is thrown off

and you float all around

like a happened balloon.

27.

About Marriage

by Denise Levertov

Don’t lock me in wedlock, I want

marriage, an

encounter—

I told you about the

green light of

May

(a veil of quiet befallen

the downtown park,

late

Saturday after

noon, long

shadows and cool

air, scent of

new grass,

fresh leaves,

blossom on the threshold of

abundance—

and the birds I met there,

birds of passage breaking their journey,

three birds each of a different species:

the azalea-breasted with round poll, dark,

the brindled, merry, mousegliding one,

and the smallest, golden as gorse and wearing

a black Venetian mask

and with them the three douce hen-birds

feathered in tender, lively brown—

I stood

a half-hour under the enchantment,

no-one passed near,

the birds saw me and

let me be

near them.)

It’s not

irrelevant:

I would be

met

and meet you

so,

in a green

airy space, not

locked in.

28.

The Invitation

by Oriah

It doesn’t interest me

what you do for a living.

I want to know

what you ache for

and if you dare to dream

of meeting your heart’s longing.

It doesn’t interest me

how old you are.

I want to know

if you will risk

looking like a fool

for love

for your dream

for the adventure of being alive.

It doesn’t interest me

what planets are

squaring your moon…

I want to know

if you have touched

the centre of your own sorrow

if you have been opened

by life’s betrayals

or have become shrivelled and closed

from fear of further pain.

I want to know

if you can sit with pain

mine or your own

without moving to hide it

or fade it

or fix it.

I want to know

if you can be with joy

mine or your own

if you can dance with wildness

and let the ecstasy fill you

to the tips of your fingers and toes

without cautioning us

to be careful

to be realistic

to remember the limitations

of being human.

It doesn’t interest me

if the story you are telling me

is true.

I want to know if you can

disappoint another

to be true to yourself.

If you can bear

the accusation of betrayal

and not betray your own soul.

If you can be faithless

and therefore trustworthy.

I want to know if you can see Beauty

even when it is not pretty

every day.

And if you can source your own life

from its presence.

I want to know

if you can live with failure

yours and mine

and still stand at the edge of the lake

and shout to the silver of the full moon,

“Yes.”

It doesn’t interest me

to know where you live

or how much money you have.

I want to know if you can get up

after the night of grief and despair

weary and bruised to the bone

and do what needs to be done

to feed the children.

It doesn’t interest me

who you know

or how you came to be here.

I want to know if you will stand

in the centre of the fire

with me

and not shrink back.

It doesn’t interest me

where or what or with whom

you have studied.

I want to know

what sustains you

from the inside

when all else falls away.

I want to know

if you can be alone

with yourself

and if you truly like

the company you keep

in the empty moments.

29.

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.

30.A Blessing for Wedding

by Jane Hirshfield

Today when persimmons ripen

Today when fox-kits come out of their den into snow

Today when the spotted egg releases its wren song

Today when the maple sets down its red leaves

Today when windows keep their promise to open

Today when fire keeps its promise to warm

Today when someone you love has died

or someone you never met has died

Today when someone you love has been born

or someone you will not meet has been born

Today when rain leaps to the waiting of roots in their dryness

Today when starlight bends to the roofs of the hungry and tired

Today when someone sits long inside his last sorrow

Today when someone steps into the heat of her first embrace

Today, let this light bless you

With these friends let it bless you

With snow-scent and lavender bless you

Let the vow of this day keep itself wildly and wholly

Spoken and silent, surprise you inside your ears

Sleeping and waking, unfold itself inside your eyes

Let its fierceness and tenderness hold you

Let its vastness be undisguised in all your days