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Lady with the frilled blouse And simple tartan skirt, Since you have left the house Its emptiness has hurt All thought. In your presence Time rode easy, anchored On a smile; but absence Rocked love's balance, unmoored The days. They buck and bound Across the calendar Pitched from the quiet sound Of your flower-tender Voice. Need breaks on my strand; You've gone, I am at sea. Until you resume command Self is in mutiny. by Seamus Heaney (b. 1939) |
Love is not all: it is not meat nor drink
Nor slumber nor a roof against the rain;
Nor yet a floating spar to men that sink
And rise and sink and rise and sink again;
Love can not fill the thickened lung with breath,
Nor clean the blood, nor set the fractured bone;
Yet many a man is making friends with death
Even as I speak, for lack of love alone.
It well may be that in a difficult hour,
Pinned down by pain and moaning for release,
Or nagged by want past resolution's power,
I might be driven to sell your love for peace,
Or trade the memory of this night for food.
It well may be. I do not think I would.
by Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892-1950)
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