a broken appointment

You did not come,
And marching Time drew on,and wore me numb.—
Yet less for loss of your dear presence there
Than that I thus found lacking in your make
That high compassion which can overbear
Reluctance for pure lovingkindness’ sake
Grieved I, when, as the hope-hour stroked its sum,
You did not come.

You love not me,
And love alone can lend you loyalty;
—I know and knew it. But, unto the store
Of human deeds divine in all but name,
Was it not worth a little hour or more
To add yet this: Once you,a woman,came
To soothe a time-torn man;even though it be
You love not me.

Thomas Hardy

.

The flowers sent here by mistake,
signed with a name that no one knew,
are turning bad. What shall we do?
Our neighbor says they’re not for her,
and no one has a birthday near.
We should thank someone for the blunder.
Is one of us having an affair?
At first we laugh, and then we wonder.

The iris was the first to die,
enshrouded in its sickly-sweet
and lingering perfume. The roses
fell one petal at a time,
and now the ferns are turning dry.
The room smells like a funeral,
but there they sit, too much at home,
accusing us of some small crime,
like love forgotten, and we can’t
throw out a gift we’ve never owned.

D.Gioia

voyage to cythera

the sea is full of old tired ships

after having loved we lie close together
and at the same time with distance between us
like two sailing ships that enjoy so intensely
their own lines in the dark water they divide
that their hulls
are almost splitting from sheer delight
while racing,out in the blue
under sails which the night wind fills
with flowerscented air and moonlight
without one of them ever trying
to outsail the other
and without the distance between them
lessening or growing at all

but there are other nights,where we drift
like two brightly illuminated luxury liners
lying side by side
with the engines shut off,under a strange constellation
and without a single passenger on board:
on each deck a violin orchestra is playing
in honour of the luminous waves.
and the sea is full of old tired ships
which we have sunk in our attempt to reach each other.

H.Nordbrandt