Collected Love Poems. Brian Patten

These Boys Have Never Really Grown into Men

       A Few Sentences about Beauty

       Her Ghost

       Love Poem in February

       INDEX OF FIRST LINES

       About the Author

       Other Books By

       Copyright

       About the Publisher

       Not Only

      Not only the leaf shivering with delight

      No,

      Not only the grass shrugging off the weight of frost

      No,

      Not only the taste of your skin

      No,

      Not only steam rising from the morning river

      No,

      Not only the heart on fire

      No,

      Not only the sound of the sunflower roaring

      No,

      Not only love’s resurrection

      No,

      Not only the cathedral window deep in the raindrop

      No,

      Not only the sky as blue and smooth as an egg

      No,

      Not only the fairytale of forever

      No,

      Not only the wings of the crane fly consumed by fire

      No,

      Not only these things

      No,

      But without you none of these things

       Into My Mirror Has Walked

      Into my mirror has walked

      A woman who will not talk

      Of love or of its subsidiaries,

      But who stands there,

      Pleased by her own silence.

      The weather has worn into her

      All seasons known to me.

      In one breast she holds

      Evidence of forests,

      In the other, of seas.

      I will ask her nothing yet

      Would ask so much

      If she gave a sign—

      Her shape is common enough,

      Enough shape to love.

      But what keeps me here

      Is what glows beyond her.

      I think at times

      A boy’s body

      Would be as easy

      To read light into,

      I think sometimes

      My own might do.

       These Songs Were Begun One Winter

      These songs were begun one winter

      When on a window thick with frost

      Her finger drew

      A map of all possible directions,

      When her body was one possibility among

      Arbitrary encounters

      And loneliness sufficient to warrant

      A meeting of opposites.

      How easily forgotten then

      What was first felt—

      An anchor lifted from the blood,

      Sensations intense as any lunatic’s,

      Ruined by unaccustomary events,

      Let drop because of weariness.

       The Ambush

      When the face you swore never to forget

      Can no longer be remembered,

      When a list of regrets is torn up and thrown away

      Then the hurt fades,

      And you think you’ve grown strong.

      You sit in bars and boast to yourself,

      ‘Never again will I be vulnerable.

      It was an aberration to be so open,

      A folly, never to be repeated.’

      How absurd and fragile such promises.

      Hidden from you, crouched

      Among the longings you have suppressed

      And the desires you imagine tamed,

      A sweet pain waits in ambush.

      And there will come a day when in a field

      Heaven’s mouth gapes open,

      And on a web the shadow

      Of a marigold will smoulder.

      Then without warning,

      Without a shred of comfort,

      Emotions you thought had been put aside

      Will flare up within you and bleed you of reason.

      The routines which comforted you,

      And the habits in which you sought refuge

      Will bend like sunlight under water,

      And go astray.

      Once again your body will become a banquet,

      Falling heavenwards.

      You will loll in spring’s sweet avalanche

      Without the burden of memory,

      And once again

      Monstrous love will swallow you.

       A Blade of Grass

      You ask for a poem.

      I offer you a blade of grass.

      You say it is not good enough.

      You ask for a poem.

      I say this blade of grass will do.

      It has dressed