Near the Wall of a House by Yehuda Amichai

Yehuda Amichai (1924-2000)

Yehuda reminds the reader there is more to living than being in love, while love is indeed beautiful as a species we miss so much of life’s real beauty chasing just that one aspect of living.

Near the wall of a house painted
to look like stone,
I saw visions of God.

A sleepless night that gives others a headache
gave me flowers
opening beautifully inside my brain.

And he who was lost like a dog
will be found like a human being
and brought back home again.

Love is not the last room: there are others
after it, the whole length of the corridor
that has no end.

Yehuda Amichai 
Tr: Chana Block

If It Be Your Will by Leonard Cohen (1934-)

I love how Cohen’s words make this devotional poem reach out beyond any particular religion, although it was inspired by the Kol Nidre.

If it be your will
that I speak no more,
and my voice be still
as it was before;
I will speak no more,
I shall abide until
I am spoken for,
If it be your will.

If it be your will
that a voice be true,
from this broken hill
I will sing for you.
From this broken hill
all your praises they shall ring
if it be your will
to let me sing.

If it be your will
if there is a choice,
let the rivers fill,
let the hills rejoice.
Let your mercy spill
on all those burning hearts in hell,
if it be your will
to make us well.

And draw us near
and bind us tight,
all your children here,
in their rags of light;
in our rags of light,
all dressed to kill;
and end this night
if it be your will.

Leonard Cohen

Elegy for Himself by Chidiock Tichborne (1558-1586)

written in the tower before his execution

Chidiock wrote this the night before he was executed for treason as a Roman Catholic, to write so eloquently under such circumstances amazes me. He was 28 years old.

My prime of youth is but a frost of cares;
My feast of joy is but a dish of pain;
My crop of corn is but a field of tares;
And all my good is but vain hope of gain:
The day is past, and yet saw no sun;
And now I live, and now my life is done.

My tale was heard, and yet it was not told;
My fruit is fall’n, and yet my leaves are green;
My youth is spent, and yet I am not old;
I saw the world, and yet I was not seen:
My thread is cut, and yet it is not spun;
And now I live, and now my life is done.

I sought my death, and found it in my womb;
I looked for life, and saw it was a shade;
I trod the earth, and knew it was my tomb;
And now I die, and now I was but made;
My glass is full, and now my glass is run;
And now I live, and now my life is done.


Chidiock Tichborne

Seduction Poem by Alison Croggon (1962- )

I have come across this poem so many times in recent weeks it now speaks so deeply to me - it is erotic, evocatively basic without the use of base language - and I am in love with it.


I want the slew of muscle, a less
cerebral meeting place; no word
but your male shout, the slurred
unpublic face and honest skin
crying to me, yes,
the mouthless, eyeless tenderness
crying to be let in.

Unbutton all your weight, like a bird
flying the night’s starred nakedness:
put down your grammatical tongue, undress
your correct and social skin:
come white and absurd
all your language one word
crying to be let in


Alison Croggon

In the Dead Afternoon’s Gold More by Fernando Pessoa (1888-1935)

I first heard this poem on the radio a couple of weeks ago and every word resonated through me, and they still do.

In the dead afternoon’s gold more –
The no-place gold dust of late day
Which is sauntering past my door
And will not stay –

In the silence, still touched with gold,
Of the woods’ green ending, I see
The memory. You were fair of old
And are in me …

Though you’re not there, your memory is
And, you not anyone, your look.
I shake as you come like a breeze
And I mourn some good …

I’ve lost you. Never had you. The hour
Soothes my anguish so as to leave,
In my remembering being, the power
To feel love,

Though loving be a thing to fear,
A delusory and vain haunting,
And the night of this vague desire
Have no morning.


Fernando Pessoa, tr. Jonathon Griffin

Love Constant Beyond Death by Francisco Gomez de Quevedo (1580-1645)

The metaphysical endurance of love after death is captured beautifully here by Quevedo, who by the age of just 23 was an acclaimed poet.

The final shadow that will close my eyes
will in its darkness take me from white day
and instantly untie the soul from lies
and flattery of death, and find its way
 and yet my soul won’t leave its memory
of love there on the shore where it has burned:
my flame can swim cold water and has learned
to lose respect for laws’ severity.
My soul, whom a God made his prison of,
my veins, which a liquid humour fed to fire,
my marrows, which have gloriously flamed,
will leave their body, never their desire;
they will be ash but ash in feeling framed;
they will be dust but will be dust in love.


Francisco Gomez de Quevedo
tr. Willis Barnstone

The Panther by Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926)

In the Jardin des Plantes, Paris

This poem stirs my soul with its insight into a life in captivity giving the reader a clear and intense sense of the reality

His vision, from the constantly passing bars,
has grown so weary that it cannot hold
anything else. It seems to him there are
a thousand bars; and behind the bars, no world.

As he paces in cramped circles, over and over,
the movement of his powerful soft strides
is like a ritual dance around a centre
in which a mighty will stand paralysed.

Only at times, the curtain of the pupils
lifts, quietly –. An image enters in,
rushes down through the tensed, arrested muscles,
plunges into the heart and is gone.


Rainer Maria Rilke

The Silken Tent by Robert Frost (1874-1963)

This powerful sonnet reflects the ties of partnership, family and the poet’s belief that it is those ties that form the basis of love.

She is as in a field a silken tent
At midday when a sunny summer breeze
Has dried the dew and all its ropes relent,
So that in guys it gently sways at ease,
And its supporting central cedar pole,
That is its pinnacle to heavenward
And signifies the sureness of the soul,
Seems to owe naught to any single cord,
But strictly held by none, is loosely bound
By countless silken ties of love and thought
To everything on earth the compass round,
And only by one’s going slightly taut
In the capriciousness of summer air
Is of the slightest bondage made aware.


Robert Frost

From Invitation (1) by Grace Nichols (1950 - )

I love this poem because it is packed full of positive attitude towards self – something I am not very good at and need the reminder.


If my fat
was too much for me
I would have told you
I would have lost a stone
or two

I would have gone jogging
even when it was fogging
I would have weighed in
sitting the bathroom scale
with my tail tucked in

I would have dieted
more care than a diabetic

But as it is
I’m feeling fine
feel no need
to change my lines
when I move I’m target light

Come up and see me sometime


Grace Nichols

Will Not Come Back (after Becquer) by Robert Lowell (1917 – 1977)

Dark swallows will doubtless come back killing
the injudicious nightflies with a clack of the beak;
but these that stopped full flight to see your beauty
and my good fortune… as if they knew our names –
they’ll not come back.  The thick lemony honeysuckle,
climbing from the earthroot to your window,
will open more beautiful blossoms to the evening:
but these… like dewdrops, trembling, shining, falling,
the tears of day – they’ll not come back…
Some other love will sound his fireword for you
and wake your heart, perhaps, from its cool sleep;
but silent, absorbed, and on his knees,
as men adore God at the altar, as I love you –
don’t blind yourself, you’ll not be loved like that


Robert Lowell

Fall (after Rilke) by Robin Robertson (1955-)

The leaves are falling, falling from trees
in dying gardens far above us; as if their slow
free-fall was the sky declining.

And tonight, this heavy earth is falling away
from all the other stars, drawing into silence.

We are all falling now. My hand, my heart,
stall and drift in darkness, see-sawing down.

And we still believe there is one who sifts and holds
the leaves, the lives, of all those softly falling.





Robin Robertson