So much power in so few words from the Polish poet Anna Swir (1909-1984) in this piece from her wonderful collection, Talking to My Body.
“The Greatest Love”
She is sixty. She lives
the greatest love of her life.
She walks arm-in-arm with her dear one,
her hair streams in the wind.
Her dear one says:
“You have hair like pearls.”
Her children say:
“Old fool.”
Translated from the Polish by Czeslaw Milosz and Leonard Nathan
So many deeply beautiful and haunting poems from Thom Gunn (1929-2004) in The Man with Night Sweats.
“Philemon and Baucis”
love without shadows–W.C.W.
Two trunks like bodies, bodies like twined trunks
Supported by their wooden hug. Leaves shine
In tender habit at the extremities.
Truly each other’s, they have embraced so long
Their barks have met and wedded in one flow
Blanketing both. Time lights the handsome bulk.
The gods were grateful, and for comfort given
Gave comfort multiplied a thousandfold.
Therefore the couple leached into that soil
The differences prolonged through their late vigour
That kept their exchanges salty and abrasive,
And found, with loves balancing equally,
Full peace of mind. They put unease behind them
A long time back, a long time back forgot
How each woke separate through the pale grey night,
A long time back forgot the days when each
—Riding the other’s nervous exuberance—
Knew the slow thrill of learning how to love
What, gradually revealed, becomes itself,
Expands, unsheathes, as the keen rays explore:
Invented in the continuous revelation.
They have drifted into a perpetual nap,
The peace of trees that all night whisper nothings.
I never grow tired of Jane Hirshfield (1953-) and her clear, calming verse.
“Stone and Knife”
One angle blunts, another sharpens
Loss also: stone & knife
Some griefs augment the heart,
enlarge;
some stunt.
Scentless loosestrife,
rooms unwalked in,
these losses are small.
Others cannot be described at all.
live in the layers 