To the Unknown Lover Horrifying, the very thought of youwhoever you are,future knife to my scar,stay where you are. Be handsome, beautiful, drop-deadgorgeous, keep away.Read my lips.No way. OK? This old heart of mine’san empty purse.These ears are closed.Don’t phone, want dinner, make things worse.Your little quirks?Your wee endearing ways?What makes you you, all that?… Continue reading Carol Ann Duffy
Now I feel nothing but her stream awaythe way she does, dead slow and fast as lightlike a galaxy that leaves behind one sparktoo low and dull to catch her silent drift;though somewhere out there in my turning darkthey know each sunrise falling like a liftand white curve of her arm gone from the night.… Continue reading Don Paterson
Horrifying, the very thought of you,whoever you are,future knife to my scar,stay where you are. — Carol Ann Duffy, Love Poems (Picador USA, February 1st 2010)
Tune to the frequency of the wood and you’ll hearthe deer, breathing; a muscle, tensing; the sighof a field mouse under an owl. Now listen to yourself — that friction — the push-and-drag,the double pulse, the drum. You can hear it, clearly.You can hear the sound of your body, breaking down. If you’re very quiet,… Continue reading Robin Robertson
I will tear this folly from my heart, though every fibre bleed as I rend it away! ― Walter Scott, Ivanhoe. (Penguin Classics; Reprint edition October 1, 2000) Originally published 1819.
But what lovers we were, what lovers,even when it was all over— — Don Paterson, from “The Wreck,” The White Lie: New and Selected Poetry. (Graywolf Press August 1, 2001)
In my dream you are sitting outat the edge of the water,watching me wade towards you in the dark:time has stood still since the riverleached out the last thread of warmth and left you to dry, — John Burnside, from “A Swimming Lesson,” Swimming in the Flood. (Trafalgar Square November 1997)
That soul is incomplete, the heartforever pilgrim,this he did not doubt — John Burnside, from “Still Life with Feeding Snake,” Still Life with Feeding Snake: Poems (Jonathan Cape, 2017)
So I will lie beside you hereunnameduntil my hands recover from your skin. — John Burnside , from “De Humani Corporis Fabrica,” The Good Neighbour (Cape, 2005)
… People trifle with love. Now, I deny that love is a strong passion. Fear is the strong passion; it is with fear that you must trifle, if you wish to taste the intensest joys of living. Envy me – envy me, sir,” he added with a chuckle, “I am a coward! — Robert Louis… Continue reading Robert Louis Stevenson
The Vale of Soul-Making 