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Next story: Amour, Amour, Amarone

The L Word

A simple “I love you” is never trite or tired, but come Valentine’s Day more individual and evocative expressions of affection seem required. In past years we at AV have solicited your own handmade love poems; we’ve asked you to tell us your worst and best Valentine’s Day stories; we’ve offered up our pages like the bathroom walls of some scary bar on which to scrawl your messages of love and lust. In short, we’ve let you do all the work. This year we’ve decided you deserve a break, and have transferred the heavy lifting to writers who know what they’re about. With any luck these poems may inspire your own words; if not, why then, just steal them and pretend they’re yours:

Catullus V

Lesbia, let us live only for loving,

and let us value at a single penny

all the useless flap of senile busybodies!

Suns when they set are capable of rising,

but at the ending of our own brief light

night is one sleep from which we never awaken.

Give me a thousand kisses and then a hundred

Another thousand next, and then a hundred,

A thousand without pause and then a hundred

Until when we have run up our thousands

We will cry bankrupt, hiding our assets

From ourselves and any who would harm us,

knowing the value of our trade in kisses.

Catullus, translated by Charles Martin

He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven

Had I the heaven’s embroidered cloths,

Enwrought with golden and silver light,

The blue and the dim and the dark cloths

Of night and light and the half-light,

I would spread the cloths under your feet:

But I, being poor, have only my dreams

I have spread my dreams under your feet;

Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

Wllliam Butler Yeats

Sonnet XVII

I do not love you as if you were salt-rose, or topaz,

or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off.

I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,

in secret, between the shadow and the soul.

I love you as the plant that never blooms

but carries in itself the light of hidden flowers;

thanks to your love a certain solid fragrance,

risen from the earth, lives darkly in my body.

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where.

I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride;

so I love you because I know no other way

than this: where I does not exist, nor you,

so close that your hand on my chest is my hand,

so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep.

Pablo Neruda

Decade

When you came, you were like red wine and honey,

And the taste of you burnt my mouth with its sweetness.

Now you are like morning bread,

Smooth and pleasant.

I hardly taste you at all for I know your savour,

But I am completely nourished.

Amy Lowell

Summer Kitchen

In June’s high light she stood at the sink

With a glass of wine,

And listened for the bobolink,

And crushed garlic in late sunshine.

I watched her cooking, from my chair.

She pressed her lips

Together, reached for kitchenware,

And tasted sauce from her fingertips.

“It’s ready now. Come on,” she said.

“You light the candle.”

We ate, and talked, and went to bed,

And slept. It was a miracle.

Donald Hall

The Green Automobile

If I had a Green Automobile

I’d go find my old companion

in his house on the Western ocean.

Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha!

I’d honk my horn at his manly gate,

inside his wife and three

children sprawl naked

on the living room floor.

He’d come running out

to my car full of heroic beer

and jump screaming at the wheel

for he is the greater driver.

We’d pilgrimage to the highest mount

of our earlier Rocky Mountain visions

laughing in each others arms,

delight surpassing the highest Rockies,

and after old agony, drunk with new years,

bounding toward the snowy horizon

blasting the dashboard with original bop

hot rod on the mountain

we’d batter up the cloudy highway

where angels of anxiety

careen through the trees

and scream out of the engine.

Allen Ginsberg

Song for the Last Act

Now that I have your face by heart, I look

Less at its features than its darkening frame

Where quince and melon, yellow as young flame,

Lie with quilled dahlias and the shepherd’s crook.

Beyond, a garden, There, in insolent ease

The lead and marble figures watch the show

Of yet another summer loath to go

Although the scythes hang in the apple trees.

Now that I have your face by heart, I look.

Now that I have your voice by heart, I read

In the black chords upon a dulling page

Music that is not meant for music’s cage,

Whose emblems mix with words that shake and bleed.

The staves are shuttled over with a stark

Unprinted silence. In a double dream

I must spell out the storm, the running stream.

The beat’s too swift. The notes shift in the dark.

Now that I have your voice by heart, I read.

Now that I have your heart by heart, I see

The wharves with their great ships and architraves;

The rigging and the cargo and the slaves

On a strange beach under a broken sky.

O not departure, but a voyage done!

The bales stand on the stone; the anchor weeps

Its red rust downward, and the long vine creeps

Beside the salt herb, in the lengthening sun.

Now that I have your heart by heart, I see.

Louise Bogan

You’re the Top! (Excerpted)

You’re the top!

You’re the Coliseum.

You’re the top!

You’re the Louvre Museum.

You’re a melody from a symphony by Strauss

You’re a Bendel bonnet,

A Shakespeare’s sonnet,

You’re Mickey Mouse.

You’re the Nile,

You’re the Tower of Pisa,

You’re the smile on the Mona Lisa

I’m a worthless check, a total wreck, a flop,

But if, baby, I’m the bottom you’re the top!

You’re the top!

You’re Mahatma Gandhi.

You’re the top!

You’re Napoleon Brandy.

You’re the purple light

Of a summer night in Spain,

You’re the National Gallery

You’re Garbo’s salary,

You’re cellophane.

You’re sublime,

You’re turkey dinner,

You’re the time, the time of a Derby winner

I’m a toy balloon that’s fated soon to pop

But if, baby, I’m the bottom,

You’re the top!

—Cole Porter

You’re the Top! (Parody)

You’re The Top!

You’re Miss Pinkham’s tonic

You’re The Top!

You’re a high colonic

You’re the rhythmic beat

Of a bridal suite in use

You’re the mound of Venus

You’re King Kong’s penis

You’re self-abuse!

You’re an arch

In the Rome collection

You’re the starch

In a groom’s erection

I’m a eunuch who

Has just been through an op

But if, baby, I’m the bottom

You’re The Top!

—Irving Berlin (purportedly)