Relationship poems
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Ignorant Before The Heavens Of My Life
© Rainer Maria Rilke
Ignorant before the heavens of my life,
I stand and gaze in wonder. Oh the vastness
of the stars. Their rising and descent. How still.
As if I didn't exist. Do I have any
As Once The Winged Energy Of Delight
© Rainer Maria Rilke
As once the winged energy of delight
carried you over childhood's dark abysses,
now beyond your own life build the great
arch of unimagined bridges.
Superbly Situated
© Padraic Colum
you politely ask me not to die and i promise not to
right from the beginning—a relationship based on
good sense and thoughtfulness in little things
kept busy
© Joanne Burns
from our deep cool verandah we spy on the world passing by. we both wear glasses in order to pick out the details. even as children we noticed all. people would say dont like those twins they look at you funny. we were reassured. our powers had been confirmed. but that was a long while ago. now we are 60. we have lived in this ground floor flat on the main road for 20 years. it is a very suitable dwelling, and we have a satisfactory relationship with the landlord. we think he is pleased we notice his transparency. we have been here since we left our husbands who got in the way of our observations.
after our evening meal we talk quietly of what we have seen. we believe in sharing our observations in case one of us has missed something. for our eyesight isnt as sharp as it was ten years ago. though we do clean our glasses each hour and keep our hair tied firmly back in small grey buns so nothing can distract our focus. we are small women. many people do not notice us, while we are noticing them. we keep to ourselves. mother used to say to us never get too friendly with strangers they can harm you. even if they smile and offer you an hour of their lives dont tell them nothing. mother knew a lot. she always kept the bible and a cloth to clean her hands on the kitchen table within reach.
The Bungalows
© John Ashbery
Impatient as we were for all of them to join us,
The land had not yet risen into view: gulls had swept the gray steel towers away
So that it profited less to go searching, away over the humming earth
Than to stay in immediate relation to these other things—boxes, store parts, whatever you wanted to call them—
Whose installedness was the price of further revolutions, so you knew this combat was the last.
And still the relationship waxed, billowed like scenery on the breeze.
The Book Of Paradise - The Seven Sleepers
© Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
And the sheep-dog will not leave them,--
Scared away, his foot all-mangled,
To his master still he presses,
And he joins the hidden party,
Joins the favorites of slumber.
Fresh Air
© Kenneth Koch
3
Summer in the trees! “It is time to strangle several bad poets.”
The yellow hobbyhorse rocks to and fro, and from the chimney
Drops the Strangler! The white and pink roses are slightly agitated by the struggle,
But afterwards beside the dead “poet” they cuddle up comfortingly against their vase. They are safer now, no one will compare them to the sea.
Crossroads in the Past
© John Ashbery
That night the wind stirred in the forsythia bushes,
but it was a wrong one, blowing in the wrong direction.
“That’s silly. How can there be a wrong direction?
‘It bloweth where it listeth,’ as you know, just as we do
when we make love or do something else there are no rules for.”
I Got Stoned And I Missed It
© Sheldon Allan Silverstein
I was sitting in my basement
I just rolled myself a taste
of something green and gold and glorious
to get me through the day
The Wind Chimes by Shirley Buettner: American Life in Poetry #37 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate 2004
© Ted Kooser
Painful separations, through divorce, through death, through alienation, sometimes cause us to focus on the objects around us, often invested with sentiment. Here's Shirley Buettner, having packed up what's left of a relationship.
Amities
© Ezra Pound
You wore the same quite correct clothing,
You took no pleasure at all in my triumphs,
You had the same old air of condescension
Mingled with a curious fear
That I, myself, might have enjoyed them.
Te Voilel, mon Bourrienne, you also shall be immortal.
HMS Pinafore: Act I
© William Schwenck Gilbert
SCENE - Quarter-deck of H.M.S. Pinafore. Sailors, led by
Boatswain, discovered cleaning brasswork, splicing rope, etc.
The Ring And The Book - Chapter II - Half-Rome
© Robert Browning
All five soon somehow found themselves at Rome,
At the villa door: there was the warmth and light
The sense of life so just an inch inside
Some angel must have whispered One more chance!
Aubade by Dore Kiesselbach : American Life in Poetry #237 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate 2004-2006
© Ted Kooser
An aubade is a poem about separation at dawn, but as you’ll see, this one by Dore Kiesselbach, who lives in Minnesota, is about the complex relationship between a son and his mother.
Aubade
The Quarrel by Linda Pastan: American Life in Poetry #149 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate 2004-2006
© Ted Kooser
Elsewhere in this newspaper you may find some advice for maintaining and repairing troubled relationships. Here, in a poem by Linda Pastan of Maryland, is one of those relationships in need of some help.
The Quarrel
If there were a monument
to silence, it would not be
the tree whose leaves
murmur continuously
among themselves;
Wallpapering by Sue Ellen Thompson: American Life in Poetry #109 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate 2004
© Ted Kooser
One big test of the endurance of any relationship is taking on a joint improvement project. Here Sue Ellen Thompson offers an account of one such trial by fire.
Wallpapering
My parents argued over wallpaper. Would stripes
make the room look larger? He
would measure, cut, and paste; she'd swipe
the flaws out with her brush. Once it was properly
Long Marriage by Gerald Fleming: American Life in Poetry #208 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate 2004-20
© Ted Kooser
To have a helpful companion as you travel through life is a marvelous gift. This poem by Gerald Fleming, a long-time teacher in the San Francisco public schools, celebrates just such a relationship.
Long Marriage
