58 Absolutely Beautiful Love Poems You Should Read Right Now
1. “ANY LIT” BY HARRYETTE MULLEN
You are a ukulele beyond my microphone
You are a Yukon beyond my Micronesia
You are a union beyond my meiosis
You are a unicycle beyond my migration
You are a universe beyond my mitochondria
You are a Eucharist beyond my Miles Davis
You are a euphony beyond my myocardiogram
You are a unicorn beyond my Minotaur
You are a eureka beyond my maitai
You are a Yuletide beyond my minesweeper
You are a euphemism beyond my myna bird
ENTER TO WIN A $100 GIFT CARD TO BARNES & NOBLE (AVAILABLE ONLY IN THE US)
YES! SIGN ME UP FOR DAILY DEALS, YOUR BOOK DEALS NEWSLETTER, TO ENTER THIS GIVEAWAY!
SIGN UP TO ENTER
VIEW FULL GIVEAWAY RULES
2. “TO THE GIRL WHO WORKS AT STARBUCKS” BY RUDY FRANCISCO
Loading video
3. “ATLAS” BY U.A. FANTHORPE
There is a kind of love called maintenance
Which stores the WD40 and knows when to use it
Which checks the insurance, and doesnt forget
The milkman; which remembers to plant bulbs;
Which answers letters; which knows the way
The money goes; which deals with dentists
And Road Fund Tax and meeting trains,
And postcards to the lonely; which upholds
The permanently rickety elaborate
Structures of living, which is Atlas.
And maintenance is the sensible side of love,
Which knows what time and weather are doing
To my brickwork; insulates my faulty wiring;
Laughs at my dryrotten jokes; remembers
My need for gloss and grouting; which keeps
My suspect edifice upright in air,
As Atlas did the sky.
4. “WHEN A BOY TELLS YOU HE LOVES YOU” BY EDWIN BODNEY
Loading video
5. “WHEN YOU COME” BY MAYA ANGELOU
When you come to me, unbidden,
Beckoning me
To long-ago rooms,
Where memories lie.
Offering me, as to a child, an attic,
Gatherings of days too few.
Baubles of stolen kisses.
Trinkets of borrowed loves.
Trunks of secret words,
I CRY.
6. “SONNET 29” BY WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
When, in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes,
I all alone beweep my outcast state,
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,
And look upon myself and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featured like him, like him with friends possessed,
Desiring this man’s art and that man’s scope
With what I most enjoy contented least;
Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,
Haply I think on thee, and then my state,
(Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth) sings hymns at heaven’s gate;
For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings
That then I scorn to change my state with kings.
7. “SONNET 116” BY WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Loading video
8. “UNTITLED” BY CHRISTOPHER POINDEXTER
9. “IT IS HERE” BY HAROLD PINTER
(for A)
What sound was that?
I turn away, into the shaking room.
What was that sound that came in on the dark?
What is this maze of light it leaves us in?
What is this stance we take,
To turn away and then turn back?
What did we hear?
It was the breath we took when we first met.
Listen. It is here.
10. “VALENTINE” BY JOHN FULLER
Loading video
11. “ECHO” BY CAROL ANN DUFFY
I think I was searching for treasures or stones
in the clearest of pools
when your face…
when your face,
like the moon in a well
where I might wish…
might well wish
for the iced fire of your kiss;
only on water my lips, where your face…
where your face was reflected, lovely,
not really there when I turned
to look behind at the emptying air…
the emptying air.
12. “IT’S ALL I HAVE TO BRING TODAY” BY EMILY DICKINSON
It’s all I have to bring today—
This, and my heart beside—
This, and my heart, and all the fields—
And all the meadows wide—
Be sure you count—should I forget
Some one the sum could tell—
This, and my heart, and all the Bees
Which in the Clover dwell.
13. “UNTITLED” BY PAVANA
14. “TO THE DESERT” BY BENJAMIN ALIRE SÁENZ
I came to you one rainless August night.
You taught me how to live without the rain.
You are thirst and thirst is all I know.
You are sand, wind, sun, and burning sky,
The hottest blue. You blow a breeze and brand
Your breath into my mouth. You reach—then bend
Your force, to break, blow, burn, and make me new.
You wrap your name tight around my ribs
And keep me warm. I was born for you.
Above, below, by you, by you surrounded.
I wake to you at dawn. Never break your
Knot. Reach, rise, blow, Sálvame, mi dios,
Trágame, mi tierra. Salva, traga, Break me,
I am bread. I will be the water for your thirst.
15. “A GLIMPSE” BY WALT WHITMAN
A glimpse through an interstice caught,
Of a crowd of workmen and drivers in a bar-room around the stove late of a winter night, and I unremark’d seated in a corner,
Of a youth who loves me and whom I love, silently approaching and seating himself near, that he may hold me by the hand,
A long while amid the noises of coming and going, of drinking and oath and smutty jest,
There we two, content, happy in being together, speaking little, perhaps not a word.
16. “I WANNA BE YOURS” BY JOHN COOPER CLARKE
Loading video
17. “I WANTED TO MAKE MYSELF LIKE THE RAVINE” BY HANNAH GAMBLE
I wanted to make myself like the ravine
so that all good things
would flow into me.
Because the ravine is lowly,
it receives an abundance.
This sounds wonderful
to everyone
who suffers from lacking,
but consider, too, that a ravine
keeps nothing out:
in flows a peach
with only one bite taken out of it,
but in flows, too,
the body of a stiff mouse
half cooked by the heat of the stove
it was toughening under.
I have an easygoing way about me.
I’ve been an inviting host —
meaning to, not meaning to.
Oops — he’s approaching with his tongue
already out
and moving.
Analyze the risks
of becoming a ravine.
Compare those with the risks
of becoming a well
with a well-bolted lid.
Which I’d prefer
depends largely on which kinds
of animals were inside me
when the lid went on
and how likely they’d be
to enjoy the water,
vs. drown, freeze, or starve.
The lesson: close yourself off
at exactly the right time.
On the day that you wake up
under some yellow curtains
with a smile on your face,
lock the door.
Live out your days
untroubled like that.
18. “QUEEN ANNE’S LACE” BY WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS
Her body is not so white as
anemone petals nor so smooth—nor
so remote a thing. It is a field
of the wild carrot taking
thefield by force; the grass
does not raise above it.
Here is no question of whiteness,
white as can be, with a purple mole
at the center of each flower.
Each flower is a hand’s span
of her whiteness. Wherever
his hand has lain there is
a tiny purple blossom under his touch
to which the fibres of her being
stem one by one, each to its end,
until the whole field is a
white desire, empty, a single stem,
a cluster, flower by flower,
a pious wish to whiteness gone over—
or nothing.
19. “WHEN LOVE ARRIVES” BY SARAH KAY & PHIL KAYE
Loading video
20. “TO YOU” BY KENNETH KOCH
I love you as a sheriff searches for a walnut
That will solve a murder case unsolved for years
Because the murderer left it in the snow beside a window
Through which he saw her head, connecting with
Her shoulders by a neck, and laid a red
Roof in her heart. For this we live a thousand years;
For this we love, and we live because we love, we are not
Inside a bottle, thank goodness! I love you as a
Kid searches for a goat; I am crazier than shirttails
In the wind, when you’re near, a wind that blows from
The big blue sea, so shiny so deep and so unlike us;
I think I am bicycling across an Africa of green and white fields
Always, to be near you, even in my heart
When I’m awake, which swims, and also I believe that you
Are trustworthy as the sidewalk which leads me to
The place where I again think of you, a new
Harmony of thoughts! I love you as the sunlight leads the prow
Of a ship which sails
From Hartford to Miami, and I love you
Best at dawn, when even before I am awake the sun
Receives me in the questions which you always pose.
21. “POLARITIES” BY KENNETH SIESSOR
Sometimes she is like sherry, like the sun through a vessel of glass,
Like light through an oriel window in a room of yellow wood;
Sometimes she is the colour of lions, of sand in the fire of noon,
Sometimes as bruised with shadows as the afternoon.
Sometimes she moves like rivers, sometimes like trees;
Or tranced and fixed like South Pole silences;
Sometimes she is beauty, sometimes fury, sometimes neither,
Sometimes nothing, drained of meaning, null as water.
Sometimes, when she makes me pea-soup or plays me Schumann,
I love her one way; sometimes I love her another
More disturbing way when she opens her mouth in the dark;
Sometimes I like her with camellias, sometimes with a parsley-stalk,
Sometimes I like her swimming in a mirror on the wall;
Sometimes I don’t like her at all.
22. “UNTITLED” BY AMANDA LOVELACE
23. “WHEN WE ARE OLD AND THESE REJOICING VEINS” BY EDNA ST. VINCENT MILLAY
When we are old and these rejoicing veins
Are frosty channels to a muted stream,
And out of all our burning their remains
No feeblest spark to fire us, even in dream,
This be our solace: that it was not said
When we were young and warm and in our prime,
Upon our couch we lay as lie the dead,
Sleeping away the unreturning time.
O sweet, O heavy-lidded, O my love,
When morning strikes her spear upon the land,
And we must rise and arm us and reprove
The insolent daylight with a steady hand,
Be not discountenanced if the knowing know
We rose from rapture but an hour ago.
24. “WITCH WIFE” BY EDNA ST. VINCENT MILLAY
She is neither pink nor pale,
And she never will be all mine;
She learned her hands in a fairy-tale,
And her mouth on a valentine.
She has more hair than she needs;
In the sun ’tis a woe to me!
And her voice is a string of coloured beads,
Or steps leading into the sea.
She loves me all that she can,
And her ways to my ways resign;
But she was not made for any man,
And she never will be all mine.
25. “TYPEWRITER SERIES #2091” BY TYLER KNOTT GREGSON
26. “RONDEL OF MERCILESS BEAUTY” BY GEOFFREY CHAUCER
Your two great eyes will slay me suddenly;
Their beauty shakes me who was once serene;
Straight through my heart the wound is quick and keen.Only your word will heal the injury
To my hurt heart, while yet the wound is clean—
Your two great eyes will slay me suddenly;
Their beauty shakes me who was once serene.Upon my word, I tell you faithfully
Through life and after death you are my queen;
For with my death the whole truth shall be seen.
Your two great eyes will slay me suddenly;
Their beauty shakes me who was once serene;
Straight through my heart the wound is quick and keen.
27. “TO AN ARMY WIFE IN SARDIS” FROM SAPPHO TRANSLATED BY MARY BARNARD
To an army wife, in Sardis:
Some say a cavalry corps,
some infantry, some, again,
will maintain that the swift oars
of our fleet are the finest
sight on dark earth; but I say
that whatever one loves, is.
This is easily proved: did
not Helen—she who had scanned
the flower of the world’s manhood—
choose as first among men one
who laid Troy’s honor in ruin?
warped to his will, forgetting
love due her own blood, her own
child, she wandered far with him.
So Anactoria, although you
being far away forget us,
the dear sound of your footstep
and light glancing in your eyes
would move me more than glitter
of Lydian horse or armored
tread of mainland infantry
28. “THE GOOD MORROW” BY JOHN DONNE
Loading video
29. “A LOVE SONG FOR LUCINDA” BY LANGSTON HUGHES
Love
Is a ripe plum
Growing on a purple tree.
Taste it once
And the spell of its enchantment
Will never let you be.
Love
Is a bright star
Glowing in far Southern skies.
Look too hard
And its burning flame
Will always hurt your eyes.
Love
Is a high mountain
Stark in a windy sky.
If you
Would never lose your breath
Do not climb too high.
30. “TWENTY ONE LOVE POEMS” BY ADRIENNE RICH
Loading video
31. “I LOVE YOU” BY CARL SANDBERG
I love you for what you are, but I love you yet more for what you are going to be.
I love you not so much for your realities as for your ideals. I pray for your desires that they may be great, rather than for your satisfactions, which may be so hazardously little.
A satisfied flower is one whose petals are about to fall. The most beautiful rose is one hardly more than a bud wherein the pangs and ecstasies of desire are working for a larger and finer growth. Not always shall you be what you are now. You are going forward toward something great. I am on the way with you and therefore I love you.
32. “FOR HIM” BY RUPI KAUR
33. “UNTITLED” BY RUPI KAUR
34. “SONNET XLIII”” BY ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING
How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of being and ideal grace.
I love thee to the level of every day’s
Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.
I love thee freely, as men strive for right;
I love thee purely, as they turn from praise.
I love thee with the passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood’s faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints. I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life; and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.
35. “FALLING STARS” BY RAINER MARIA RILKE
Do you remember still the falling stars
that like swift horses through the heavens raced
and suddenly leaped across the hurdles
of our wishes—do you recall? And we
did make so many! For there were countless numbers
of stars: each time we looked above we were
astounded by the swiftness of their daring play,
while in our hearts we felt safe and secure
watching these brilliant bodies disintegrate,
knowing somehow we had survived their fall.
36. “PHOTOGRAPH” BY ANDREA GIBSON
Loading video
37. “LITANY” BY BILLY COLLINS
Loading video
38. “LOVE POEM” BY AUDRE LORDE
Speak earth and bless me with what is richest
make sky flow honey out of my hips
rigis mountains
spread over a valley
carved out by the mouth of rain.
And I knew when I entered her I was
high wind in her forests hollow
fingers whispering sound
honey flowed
from the split cup
impaled on a lance of tongues
on the tips of her breasts on her navel
and my breath
howling into her entrances
through lungs of pain.
Greedy as herring-gulls
or a child
I swing out over the earth
over and over
again.
39. “DEFEATED BY LOVE” BY RUMI
The sky was lit
by the splendor of the moon
So powerful
I fell to the ground
Your love
has made me sure
I am ready to forsake
this worldly life
and surrender
to the magnificence
of your Being
40. “HABITATION” BY MARGARET ATWOOD
Marriage is not
a house, or even a tent
it is before that, and colder:
the edge of the forest, the edge
of the desert
the unpainted stairs
at the back, where we squat
outdoors, eating popcorn
where painfully and with wonder
at having survived
this far
we are learning to make fire
41. “DESIRE” BY ALICE WALKER
My desire
is always the same; wherever Life
deposits me:
I want to stick my toe
& soon my whole body
into the water.
I want to shake out a fat broom
& sweep dried leaves
bruised blossoms
dead insects
& dust.
I want to grow
something.
It seems impossible that desire
can sometimes transform into devotion;
but this has happened.
And that is how I’ve survived:
how the hole
I carefully tended
in the garden of my heart
grew a heart
to fill it.
42. “MAD GIRL’S LOVE SONG” BY SYLVIA PLATH
“I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead;
I lift my lids and all is born again.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)
The stars go waltzing out in blue and red,
And arbitrary blackness gallops in:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
I dreamed that you bewitched me into bed
And sung me moon-struck, kissed me quite insane.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)
God topples from the sky, hell’s fires fade:
Exit seraphim and Satan’s men:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
I fancied you’d return the way you said,
But I grow old and I forget your name.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)
I should have loved a thunderbird instead;
At least when spring comes they roar back again.
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)”
43. “SOMEWHERE I HAVE NEVER TRAVELED” BY E.E. CUMMINGS
Loading video
44. “LOVE IS A PLACE” BY E.E. CUMMINGS
love is a place
& through this place of
love move
(with brightness of peace)
all places
yes is a world
& in this world of
yes live
(skilfully curled)
all worlds
45. “UNTITLED” BY AMAN BATRA
46. “YOUR FEET” BY PABLO NERUDA
When I cannot look at your face
I look at your feet.
Your feet of arched bone,
your hard little feet.
I know that they support you,
and that your sweet weight
rises upon them.
Your waist and your breasts,
the doubled purple
of your nipples,
the sockets of your eyes
that have just flown away,
your wide fruit mouth,
your red tresses,
my little tower.
But I love your feet
only because they walked
upon the earth and upon
the wind and upon the waters,
until they found me.
47. “THE WORLD AS MEDITATION” BY WALLACE STEVENS
Loading video
48. “BLUEBIRD TYPEWRITER POETRY #7” BY SEAN BATES
49. “MARRIED LOVE” BY KUAN TAO-SHENG, TRANSLATED BY KENNETH REXROTH AND LING CHUNG
You and I
Have so much love,
That it
Burns like a fire,
In which we bake a lump of clay
Molded into a figure of you
And a figure of me.
Then we take both of them,
And break them into pieces,
And mix the pieces with water,
And mold again a figure of you,
And a figure of me.
I am in your clay.
You are in my clay.
In life we share a single quilt.
In death we will share one bed.
50. “HOW FALLING IN LOVE IS LIKE OWNING A DOG” BY TAYLOR MALI
Loading video
51. “LOVE IS A FIRE THAT BURNS UNSEEN” BY LUÍS VAZ DE CAMÕES, TRANSLATED BY RICHARD ZENITH
Love is a fire that burns unseen,
a wound that aches yet isn’t felt,
an always discontent contentment,
a pain that rages without hurting,
a longing for nothing but to long,
a loneliness in the midst of people,
a never feeling pleased when pleased,
a passion that gains when lost in thought.
It’s being enslaved of your own free will;
it’s counting your defeat a victory;
it’s staying loyal to your killer.
But if it’s so self-contradictory,
how can Love, when Love chooses,
bring human hearts into sympathy?
52. “NEVER GIVE ALL THE HEART” BY W.B. YEATS
Never give all the heart, for love
Will hardly seem worth thinking of
To passionate women if it seem
Certain, and they never dream
That it fades out from kiss to kiss;
For everything that’s lovely is
But a brief, dreamy, kind delight.
O never give the heart outright,
For they, for all smooth lips can say,
Have given their hearts up to the play.
And who could play it well enough
If deaf and dumb and blind with love?
He that made this knows all the cost,
For he gave all his heart and lost.
53. “HOW TO LOVE YOUR INTROVERT” BY KEVIN YANG
Loading video
54. “SEDUCTION” BY NIKKI GIOVANNI
Loading video
55. “CAMOMILE TEA” BY KATHERINE MANSFIELD
Outside the sky is light with stars;
There’s a hollow roaring from the sea.
And, alas! for the little almond flowers,
The wind is shaking the almond tree.
How little I thought, a year ago,
In the horrible cottage upon the Lee
That he and I should be sitting so
And sipping a cup of camomile tea.
Light as feathers the witches fly,
The horn of the moon is plain to see;
By a firefly under a jonquil flower
A goblin toasts a bumble-bee.
We might be fifty, we might be five,
So snug, so compact, so wise are we!
Under the kitchen-table leg
My knee is pressing against his knee.
Our shutters are shut, the fire is low,
The tap is dripping peacefully;
The saucepan shadows on the wall
Are black and round and plain to see.
56. “WILL YOU STILL LOVE ME?” BY ARIELLE WILBURN
Loading video
57. “NAMING THE HEARTBEATS” BY AIMEE NEZHUKUMATATHIL
Loading video
58. “WHEN I SAY THAT LOVING ME IS KIND OF LIKE BEING A CHICAGO BULLS FAN” BY HANIF ABDURRAQIB
Comments
Post a Comment