On Marrying a Poet

11/25/07

He called me modern
as though his hair greyed
faster than mine. When sullen
he would mutter Poe's
last four lines in "Alone"
under his breath, thinking me deaf

for rhyme. But I who fell
for his Yeats (when he was but shy
in his boyhood, slipping love
letters in my purse) would lead
his conscious measuring
lips to my breast --

where trails that curve and drawl
whet
          his attention
for my free
          undulating
verse.




* Note: Regarding the reference to W.B. Yeats, the following are some of his early love poems (from the 1899 collection, "The Wind Among the Reeds") which, I muse, would be in those love letters (er, pardon my swooning): "A Poet to His Beloved", "He Gives His Beloved Certain Rhymes", "He Remembers Forgotten Beauty", "He Tells Of The Perfect Beauty", and "He Wishes For The Cloths Of Heaven".

As to Edgar Allan Poe's "Alone", here are its last four lines:

          From the thunder and the storm,
          And the cloud that took the form
          (When the rest of Heaven was blue)
          Of a demon in my view.




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posted by S.L. Corsua