Enough of the sappy stuff. These are just fucking good poems. Trust me.
"Advice to a Discarded Lover", by Fleur Adcock
Think, now: if you have found a dead bird,
Not only dead, not only fallen,
But full of maggots: what do you feel -
More pity or more revulsion?
Pity is for the moment of death,
And the moments after. It changes
When decay comes, with the creeping stench
And the wriggling, munching scavengers.
Returning later, though, you will see
A shape of clean bone, a few feathers,
An inoffensive symbol of what
Once lived. Nothing to make you shudder.
It is clear, then. But perhaps you find
The analogy I have chosen
For our dead affair rather gruesome -
Too unpleasant a comparison.
It is not accidental. In you
I see maggots close to the surface.
You are eaten up by self-pity,
Crawling with unlovable pathos.
If I were to touch you I should feel
Against my fingers fat, moist worm-skin.
Do not ask me for charity now:
Go away until your bones are clean.
This sounds really gross and depressing, maybe, but it's not. Adcock's point is that in sorrow, after a heartbreak, the sorrowful person is gross with pain; but that, with time, the sorrow brings cleanliness and beauty. Your bones will be clean.
"Against Coupling," also by Fleur Adcock
I write in praise of the solitary act:
of not feeling a trespassing tongue
forced into one's mouth, one's breath
smothered, nipples crushed against the
rib-cage, and that metallic tingling
in the chin set off by a certain odd nerve:
unpleasure. Just to avoid those eyes would help-
such eyes as a young girl draws life from,
listening to the vegetal
rustle within her, as his gaze
stirs polypal fronds in the obscure
sea-bed of her body, and her own eyes blur
. There is much to be said for abandoning
this no longer novel exercise-
for now 'participating in
a total experience'-when
one feels like the lady in Leeds who
had seen The Sound Of Music eighty-six times;
or more, perhaps, like the school drama mistress
producing A Midsummer Night's Dream
for the seventh year running, with
yet another cast from 5B.
Pyramus and Thisbe are dead, but
the hole in the wall can still be troublesome.
I advise you, then, to embrace it without
encumberance. No need to set the scene,
dress up (or undress), make speeches.
Five minutes of solitude are
enough-in the bath, or to fill
that gap between the Sunday papers and lunch.
The joys of being alone!
The time will come
when, with elation,
you will greet
yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror,
and each will
smile at the other's welcome,
and say, sit here. Eat.
You
will love again the stranger who was yourself
Give wine. Give
bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved
you
all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you
by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,
the
photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the
mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.
"After Great Pain..." by Emily Dickinson
After great pain, a formal feeling comes --
The Nerves sit ceremonious, like Tombs --
The stiff Heart questions was it He, that bore,
And Yesterday, or Centuries before?
The Feet, mechanical, go round --
Of Ground, or Air, or Ought --
A Wooden way
Regardless grown,
A Quartz contentment, like a stone --
This is the Hour of Lead --
Remembered, if outlived,
As Freezing persons, recollect the Snow --
First -- Chill -- then Stupor -- then the letting go --
Though I am wearing the same tie as yesterday,
am as poor as yesterday,
as good for nothing as yesterday,
today
I am completely different.
Though I am wearing the same clothes,
am as drunk as yesterday,
living as clumsily as yesterday, nevertheless
today
I am completely different.
I patiently close my eyes
on all the grins and smirks
on all the twisted smiles and horse laughs---
and glimpse then, inside me
one beautiful white butterfly
fluttering towards tomorrow.
