~ 2 of my favorite love poems ~

WHEN YOU ARE OLD
by William Butler Yeats

When you are old and gray and full of sleep
And nodding by the fire, take down this book
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;

How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true,
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you
And loved the sorrows of your changing face;


And bending down beside the glowing bars murmur, a little sadly, how love fled
And paced upon the mountains overhead and hid his face among a crowd of stars.

LOVESONG by Ted Hughes

He loved her and she loved him. / His kisses sucked out her whole past and future or tried to
He had no other appetite / She bit him she gnawed him she sucked
She wanted him complete inside her / Safe and sure forever and ever
Their little cries fluttered into the curtains

Her eyes wanted nothing to get away / Her looks nailed down his hands his wrists his elbows
He gripped her hard so that life / Should not drag her from that moment
He wanted all future to cease / He wanted to topple with his arms round her
Off that moment's brink and into nothing / Or everlasting or whatever there was

Her embrace was an immense press / To print him into her bones
His smiles were the garrets of a fairy palace / Where the real world would never come
Her smiles were spider bites / So he would lie still till she felt hungry
His words were occupying armies / Her laughs were an assassin's attempts
His looks were bullets daggers of revenge / His glances were ghosts in the corner with horrible secrets
His whispers were whips and jackboots / Her kisses were lawyers steadily writing
His caresses were the last hooks of a castaway / Her love-tricks were the grinding of locks
And their deep cries crawled over the floors / Like an animal dragging a great trap
His promises were the surgeon's gag / Her promises took the top off his skull
She would get a brooch made of it / His vows pulled out all her sinews
He showed her how to make a love-knot / Her vows put his eyes in formalin
At the back of her secret drawer / Their screams stuck in the wall

Their heads fell apart into sleep like the two halves / Of a lopped melon, but love is hard to stop
In their entwined sleep they exchanged arms and legs / In their dreams their brains took each other hostage

In the morning they wore each other's face.