This made me both laugh and get weak in the knees…
Last weekend, I went to see the movie Gloria Bell with my friend Gisela, and one scene was incredibly romantic. A man and a woman sit on a sofa, and the man reads her a poem out of a book. (Side note: How dreamy to read poetry from a paperback, side by side, curving back the cover.)
The poem is by Chilean poet Claudio Bertoni:
I’d like to be a nest if you were a little bird.
I’d like to be a scarf if you were a neck and were cold.
If you were music, I’d be an ear.
If you were water, I’d be a glass.
If you were light, I’d be an eye.
If you were a foot, I’d be a sock.
If you were the sea, I’d be a beach.
And if you were still the sea, I’d be a fish,
and I’d swim in you.
And if you were the sea, I’d be salt.
And if I were salt, you’d be lettuce,
an avocado or at least a fried egg.
And if you were a fried egg,
I’d be a piece of bread.
And if I were a piece of bread,
you’d be butter or jam.
If you were jam,
I’d be the peach in the jam.
If I were a peach,
you’d be a tree.
And if you were a tree,
I’d be your sap…
and I’d course through your arms like blood.
And if I were blood,
I’d live in your heart.
* Ahh!! Clutches heart!*
What poems or books do you find romantic? The one above reminds me of our wedding poem, which still makes me teary ten years later.
P.S. A parenting poem that took my breath away, and how do you know your partner’s the one? Plus, more poems you may love.
I loved it!!
Such a tender poem,
Such a tender soul!!
I’m watching the movie Gloria Bell on TV and this poem caught my attention. I really Love it! It oozes passion & authenticity.
Don’t watching the movie today on Netflix I just had to research the poem it is the most beautiful poem I have ever read or even more so, heard read
Thank you very kindly for posting this poem. I saw the movie several months ago and searched for that poem. Finally, I came across it on your website. I have been thinking about that scene in which he reads it to her ever since.
Hi. Thanks for the post. Wanted to note in Gloria Bell they’re sitting on her couch while he reads the poem to her. It’s very open, but lacks the intimacy of a bedroom which I think was deliberate. Words and being vulnerable is just as intimate or can be than having sex with someone. Food for thought. That was my take.
you’re right about the sofa! just re-watched the clip on youtube. thank you!
I did not know it, but I loved to meet this “Poem for a young friend who wanted to take her own life”, by Claudio Bertoni.
xoxo
Sabrina Mix | Table setting, décor, travel & DIY Ideas
http://chezmix.com
I adore this one by Michael Ondaatje, it shows such love, attention and the passing of time:
7 or 8 Things I Know About Her (A Stolen Biography)
The Father’s Guns
After her father died they found nine guns in the house. Two in his clothing drawers, one under the bed, one in the glove compartment of the car, etc. Her brother took their mother out onto the prairie with a revolver and taught her to shoot.
The Bird
For a while in Topeka parrots were very popular. Her father was given one in lieu of a payment and kept it with him at all times because it was the fashion. It swung above him in the law office and drove back with him in the car at night. At parties friends would bring their parrots and make them perform what they had been taught: the first line from Twelfth Night, a bit of Italian opera, cowboy songs, or a surprisingly good rendition of Russ Colombo singing “Prisoner of Love”. Her father’s parrot could only imitate the office typewriter, along with the ching at the end of each line. Later it broke its neck crashing into a bookcase.
The Bread
Four miles out of Topeka on the highway – the largest electrical billboard in the State of Kansas. The envy of all Missouri. It advertised bread and the electrical image of a knife cut slice after slice. These curled off endlessly. “Meet you at the bread,” “See you at the loaf,” were common phrases. Aroused couples would park there under the stars on the open night prairie. Virtue was lost, “kissed all over by every boy in Wichita”. Poets, the inevitable visiting writers, were taken to see it, and it hummed over the seductions in cars, over the nightmares of girls in bed. Slice after slice fell towards the earth. A feeding of the multitude in this parched land on the way to Dorrance, Kansas.
First Criticism
She is two weeks old, her mother takes her for a drive. At the gas station the mechanic is cleaning the windshield and watches them through the glass. Wiping his hands he puts his head in the side window and says, “Excuse me for saying this but I know what I’m talking about – that child has a heart condition.”
Listening In
Overhear her in the bathroom, talking to a bug: “I don’t want you on me, honey.” 8 a.m.
Self Criticism
“For a while there was something about me that had a dubious quality. Dogs would not take meat out of my hand. The town bully kept handcuffing me to the trees.”
Fantasies
Always one fantasy. To be traveling down the street and a man in a clean white suit (the detail of “clean” impresses me) leaps into her path holding flowers and sings to her while an invisible orchestra accompanies his solo. All her life she has waited for this and it never happens.
Reprise
In 1956 the electric billboard in Kansas caught fire and smoke plumed into a wild sunset. Bread on fire, broken glass. Birds flew towards it above the cars that circled round to watch. And last night, past midnight, her excited phone call. Her home town is having a marathon to benefit the symphony. She pays $4 to participate. A tuxedoed gentleman begins the race with a clash of symbols and she takes off. Along her route at frequent intervals are quartets who play for her. When they stop for water a violinist performs a solo. So here she comes. And there I go, stepping forward in my white suit, with a song in my heart.
Have you ever read “Topography” by Sharon Olds? So sexy and funny. The first time I heard it, I was a freshman in college at a private university (read: conservative), and they invited this musician, Linford Detweiler of Over the Rhine, to come and play a small concert. He played the piano and in between songs he read poems, and this is one he read. I was totally mesmerized by it and I’ve never forgotten it. I was already an English major, but that moment made me fall in love with poetry in a new way.
If you like Olds, Dorianne Laux is another wonderful poet you’d probably love for weaving eros in a feminist voice. Not as Buddhist as Olds is now, but still writing. Kim Addoniziohttps://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/42520/what-do-women-want and my latest crush is Aracelis Girmay https://aracelisgirmay.net/ can write anything.
This thread is punctuating my day for a while now. Reminds me that thought is the beginning of everything. And the call and response to these poems is so thoughtful. I hope Jo creates a poetry anthology. Peace of wild beings from Seattle.
Oh girl, same. Linford and Karin as Over the Rhine also came to my small, liberal arts school. The music. The poetry. It made me fall in love with words. Turns out they went to and met at our school….before dropping out and making music together. I’m so grateful for someone to bring words to life.
Interesting enough this poem was written by Bertoni for a young friend of his who attempted to kill herself. Its context provides a nuanced perspective on the piece. Still a beautiful poem.
First of all – the comment sections of this blog are the BEST THING EVER!
Second of all, being a translator, I can tell you that it’s not easy to make translated poetry sound this beautiful. So although part of being a translator is being invisible – the translator of this poem deserves some love and respect…
that poem sounds more like a mother to a child….doesnt sound “romantic” between two lovers. just my opinon, still so sweet.
I read this at my friend’s wedding seventeen years ago. She asked me to choose a poem to read and I was worried the title would be off-putting…!
The Difficulty That Is Marriage by Paul Durcan
We disagree to disagree, we divide, we differ;
Yet each night as I lie in bed beside you
And you are faraway curled up in sleep
I array the moonlit ceiling with a mosaic of question-marks;
How was it I was so lucky to have ever met you?
I am no brave pagan proud of my mortality
Yet gladly on this changeling earth I should live for ever
If it were with you, my sleeping friend.
I have my troubles and I shall always have them
But I should rather live with you for ever
Than exchange my troubles for a changeless kingdom.
But I do not put you on a pedestal or a throne;
You must have your faults but I do not see them.
If it were with you, I should live for ever.
Oh my, this is stunning! I’ve just saved it for our wedding next year x
[i carry your heart with me(i carry it in]
BY E. E. CUMMINGS
i carry your heart with me(i carry it in
my heart)i am never without it(anywhere
i go you go,my dear;and whatever is done
by only me is your doing,my darling)
i fear
no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want
no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)
and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you
here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows
higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that’s keeping the stars apart
i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)
wow… love this poem! I know just one person who will hear this from my lips.
*tear rolling*…. My two favorite short romantic lines are the Walt Whitman Quote “We were together, I forget the rest”
AND my all time favorite singer/song write Josh Ritter (also crush)
From the song Strangers:
“I just can’t believe we were ever strangers”
The second I hear that song start, just melting away over here……
And to relate this post back to celebrity crushes: John Turturro (swoon!)
How beautiful! There’s something about Chilean poets and their way of expressing love that really gets me. At our wedding, our friend read this excerpt from Pablo Neruda’s Sonnet XVII, and I will forever love it.
I love you without knowing how or when or from where.
I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride;
so I love you because I know no other way than this;
where I does not exist, nor you,
so close that your hand on my chest is my hand,
so close that your eyes shut as I fall asleep.
Yes THIS!^^ My husband turned this into part of his wedding vows. Oh m y word.
My husband and I read this poem by Margaret Atwood at our wedding.
Variation on the Word Sleep
Margaret Atwood, 1939
I would like to watch you sleeping,
which may not happen.
I would like to watch you,
sleeping. I would like to sleep
with you, to enter
your sleep as its smooth dark wave
slides over my head
and walk with you through that lucent
wavering forest of bluegreen leaves
with its watery sun & three moons
towards the cave where you must descend,
towards your worst fear
I would like to give you the silver
branch, the small white flower, the one
word that will protect you
from the grief at the center
of your dream, from the grief
at the center. I would like to follow
you up the long stairway
again & become
the boat that would row you back
carefully, a flame
in two cupped hands
to where your body lies
beside me, and you enter
it as easily as breathing in
I would like to be the air
that inhabits you for a moment
only. I would like to be that unnoticed
& that necessary.
No way! That was my wedding poem too!!! I’m obsessed with that poem; it’s soooo beautiful. (And I love Atwood generally.)
“All I Know About Love” by Neil Gaiman is my favorite. The line about hands reaching in the darkness is just so true. It wasn’t read at our wedding last summer because I didn’t stumble upon it until after we got married, but every time I re-read it, it feels so deeply “our poem,” especially when I brush against my husband in bed and re-remember he and his love are real.
“This is everything I have to tell you about love: nothing.
This is everything I have learned about marriage: nothing.
Only that the world out there is complicated,
and there are beasts in the night, and delight and pain,
and the only thing that makes it okay, sometimes,
is to reach out a hand in the darkness and find another
hand to squeeze
and not be alone.
It’s not the kisses, or never just the kisses: it’s what they
mean.
Somebody’s got your back.
Somebody knows your worst self and somehow doesn’t
want to rescue you
or send for the army to rescue them.
It’s not two broken halves becoming one.
It’s light from a distant lighthouse bringing you both
safely home.
Because home is wherever you are both together.
So this is everything I have to tell you about love and
marriage: nothing,
like a book without pages or a forest without trees.
Because there are some things you cannot know before you
experience them.
Because no study can prepare you for the joys or trials.
Because nobody else’s love, nobody else’s marriage, is like
yours,
and it’s a road you can only learn by walking it,
a dance that cannot be taught,
a song that did not exist before you began, together, to
sing.
And because in the darkness you will reach out a hand,
not knowing for certain if someone is even there.
And your hands will meet,
and then neither of you will ever need to be alone again.
And that’s all I know about love.”
We are having this read at our wedding in May, by my fiance’s sister, thanks to someone who posted it to Cup of Jo’s comment section months ago.
This is perfect. My 20th anniversary is this September, and now I know what to give him ;-) Thanks.
Thank you for sharing this. I’m a big fan of his, but have never heard of this poem. It’s absolutely beautiful.
I stumbled upon it on his blog, I think? So glad to be able to introduce it to a few new people. Thank you for lovely words, ladies. And happy anniversary, Nancy! What a beautiful milestone.
My two favorite love poems are sonnets:
Sonnet XXX by Edna St. Vincent Millay
Love is not all: it is not meat nor drink
Nor slumber nor a roof against the rain;
Nor yet a floating spar to men that sink
And rise and sink and rise and sink again;
Love can not fill the thickened lung with breath,
Nor clean the blood, nor set the fractured bone;
Yet many a man is making friends with death
Even as I speak, for lack of love alone.
It well may be that in a difficult hour,
Pinned down by pain and moaning for release,
Or nagged by want past resolution’s power,
I might be driven to sell your love for peace,
Or trade the memory of this night for food.
It well may be. I do not think I would.
I get the chills EVERY TIME.
Sonnet 130 by William Shakespeare
My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun;
Coral is far more red than her lips’ red;
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.
I have seen roses damasked, red and white,
But no such roses see I in her cheeks;
And in some perfumes is there more delight
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.
I love to hear her speak, yet well I know
That music hath a far more pleasing sound;
I grant I never saw a goddess go;
My mistress when she walks treads on the ground.
And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare
As any she belied with false compare.
I discovered this one thanks to the TV show “My So-Called Life” – I love the message that it’s OK to love a woman who’s not perfect – a woman who’s REAL.
This one, by Matthew Olzmann, gets me every time with its tenderness and humor.
MOUNTAIN DEW COMMERCIAL DISGUISED AS A LOVE POEM
Here’s what I’ve got, the reasons why our marriage
might work: Because you wear pink but write poems
about bullets and gravestones. Because you yell
at your keys when you lose them, and laugh,
loudly, at your own jokes. Because you can hold a pistol,
gut a pig. Because you memorize songs, even commercials
from thirty years back and sing them when vacuuming.
You have soft hands. Because when we moved, the contents
of what you packed were written inside the boxes.
Because you think swans are overrated.
Because you drove me to the train station. You drove me
to Minneapolis. You drove me to Providence.
Because you underline everything you read, and circle
the things you think are important, and put stars next
to the things you think I should think are important,
and write notes in the margins about all the people
you’re mad at and my name almost never appears there.
Because you make that pork recipe you found
in the Frida Kahlo Cookbook. Because when you read
that essay about Rilke, you underlined the whole thing
except the part where Rilke says love means to deny the self
and to be consumed in flames. Because when the lights
are off, the curtains drawn, and an additional sheet is nailed
over the windows, you still believe someone outside
can see you. And one day five summers ago,
when you couldn’t put gas in your car, when your fridge
was so empty—not even leftovers or condiments—
there was a single twenty-ounce bottle of Mountain Dew,
which you paid for with your last damn dime
because you once overheard me say that I liked it.
I love this so, so much! It’s so perfectly real.
Here’s one about loving your single self. I swoon everytime.
https://tanyadavis.bandcamp.com/track/how-to-be-alone
♡♡♡
what is the name of the poem?
i’m not sure! i couldn’t find it anywhere online.
The name is: PARA UNA JOVEN AMIGA QUE
INTENTÓ QUITARSE LA VIDA
Translates to:
For A Young Friend That Tried To Take Her Own Life
Here it is in SPanish
https://expresar-nos.blogspot.com/2009/01/claudio-bertoni.html
So many beautiful poems! If you like poetry, you should listen to The Slowdown podcast with Tracy K. Smith. It’s a 5 minute daily poem and it’s so wonderful: https://www.apmpodcasts.org/slowdown/
This is soo delightful!
Adding this favorite from W.H. Auden:
O Tell Me The Truth About Love
Some say love’s a little boy,
And some say it’s a bird,
Some say it makes the world go round,
Some say that’s absurd,
And when I asked the man next door,
Who looked as if he knew,
His wife got very cross indeed,
And said it wouldn’t do.
Does it look like a pair of pyjamas,
Or the ham in a temperance hotel?
Does its odour remind one of llamas,
Or has it a comforting smell?
Is it prickly to touch as a hedge is,
Or soft as eiderdown fluff?
Is it sharp or quite smooth at the edges?
O tell me the truth about love.
Our history books refer to it
In cryptic little notes,
It’s quite a common topic on
The Transatlantic boats;
I’ve found the subject mentioned in
Accounts of suicides,
And even seen it scribbled on
The backs of railway guides.
Does it howl like a hungry Alsatian,
Or boom like a military band?
Could one give a first-rate imitation
On a saw or a Steinway Grand?
Is its singing at parties a riot?
Does it only like Classical stuff?
Will it stop when one wants to be quiet?
O tell me the truth about love.
I looked inside the summer-house;
It wasn’t even there;
I tried the Thames at Maidenhead,
And Brighton’s bracing air.
I don’t know what the blackbird sang,
Or what the tulip said;
But it wasn’t in the chicken-run,
Or underneath the bed.
Can it pull extraordinary faces?
Is it usually sick on a swing?
Does it spend all its time at the races,
or fiddling with pieces of string?
Has it views of its own about money?
Does it think Patriotism enough?
Are its stories vulgar but funny?
O tell me the truth about love.
When it comes, will it come without warning
Just as I’m picking my nose?
Will it knock on my door in the morning,
Or tread in the bus on my toes?
Will it come like a change in the weather?
Will its greeting be courteous or rough?
Will it alter my life altogether?
O tell me the truth about love.
Our evening routine lately has been for me to read to my husband from Mary Oliver’s Dog Songs, until I hit one that makes me cry (so many of them!) and then he rubs my back to soothe me. It’s so nice to feel cozy together, and to chat about all the wonderful dogs we’ve known before we go to sleep. I’m still not all the way through the book, on account of the crying, but with his help I’m sure we’ll finish it.
This sounds incredibly sweet. I love Mary Oliver too!
A favorite about long-distance love:
The Quiet World
BY JEFFREY MCDANIEL
In an effort to get people to look
into each other’s eyes more,
and also to appease the mutes,
the government has decided
to allot each person exactly one hundred
and sixty-seven words, per day.
When the phone rings, I put it to my ear
without saying hello. In the restaurant
I point at chicken noodle soup.
I am adjusting well to the new way.
Late at night, I call my long distance lover,
proudly say I only used fifty-nine today.
I saved the rest for you.
When she doesn’t respond,
I know she’s used up all her words,
so I slowly whisper I love you
thirty-two and a third times.
After that, we just sit on the line
and listen to each other breathe.
This was one of the readings from our wedding, my absolute favorite, by Jeannette Winterson:
“You don’t fall in love like you fall in a hole. You fall like falling through space. It’s like you jump off your own private planet to visit someone else’s planet. And when you get there it all looks different: the flowers, the animals, the colours people wear. It is a big surprise falling in love because you thought you had everything just right on your own planet, and that was true, in a way, but then somebody signalled to you across space and the only way you could visit was to take a giant jump. Away you go, falling into someone else’s orbit and after a while you might decide to pull your two planets together and call it home. And you can bring your dog. Or your cat. Your goldfish, hamster, collection of stones, all your odd socks. (The ones you lost, including the holes, are on the new planet you found.)
And you can bring your friends to visit. And read your favourite stories to each other. And the falling was really the big jump that you had to make to be with someone you don’t want to be without. That’s it.
PS You have to be brave.”
Going to see this movie with my husband on Sunday – totally wasn’t on my radar before reading this post. Thanks for always sharing interesting things!
Do you know “le toi de moi” by Carla Bruni? It is intimate like Bertoni’s poem and then she croooons to you.
“Je suis ton pile
Tu es mon face
Toi mon nombril
Et moi ta glace
Tu es l’envie et moi le geste
Toi le citron et moi le zeste
Je suis le thé, tu es la tasse
Toi la guitare et moi la basse”
Northern Irish band The Divine Comedy had a slightly twisted take on this idea (starts off sweet enough, but wait for it…): https://youtu.be/iMvevJfvVcg
We choose this poem to be read at our wedding and I cried through the whole reading.
All I Ever Wanted by Katie Ford
When I thought it was right to name my desires,
what I wanted of life, they seemed to turn
like bleating sheep, not to me, who could have been
a caring, if unskilled, shepherd, but to the boxed-in hills
beyond which the blue mountains sloped down
with poppies orange as crayfish all the way to the Pacific seas
in which the hulls of whales steered them
in search of a mate for whom they bellowed
in a new, highly particular song
we might call the most ardent articulation of love,
the pin at the tip of evolution,
modestly shining.
In the middle of my life
it was right to say my desires
but they went away. I couldn’t even make them out,
not even as dots
now in the distance.
Yet I see the small lights
of winter campfires in the hills—
teenagers in love often go there
for their first nights—and each yellow-white glow
tells me what I can know and admit to knowing,
that all I ever wanted
was to sit by a fire with someone
who wanted me in measure the same to my wanting.
To want to make a fire with someone,
with you,
was all.
My now husband and I had a long distance flirtation after meeting at a wedding. 6 weeks after we met I flew to San Francisco for a multi-day second date. On the first morning I woke up with the craziest most intense leg cramps. The next day we walked all over the city – I wanted to get out picture taken in front of the statue in North Beach from the cover of poet Richard Brautigan’s Trout Fishing in America.
After all that walking I was so afraid I was going to have the crazy leg cramps again so when we got back to his apartment his ran a bath with epsom salts for me, sat on a chair behind the half closed door (so as not to glare ;) and read me Brautigan poems which are of course equal parts hilarious and heartbreaking:
I live in the Twentieth Century by Richard Brautigan
I live in the Twentieth Century
and you lie here beside me. You
were unhappy when you fell asleep.
There was nothing I could do about
it. I felt hopeless. Your face
is so beautiful that I cannot stop
to describe it, and there’s nothing
I can do to make you happy while
you sleep.
-2 by Richard Brautigan
Everybody wants to go to bed
with everybody else, they’re
lined up for blocks, so I’ll
go to bed with you. They won’t
miss us.
Love your story, Danielle! It’s so romantic. And love Brautigan, who is so underrated. (Have you ever read his story, “Revenge of the Lawn”?)
Coming Home by Mary Oliver:
When we are driving in the dark,
on the long road to Provincetown,
when we are weary,
when the buildings and the scrub pines lose their familiar look,
I imagine us rising from the speeding car.
I imagine us seeing everything from another place–
the top of one of the pale dunes, or the deep and nameless
fields of the sea.
And what we see is a world that cannot cherish us,
but which we cherish.
And what we see is our life moving like that
along the dark edges of everything,
headlights sweeping the blackness,
believing in a thousand fragile and unprovable things.
Looking out for sorrow,
slowing down for happiness,
making all the right turns
right down to the thumping barriers to the sea,
the swirling waves,
the narrow streets, the houses,
the past, the future,
the doorway that belongs
to you and me.
This was read at my wedding because when I think of my husband, I think of home.
My sister read this poem at our wedding…
Falling in Love is Like Owning a Dog
by Taylor Mali
First of all, it’s a big responsibility,
especially in a city like New York {note: I changed this to Portland}.
So think long and hard before deciding on love.
On the other hand, love gives you a sense of security:
when you’re walking down the street late at night
and you have a leash on love
ain’t no one going to mess with you.
Because crooks and muggers think love is unpredictable.
Who knows what love could do in its own defense?
On cold winter nights, love is warm.
It lies between you and lives and breathes
and makes funny noises.
Love wakes you up all hours of the night with its needs.
It needs to be fed so it will grow and stay healthy.
Love doesn’t like being left alone for long.
But come home and love is always happy to see you.
It may break a few things accidentally in its passion for life,
but you can never be mad at love for long.
Is love good all the time? No! No!
Love can be bad. Bad, love, bad! Very bad love.
Love makes messes.
Love leaves you little surprises here and there.
Love needs lots of cleaning up after.
Sometimes you just want to get love fixed.
Sometimes you want to roll up a piece of newspaper
and swat love on the nose,
not so much to cause pain,
just to let love know Don’t you ever do that again!
Sometimes love just wants to go for a nice long walk.
Because love loves exercise.
It runs you around the block and leaves you panting.
It pulls you in several different directions at once,
or winds around and around you
until you’re all wound up and can’t move.
But love makes you meet people wherever you go.
People who have nothing in common but love
stop and talk to each other on the street.
Throw things away and love will bring them back,
again, and again, and again.
But most of all, love needs love, lots of it.
And in return, love loves you and never stops.
I love this post so profundly!
At my wedding, this poem was read:
Lupins – Seamus Heaney
They stood. And stood for something. Just by standing.
In waiting. Unavailable. But there
For sure. Sure and unbending.
Rose-fingered dawn’s and navy midnight’s flower.
Seed packets to begin with, pink and azure,
Sifting lightness and small jittery promise:
Lupin spires, erotics of the future,
Lip-brush of the blue and earth’s deep purchase.
O pastel turrets, pods and tapering stalks
That stood their ground for all our summer wending
And even when they blanched would never balk.
And none of this surpassed our understanding.
Ha ha- somehow my first thought was “this reminds me of the children’s book The Runaway Bunny”. But way sweeter, of course.
Gosh, this is gorgeous. We did a reading at our wedding (Union by Robert Fulghum which described our tumultuous road to marriage PERFECTLY). But our wedding song is pure poetry:
Without You by Eddie Vedder
I’ll grow when you grow
Let me loosen up the blindfold
I’ll fly when you cry
Lift us out of this landslide
Wherever you go
Whenever we part
I’ll keep on healing all the scars
That we’ve collected from the start
I’d rather this than live without you
For every wish upon a star
That goes unanswered in the dark
There is a dream, I’ve dreamt about you
And from afar, I lie awake
Close my eyes to find I wouldn’t be the same
I’ll shine when you shine
Painted pictures on my mind
Sun sets on this ocean
Never once on my devotion
However you are
Or far that you are
I’ll keep on healing all the scars
That we’ve collected from the start
I’d rather this than live without you
For every wish upon a star
That goes unanswered in the dark
There is a dream, I’ve dreamt about you
And from afar, I lie awake
Close my eyes to find I’d never be the same
Without you
One of the best songs ever :)
We did Union, too! We went to four weddings before ours after we had picked the reading, and hearing it hit us both right in the feels. Sometimes I’ll just say “from that moment of yes to this moment of yes” when we’ve made a big life decision, and we both get the giggles.
This reminds me of a romantic version of The Runaway Bunny by Margaret Wise Brown <3
My twin sis read a poem about French horns announcing love at my wedding reception, and I wish I could find it. It was so touching–she and my now husband and I played horn together in high school and were pals that one year. More than a decade later, the French horns were right when he and I re-met. :) Thank you for posting this beautiful poem!
When my husband and I were falling in love, he recited this poem to me.
Two Songs by Adrienne Rich
1
Sex, as they harshly call it,
I fell into this morning
at ten o’clock, a drizzling hour
of traffic and wet newspapers.
I thought of him who yesterday
clearly didn’t
turn me to a hot field
ready for plowing,
and longing for that young man
pierced me to the roots
bathing every vein, etc.
All day he appears to me
touchingly desirable,
a prize one could wreck one’s peace for.
I’d call it love if love
didn’t take so many years
but lust too is a jewel
a sweet flower and what
pure happiness to know
all our high-toned questions
breed in a lively animal.
2
That “old last act”!
And yet sometimes
all seems post coitum triste
and I a mere bystander.
Somebody else is going off,
getting shot to the moon.
Or, a moon-race!
Split seconds after
my opposite number lands
I make it—
we lie fainting together
at a crater-edge
heavy as mercury in our moonsuits
till he speaks—
in a different language
yet one I’ve picked up
through cultural exchanges. . .
we murmur the first moonwords:
Spasibo. Thanks. O.K.
My dear friend read “The Whistler” by Mary Oliver when I married my wife. I love that it captures the wonder of discovering your partner over and over. Every time I read it I tear up.
THE WHISTLER
All of a sudden she began to whistle. By all of a sudden
I mean that for more than thirty years she had not
whistled. It was thrilling. At first I wondered, who was
in the house, what stranger? I was upstairs reading, and
she was downstairs. As from the throat of a wild and
cheerful bird, not caught but visiting, the sounds war-
bled and slid and doubled back and larked and soared.
Finally I said, Is that you? Is that you whistling? Yes, she
said. I used to whistle, a long time ago. Now I see I can
still whistle. And cadence after cadence she strolled
through the house, whistling.
I know her so well, I think. I thought. Elbow and ankle-
Mood and desire. Anguish and frolic. Anger too.
And the devotions. And for all that, do we even begin
to know each other? Who is this I’ve been living with
for thirty years?
This clear, dark, lovely whistler?
This is beautiful…
Aww, I love reading through all the poems in the comments! I read a Mark Twain poem to our husband during our reception as part of my speech (we both gave short thank you speeches):
These I Can Promise by Mark Twain
I cannot promise you a life of sunshine;
I cannot promise riches, wealth, or gold;
I cannot promise you an easy pathway
That leads away from change or growing old.
But I can promise all my heart’s devotion;
A smile to chase away your tears of sorrow;
A love that’s ever true and ever growing;
A hand to hold in yours through each tomorrow.