Love Poems: Second Edition

By Steven Payne

Steven Payne lives and writes in his home county of Leicestershire. He is the author of Carrying the Torch, My Lost Prize, Love Letters: Great Literary Romances and Love Poems, all published by Xlibris.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris UK
• Release date: Feb 28, 2013
• ISBN: 9781483600390

Steven Payne

I was born in 1972 and with one relatively brief exception I have lived all my life in my home county of Leicestershire. I have written from a very early age, although it took me almost until the age of forty to get into print! When not writing I enjoy reading, cooking and walking.

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Copyright © 2013 by Steven Payne.

Cover image: John Atkinson Grimshaw (1836-1893): The Lovers (1874), paper on board, 34.29 cm x 21.59 cm / 13.5 in. x 8.5 in. Private collection.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Rev. date: 02/25/2013

To order additional copies of this book, contact:

Xlibris Corporation

0-800-644-6988

www.xlibrispublishing.co.uk

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306171

Contents

For Alison, with infinite love

Preface

Better Late Than Never

The Change

Anonymous written c. 1300: ‘Alysoun’

Day Tripping

The Grass Bed

Two Chairs

Footfalls

Nothing

I Wouldn’t Change Now

Fyodor Tyutchev 1803-1873: ‘Last Love’

A Brief History of Love Poetry

Parallax

Lies

At Anchor

The Fairest of Them All

The Moon at Morning

Jealousy

Luís Vaz de Camões 1524-1580: ‘My errors, ill fortune and passionate love’

Positions

The Cannibal

Entanglement

Your Course

The Love Poets

The Certainty Principle

Heinrich Heine 1797-1856: Nine translations

A Bitter Thing

Way of the World

Absence

Intimation

Duerme, amor mio: four aubades

Memorandum

Propertius c. 50BC-c. 15BC: Translations from the Elegies

I Vastly Prefer It

Period Piece

Specifics

Lilies

From Here to There

The Hours and the Times

Of All Things

Catullus c. 84BC-c. 54BC: Translations from the Carmina

The Persistence of Memory

I Choose You

Stepping Stone

Multiverse

Ars Amatoria

Wild Geese

To Call Oneself ‘The One’

Tibullus c. 54BC-19BC: Translations from the Elegies

It Seems So Long

Mixed Bag

Signs

Unlearning

Alexander Blok 1880-1921: ‘I forgot’

Night and Day

Tell me straight

The Truth About Love

Common or Garden Love Poem

Pierre de Ronsard 1524-1585: ‘These long winter nights’

When You Are Old

Far and away

N.B.

Marceline Desbordes-Valmore 1786-1859: ‘Apart’

Heavy Weather

What’s Left

The Woman

Translations from The Greek Anthology

That Time of the Month

Bodies

Alexander Pushkin 1799-1837: ‘I Loved You’

The Kissing Gate

Wolf Moon

An English Cocksman Foresees His Life

Bad Press

Rules of the Game

Song With Double Music

All

Félix Arvers 1806-1850: ‘A Secret’

Il Gran Rifiuto

In Mind

The Gift Horse

On Root

Prognosis

Epitaph

For Alison, with infinite love

as usual

as always

whatever happens

i mo chroí go deo

That woman would set sodden straw on fire.

—Theodore Roethke, ‘The Partner’

So io ben ch’a voler chiuder in versi

suo’ laudi, fora stanco

chi piú degna la mano a scriver porse.

—Petrarch, Canzoniere, XXIX

Who calls her two-faced? Faces she has three;

The first inscrutable, for the outer world;

The second shrouded in self-contemplation;

The third, her face of love,

Once for an endless moment turned on me.

—Robert Graves, ‘The Three-Faced’

Preface

The first edition of Love Poems appeared in September 2012 and consisted of poems written and a few translations made over the space of a year, from summer 2011 to the summer of the following year. Having taken advantage of the opportunity to revise and expand the original book with newer love poems and translations, my intention now is to carry on repeating this process at intervals for as long as I’m able. The sheer volume of subsequent poems and translations which have come along in these past few months since the first edition of Love Poems was published (taking me completely by surprise, I might add, and the cause of great delight) has meant that I wanted and have now been able to incorporate the newer material with the (slightly) older. Of course it’s not usual to issue a second, revised edition of a book so soon after publication of the first and I can’t hope to expand and re-publish the book on this regular a basis, more’s the pity, but then it’s not usual—not for me at any rate—to have written so much so quickly as I have in the final four months of 2012. I want Love Poems to continue to grow with new poems, original and in translation, every so often as time goes by. The book will be, I hope, an ongoing project.

In a note to his 2005 volume The Rope-Makers: Fifty-Six Love Poems, the Northern Irish poet Michael Longley speaks of his conviction of love poetry being at the very centre of the poetic enterprise as a whole, likening various different forms of verse to the spokes of a wheel: when traced back to the centre love poetry is right there at the hub. Likewise John Stammers, in his introduction to The Picador Book of Love Poems, observes: "The poetry of love is unlike any other.