A POEM FOR VALENTINE’S DAY
In honor of Valentine’s Day next week, here’s my favorite love poem ever. It’s a character sketch, beautifully rendered in twenty-four short lines, leaving such clear impressions both of the loved one and the lover/narrator that we feel as if we know them intimately by the end of the poem.
I think Nims’ skill at using the particular to make an observation about the human condition—in this case, about the nature of love—is something every writer can learn from and apply to his or her own writing. And oh, the images and language of his particulars! Great stuff.
LOVE POEM
My clumsiest dear, whose hands shipwreck vases,
At whose quick touch all glasses chip and ring,
Whose palms are bulls in china, burs in linen,
And have no cunning with any soft thing
The refugee uncertain at the door
You make at home; deftly you steady
The drunk clambering on his undulant floor.
Unpredictable dear, the taxi drivers’ terror,
Shrinking from far headlights pale as a dime
Yet leaping before red apoplectic streetcars—
Misfit in any space. And never on time.
A wrench in clocks and the solar system. Only
With words and people and love you move at ease.
In traffic of wit expertly manoeuvre
And keep us, all devotion, at your knees.
Forgetting your coffee spreading on our flannel,
Your lipstick grinning on our coat,
So gayly in love’s unbreakable heaven
Our souls on glory of spilt bourbon float.
Be with me, darling, early and late. Smash glasses—
I will study wry music for your sake.
For should your hands drop white and empty
All the toys of the world would break.
John Frederick Nims
Do you have a favorite love poem, or favorite lines about love? Give us some food for thought!
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