Dorothy Parker: Resume

Razors pain you;
Rivers are damp;
Acids stain you;
And drugs cause cramp.
Guns aren't lawful;
Nooses give;
Gas smells awful;
You might as well live.

Oscar Wilde: The Ballad of Reading Gaol (Exerpt From)

Yet each man kills the thing he loves
By each let this be heard,
Some do it with a bitter look,
Some with a flattering word,
The coward does it with a kiss,
The brave man with a sword!

Some kill their love when they are young,
And some when they are old;
Some strangle with the hands of Lust,
Some with the hands of Gold:
The kindest use a knife, because
The dead so soon grow cold.

Some love too little, some too long,
Some sell, and others buy;
Some do the deed with many tears,
And some without a sigh:
For each man kills the thing he loves,
Yet each man does not die.

Edgar Allan Poe: A Dream Within a Dream

Take this kiss upon the brow!
And, in parting from you now,
Thus much let me avow --
You are not wrong, who deem
That my days have been a dream;
Yet if hope has flown away
In a night, or in a day,
In a vision, or in none,
Is it therefore the less gone?
All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.



I stand amid the roar
Of a surf-tormented shore,
And I hold within my hand
Grains of the golden sand --
How few! yet how they creep
Through my fingers to the deep,
While I weep -- while I weep!
O God! can I not grasp
Them with a tighter clasp?
O God! can I not save
One from the pitiless wave?
Is all that we see or seem
But a dream within a dream?.

Pablo Neruda: One Hundred Love Sonnets: XVII (Translated by Mark Eisner)

I don’t love you as if you were a rose of salt, topaz,
or arrow of carnations that propagate fire:
I love you as one loves certain obscure things,
secretly, between the shadow and the soul.

I love you as the plant that doesn’t bloom but carries
the light of those flowers, hidden, within itself,
and thanks to your love the tight aroma that arose
from the earth lives dimly in my body.

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where,
I love you directly without problems or pride:
I love you like this because I don’t know any other way to love,

except in this form in which I am not nor are you,
so close that your hand upon my chest is mine,
so close that your eyes close with my dreams.

Robert Desnos: I Have Dreamed of You So Much (Translator Unknown)

I have dreamed of you so much that you are no longer real.

Is there still time for me to reach your breathing body, to kiss your mouth and make your dear voice come alive again?


I have dreamed of you so much that my arms, grown used to being crossed on my chest as I hugged your shadow, would perhaps not bend to the shape of your body.

For faced with the real form of what has haunted me and governed me for so many days and years, I would surely become a shadow.


O scales of feeling.


I have dreamed of you so much that surely there is no more time for me to wake up.

I sleep on my feet prey to all the forms of life and love, and you, the only one who counts for me today,

I can no more touch your face and lips than touch the lips and face of some passerby.

I have dreamed of you so much, have walked so much, talked so much, slept so much with your phantom,

that perhaps the only thing left for me is to become a phantom among phantoms,

a shadow a hundred times more shadow than the shadow that moves

and goes on moving, brightly, over the sundial of your life.

W. H. Auden: The More Loving One

Looking up at the stars, I know quite well
That, for all they care, I can go to hell,
But on earth indifference is the least
We have to dread from man or beast.

How should we like it were stars to burn
With a passion for us we could not return?
If equal affection cannot be,
Let the more loving one be me.

Admirer as I think I am
Of stars that do not give a damn,
I cannot, now I see them, say
I missed one terribly all day.

Were all stars to disappear or die,
I should learn to look at an empty sky
And feel its total dark sublime,
Though this might take me a little time.

A. E. Housman: He would not stay for me, and who can wonder

He would not stay for me, and who can wonder?

He would not stay for me to stand and gaze.

I shook his hand, and tore my heart in sunder,

And went with half my life about my ways

Christina Davis: The Primer

She said, I love you.

He said, Nothing.

(As if there were just one

of each word and the one

who used it, used it up).

In the history of language

the first obscenity was silence.

Fujiwara Kimikage: A Poem

Was it a previous life
Which binds our fates, decrees that now
My feelings must be stirred --
Rushing into love with you, so hidden
Like the peak of Mount Tsukuba from my sight?