You Are My Joy and Pain

Love Poems

Naomi Long Madgett

• Editore: Wayne State University Press
• Anno: 2020
• ISBN:
  9780814348024
• Argomento: Literatura
• Categoria: Poesía americana

You Are My Joy and Pain is Naomi Long Madgett's latest and possibly most endearing poetry collection. Bill Harris, a 2011 Kresge Foundation Eminent Artist, said of the book, "Even with the evidence of over a half-century or more of first-rate poetic artistry by Madgett, this collection is a breath-arresting surprise and delight. Poem-by-poem and section-by-section amaze. Each poem in the collection is a master class in technique and in her ability to transpose an idea into a tightly composed example of the craft of poetry." You Are My Joy and Pain receives its name from the Billie Holiday song "Don't Explain" and is divided into three parts. The first part, "A Promise of Sun, " contains fourteen poems relating to the hopeful and joyful beginning of a new relationship. The second part, "Trinity: A Dream Sequence, " consists of twenty poems with religious imagery and encompasses both the beginning and the end of a relationship. The third part, "Stormy Weather, " includes thirty-two poems that relate to the heartbreaking experience of a love gone wrong. These are not love poems in the abstract—the richness with which Madgett writes hints at the firsthand experience of a lifetime of loving. While several anthologies of love poems exist in the world, it is rare to find a single-author collection that so closely examines love in all of its messy and beautiful layers. Readers will identify with the hope and disappointment that Madgett presents in these poems.

Stormy Weather

Misconception

I shall remember how we met and parted

upon a hill at dusk of every day

to greet the first star in its shy appearance

and bid farewell the flaming sun’s last ray.

Oh, when we met, Apollo in his glory

cast all his radiant beauty on your hair,

and twilight’s gleaming roseate hues were mingled

with morning stars that were still lingering there.

What witchery the purple shadow uses

on darkening hillsides in the setting sun!

I used to think your eyes were truly lighted

with precious gems and pure gold finely spun.

Now that I see you, not in flame and sunshine

but by the frigid bleakness of the sea,

my sad heart whispers just how dull and tarnished

and stripped of gold you have turned out to be.

Where Do We Go?

Where do we go, my love? Where do we go?

The silver of young trees to ash has blown;

the sun’s bright gold is but a burned-out flame.

Where do we go, Love, after love has flown?

We sing but empty songs with weary voices;

with weary hearts we mourn for what has fled;

a little spark that kept our world from darkness.

Where do we go, Love, when that spark is dead?

Like driftwood drifting idly in a stream,

like silent ghosts in a bewildered dream,

like hearts that are not what they used to seem,

we wander, Love—where, after love has gone?

Where do we go, my love? Where do we go?

To bury love in cold, responseless sod

or do we weep to drown the love we feel,

or do we laugh? Or do we search for God?

Seasons Have to Pass

The frail warm dream lay shattered like a glass,

a thousand fragments crushed beneath your feet.

(Time is not stagnant: seasons have to pass.

Farewell, my dream, left wounded in the street.)

A cold wind blew like winter in July.

The doubtful ember sputtered in the rain.

(All lovely things must go; all dreams must die.

Not sighs or tears can bring them back again.)

Some dreams fade like the fragrance of a rose;

some fall and crash like fine and fragile glass,

but none can stay. The golden minute goes.

(Time is not stagnant; seasons have to pass.)

After Parting

Yes, I did suffer though the changing seasons

turned green to gold and gold to barren gray.

The moon did tarnish, and it had its reasons

and sullen dawn blurred into sunless day.

So well you knew me that you did not wonder

if parting would condemn me to the pit.

You knew your words would rock my earth like thunder;

you never had a minute’s doubt of it.

You knew, and yet you let the darkness take me.

Firm in your knowledge, still you went away.

Without a backward glance you could forsake me;

without regret you tore the mirth from May.

Yet in my heart you have been pardoned fully

for I no longer question destiny.

I know you felt compelled to go as truly

as Christ did when He turned to Calvary.

Funereal

I have dug you a grave

and laid you away in a cedar box

amid a mountain of tissue paper

and blue ribbons

and the delicate scent of age-old dreams.

I have buried all that I could

but there is still left

a quick, sharp pain

like a grain of salt in a wound.

How Shall I Face the Dawn?

How shall I face the dawn whose restless sleep

is tempest-torn and weigh...