SONNET 2 [Handsome Brown Eyes]

Ah handsome brown eyes— ah eyes that turn away—
ah burning sighs; ah tears that stretch so far;
ah night I vainly wait for, without a star;
ah luminous and vainly returning day—
oh sad complaints; oh love’s stubborn play;
oh lost hours; oh wasted pain and war;
oh thousand deaths, each in a tightened snare;
oh sullen evils that design against my way.
Ah laugh, ah forehead, hair, arm, hand, and finger,
ah plaintive lute, viola, bow, and singer—
so many flames to engulf one single woman!
I despair of you; you carry so many fires
to touch my secret places and desires,
but not one spark flies back, to make you human

SONNET 13 [The Ivy and the Tree]

Oh, if I were taken to that handsome breast
and ravished by him for whom I seem to die,
if I could live with him through all of my
short days, free of the envy of the rest;
if, clinging to me, he’d say, “We’re so blessed,
dear Love; let’s be contented just to lie
together, proving to flood and stormy sky
how life can never break our close caress”—
if I could tighten my arms around him, cling
as ivy surrounds a tree with its circling,
then death would be welcome to envy and destroy.
And if then he’d give me another thirsty kiss
till my spirit flew away through his sweet lips,

I would die instead of live, and with more joy.

SONNET 18 [Kiss Me Again]

Kiss me again, rekiss me, and then kiss
me again, with your richest, most succulent
kiss; then adore me with another kiss, meant
to steam out fourfold the very hottest hiss
from my love-hot coals. Do I hear you moaning? This
is my plan to soothe you: ten more kisses, sent
just for your pleasure. Then, both sweetly bent

on love, we’ll enter joy through doubleness,
and we’ll each have two loving lives to tend:
one in our single self, one in our friend.
I’ll tell you something honest now, my Love:
it’s very bad for me to live apart.
There’s no way I can have a happy heart
without some place outside myself to move.

SONNET 14 [The Point of Death]

While my eyes can still pour out fountains of tears,
mourning our shared hours, gone now, so long gone;
while my slow sighs and sobs can still bemoan
the loss of you in a voice someone might hear;
while my hands can still caress this lute to clear
praises for any grace you might have shown,
and while my spirit remembers to bend alone
on you, on nothing that’s outside your sphere—
I’ll never want to reach the point of death!
Though when my eyes grow dry and this voicing breath
is broken and my hand is powerless,
and when my spirit takes its mortal flight,
beating with no more signs of love—yes, then, I’ll press
death to come and cover my clearest day with night.

First published by The University of Chicago Press, 2006