The Lantern Bearers (Maxfield Parrish, 1908)

 

Poetry and Documentaries

 Last night we went to bed early and lay there each doing our thing. I found Good Poems on my Kindle and giggled at the biographies of the anthologized poets (he shot Marlowe just to watch him die). Then I found out that Wallace Stevens was an executive at an insurance firm and wrote poems during his commute. I had to read you The House was Quiet and the World was Calm. Then I had to read you To His Coy Mistress. Then you asked me about the Metaphysical Poets so I had to read you Valediction Forbidding Mourning. Then you showed me one of your favorite BBC nature documentaries about South America. It's the kind of evening that makes me grateful for every bit of my Boring Little Life (trademark pending). 

Love is Not All (Sonnet XXX)

Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892 –1950)

Love is not all: it is not meat nor drink

Nor slumber nor a roof against the rain; 

Nor yet a floating spar to men that sink 

And rise and sink and rise and sink again; 

Love can not fill the thickened lung with breath, 

Nor clean the blood, nor set the fractured bone; 

Yet many a man is making friends with death 

Even as I speak, for lack of love alone. 

It well may be that in a difficult hour, 

Pinned down by pain and moaning for release, 

Or nagged by want past resolution’s power, 

I might be driven to sell your love for peace, 

Or trade the memory of this night for food. 

It well may be. I do not think I would.