From: Parnell to Queenie ...

Paris......

I have no pictures of you now
I didn't keep the few you left me:
notes...a handful of scraps...
fraying to powder at the edges
fading
on the age-stained folds.
But you are always before me
like that apt word on the tip of the tongue
that doesn't come
--a certain expression on faces
that turn the inquisitive head
....where did I see that before?
on whom?
Your voice with one woman,
your walk with another
...the flurry of an entrance
...the hat askew
your neck before me, your back,
you hands raising a cup.
You are vanishing
bit by bit
like broken glass smoothed
in the roll of the sea.

And I thought...isn't it the same
with the relics of the saints,
a tooth here,
this one's clothes, that one's handkerchief, yet another's pen.

And then I realised that I'm a relic of you,
my hair you ran your fingers through
my lips where you laid your mouth.

You didn't fall with the white flakes of your letters
I tore up on the Pont Neuf.
The river didn't swallow you along with them.
You last while I do.

~ by Padraig O Snodaigh
From the Irish, trans. by Gabriel Fitzmaurice

What a beautiful poem ... talking about the love that is never lost, despite its physical realities, because "you last while I do". It does express a different sentiments to "if you forget me" ... but both poems are equally loving in its own way ...

Love is a many-splendored thing ...

Love is a many splendored thing
It's the April rose that only grows in the early spring
Love is nature's way of giving a reason to be living
The golden crown that makes a man a king
Once on a high and windy hill
In the morning mist two lovers kissed and the world stood still
Then your fingers touched my silent heart and taught it how to sing
Yes, true love's a many splendored thing

~ a song by Four Aces

What am I to you ...

What am I to you
Tell me darling true
To me you are the sea
Fast as you can be
And deep the shade of blue

When you're feeling low
To whom else do you go
See I cry if you hurt
I'd give you my last shirt
Because I love you so

If my sky should fall
Would you even call
Opened up my heart
I never want to part
I'm giving you the ball

When I look in your eyes
I can feel the butterflies
I love you when you're blue
Tell me darlin' true
What am I to you

Yeah well if my sky should fall
Would you even call
Opened up my heart
Never wanna part
I'm giving you the ball

When I look in your eyes
I can feel the butterflies
Could you find a love in me
Could you carve me in a tree
Don't fill my heart with lies

I will you love when you're blue
Tell me darlin' true
What am I to you
What am I to you
What am I to you

~ Norah Jones

Again and again ...

Again and again, however we know the landscape of love
and the little churchyard there, with its sorrowing names,
and the frighteningly silent abyss into which the others
fall: again and again the two of us walk out together
under the ancient trees, lie down again and again
among the flowers, face to face with the sky.

~ Rainer Maria Rilke (translated by Stephen Mitchell)

The life that I have ...

The life that I have
Is all that I have
And the life that I have
Is yours

The love that I have
Of the life that I have
Is yours and yours and yours.

A sleep I shall have
A rest I shall have
Yet death will be but a pause
For the peace of my years
In the long green grass
Will be yours and yours and yours.

~ Leo Marks
It is believed that Leo wrote this poem about his girlfriend, Ruth, who was killed in an air crash. What an amazingly loving poem ...

I am very bothered ...

I am very bothered when I think
of the bad things I have done in my life.
Not least that time in the chemistry lab
when I held a pair of scissors by the blades
and played the handles
in the naked lilac flame of the Bunsen burner;
then called your name, and handed them over.

O the unrivalled stench of branded skin
as you slipped your thumb and middle finger in,
then couldn't shake off the two burning rings. Marked,
the doctor said, for eternity.

Don't believe me, please, if I say
that was just my butterfingered way, at thirteen,
of asking you if you would marry me.

~ Simon Armitage

This is one of my favourite poems when I was at school ... it is amazing to have found it again now ...