[FOsen]

Always liked this one, by Pasadena homeboy, Hank Coulette (dead now, 22 years). Donald Justice and Robert Mezey edited his Collected- it's worth finding - he's wonderful.

Postscript

There are some questions one should know by heart.
A world without them must be shadowless.
Who was it said, Come let us kiss and part?

The one who asked, Why is the apple tart?
And dreamed the serpent was the letter S?
There are some questions one should know by heart.

It was the thorn that plotted to outsmart
The cunning of the rose with such success.
Who was it said, Come let us kiss and part?

There are interiors none may map or chart:
In your voice, crying, was a wilderness.
There are some questions one should know by heart.

Your ape and echo from the bitter start,
This mirror mourns your image’s caress.
Who was it said, Come let us kiss and part?

We had too little craft and too much art.
We thought two noes would make a perfect yes.
There are some questions one should know by heart.
Who was it said, Come let us kiss and part?


Henri Coulette

[Mark Allinson]

Who was it said, Come let us kiss and part?

Ooo, ooo, I know, I know!

So I'll save a postmodern student or two a Google - here it is:


61

SINCE there's no help, come let us kiss and part;
Nay, I have done, you get no more of me,
And I am glad, yea glad with all my heart
That thus so cleanly I myself can free;
Shake hands forever, cancel all our vows,
And when we meet at any time again,
Be it not seen in either of our brows
That we one jot of former love retain.
Now at the last gasp of Love's latest breath,
When, his pulse failing, Passion speechless lies,
When Faith is kneeling by his bed of death,
And Innocence is closing up his eyes,
Now if thou wouldst, when all have given him over,
From death to life thou mightst him yet recover.

– from Idea, by Michael Drayton (1563-1631)

[Andrew Frisardi]

I’ve been meaning to add this to this thread for a while:

Revisiting Fairwarp

Remember the soft wind and the distant voices
Riding the moist air of Spring over the harrowed fields
In March, and the horses, three of them, gamboling.
The first chiff-chaffs teetered in the thornbush, timidly
Anticipating the April sun and the first dried bents,
The advent of insects. Even in the cool late-Winter evening
Above the cold cabbage-patch the gnats would swarm
Finding a warm pocket or column of rising air.
It was there we would heel in the new young plants
Holding the damp soil with a blunt dibber. Thick cakes of mud
Like parathas clung to our boots, and we killed each wireworm singly,
If the clodhopping robin didn’t pick it off first. The blackbird
Angelically sang in the bare apple-tree opening his orange bill
In the watery air, or chased his heavy ladies on the lawn.
The woods nearby were waterlogged still, the old cart-tracks impassable
Where the charcoal-burners gathered the cordwood, and once
Long ago the green glades rang with the noise of forges.
Now they are still but for the bulky doves stuffed full of green
And grain, puffing and blowing like bellows, in the bare branches.
Here the quarrelsome jay screams at every event
And the exotic pheasant from time to time blares unseen
In the bottoms. The bright-painted woodpecker yells,
And the long-tailed tit gently warns of marauders.

It was dark by six and you used to make tea and crumpets
While I cleaned off the spade in the garage.
The house was still in the evening, and we never thought,
Sitting quietly there by the splitting logs and the dog that dreamed,
Of that unknown land of tears, and its mystery
Only a few sodden acres away.

--Peter Russell (London, 1963)