After Days of Rain and other poems - 2. Part II: Sweetest Grief to Hold

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Sweetest Grief to Hold,

Love Poems for Jimmy

 

もし愛の言葉を書いたら

彼の意味に陥りますかあなた？

彼らの善意を愛撫して 。。。^[4]

 

Poem No. 1 ^[5]

 

If I wrote some words of love to you

Would you fall into their open meaning?

Caress them for their good intentions . . . .

 

That undiscovered concord of chaos,

The guilt, hidden harmony of life,

Beating away a measured metre lost,

Seems the cause of all our disjunctions’ strife.

 

But, what if I said how much I love you,

Pulling up a thousand sweet-rooted words,

Each the more tender with love of you –

Could you lose yourself to the touch of them?

 

If I wrote some words of love for you

Would you then in my love recline?

Allow me to dream myself alive . . . .

 

 

Poem No. 2

 

Poem:

 

In lovely sorrow I sink again

To the depths of a familiar deep,

Like fingers in aging gloves descend

To borrow themselves a state complete.

Around my descent, the white shirts land,

In lines as pure as bleach can render,

While I ask if any understand

The soundless graft of what I tender.

Here where I stand is murky and loud,

With some other’s laughter swirling

As the ever-demand of that crowd,

Who seek division in a pairing.

For who plummets to this depth of mind,

Sorrow save him from the joy he’ll find.

 

Postlude:

 

Ah, to have heart and voice the same,

Skill enough to bleed talent un-lame.

 

 

Poem No. 3

 

I want to love you more

than jealous Time

breath will allow

 

 

Poem No. 4

 

We all love

what we lack

 

and for the now

I lack a lot.

 

Among them, gold and such

and the eyes of esteem

to flow words onto me.

 

Yet, my pauperhood is made

of only one insufficiency;

of but one deficit.

 

For we all love

that which we lack,

and I but lack your love.

 

 

Poem No. 5

 

If upon me one line is writ,

Let it be that I loved you well.

 

 

Poem No. 6

 

Adrift sweet thoughts of you,

I set myself to this –

to dream some part of you

nearer me than this.

 

With all the will to potion,

of staining ink and sighs,

this paper’s the emotion

of the sweet draw of your eyes.

 

So if you this knew,

what could you to me tell

to cast, and help me do

this grand sort of spell.

 

What music braced and steeled

might yet come from me to move,

that with a whisper you’ll yield

to my dreaming dream of love . . .

 

 

Poem No. 7

 

What will they think,

The ones in whose eyes this will be –

From the first seers’ blink

Till long after the end of me.

 

How long will they wonder

About the nature of this drive

To push paper with inpainted ink’s blunder,

And this love an eternity to strive.

 

But they won’t be linked

With we a privileged few,

Who celebrate Nature’s instinct

To sentence us a life with you.

 

But if they who’ll wonder then

Could see what I see now,

They would never ask again

Why through dulcet words I plow.

 

Your eyes would show them

Far better than I can do –

One glance would drive them

To desperate pen and paper too.

 

 

Poem No. 8

 

Sonnet:

 

If I could do this as well as I might –

Bring, say, a pine-clad Rocky Mountain peak

To loom over green valleys in its sight –

Spread for your account, wonders none-too meek,

What would you do if you knew their treasure

As well as that of your own mind glowing,

The greater value of sums to measure

By wanton reason of logic’s showing?

If from mountain’s height down to ocean’s shore

Elements of earth and water conspire

To lend witness to my words heretofore

And let me borrow their great attire –

Would then all the beauty seen in your eyes

Prove my love any better than these sighs?

 

 

Poem No. 9

 

If I said I loved you

and could say it well enough

to raise from it the whole of a human soul . . .

 

What would you say of me?

 

 

Poem No. 10

A fragment

 

Sonnet:

 

The messenger of the morning,

Ascends the sky of the wayward night

With whispers of a coming sight

Greater than the sum of cold stars finding

Their numbers glory in cycles’ height.

 

I look at him in awe, (…)

For all the all he means,

That I envy in every line

The eternal sun he brings.

 

 

Poem No. 11

Messenger of the Morning

 

The messenger of the morning

ascends the sky of wayward night

with whispers of a coming sight

greater than the sum of cold stars finding

their numberless glory in cycles’ height.

 

I look at him in awe,

for all the all he means;

here envy in every line

the sun hard upon his back,

pushing him to ever seek anew

the darkness that he dooms.

 

The circles grow no more with addition,

and I no greater for the attempt,

for when all is sighed and written,

what more to me will be given

than where the herald of the morn was sent.

 

Let me speak to you a fortune –

the hags of Fate can tooth it out –

in syllables of more than breath.

Believe me, for all I can know,

is where the ends will come to meet,

new beginnings have chance to form.

 

So when accounts receive their call,

And if my love were meant for man,

Time becomes equal to the span

Of every ‘I’ I have signed in recall

Concerning how your eyes this love began.

 

Messenger of the morn,

rise up behind my love

and whisper in that ear

of these things I’ve said.

 

Though these rambles lack an order,

and in form are expression unserved,

tell him they lack not my own heart.

 

Messenger of the morning

wake up my love

and deliver to his ear

this rising dream of love.

 

 

Poem No. 12

 

With Bach in one ear

and Roppongi in the other

let me say my words of love.

 

And from the two worlds

we’ll one create

if my words you can return.

 

 

Poem No. 13

 

The gold would corrode around my finger,

and music of the age get forsaken,

both rivers pause in possible linger

if the worth of love were ever proven.

 

But as I am, with eyes unseeing,

with a head unshown to connect,

have no fear of abjuring

bright thoughts with poor words that reflect.

 

About this advice I give to you,

though now stumbling and lame,

take care with what your heart you do

for this wordless want now knows your name

 

And I pray the gold to rust

in torrents down my longing;

an improbability crushed to dust

to prove your love bright and staining.

 

 

Poem No. 14 ^[6]

 

Love in the sky, with eye unblinking,

Watches from her scaffolding-height

My journey to a dawn,

And sends her jealousy to my place

To make company to what I must.

 

Through the night

as a child might run

from the gawks of eyes unkind,

I am haunted by this

and a fear of what could be;

a truth too grand to take.

 

Love has a price

costlier than should be,

the price of finding a thing

cheaper than the wealth of debt

can set a sleepy person free

if the cost of its seeming be.

 

Winter seeps around me

finds me in my every pore,

lacy fingers with icy tongues

slip in ears and between toes

spreading the springs of actions

in her own heat of firebrand.

 

So the winter night I must

with love above and ground below,

both unknowing care of what I trust

to find in another and there bestow

a light of my own sweet hope

rising higher than her unyielding scope.

 

To work so hard

at something too easy

to keep a fear as segregation

from what is a possibility

when chance keeps one too

as a division from you.

 

But now the resolve is made

and reason can keep her thorn

in the crown of cruelty,

no longer can it matter

to someone the likes of me

so long the jape of her royalty.

 

Through the night

one step is met by another

in purposes unkindred

by many a contempt

whose cause might be

to keep a mistake from me.

 

But unmoved by wind and sighs

the cause of this

is measured in increments

different of motives found

by words too often discovered

in the wanting of pity from that eye.

 

I run to the hope I have

that this chance I’ve taken

will be proven to a stave

a greater music not forsaken,

if fresh strength comes to me

to speak this love pf mine.

 

The image of a future yet to be

fills the space where steps cannot,

and brings a peace to seek

with half of me in conspiracy

‘gainst rationale and morning’s madness

as she wakes a fury in the dark.

 

Discipline lacks a mind untraversed

by the ridicule of facts

yet my heart holds your eyes

as rock-solid compass

to my navigator’s task

and that to you I must.

 

And lo, my trip grows old

as around a corner I turn

to find an object of your desire

like symbol of that power;

and every drop black

both you and it control.

 

How wonderful to find it there,

how alive to feel it in my hands

and in my mind relive

the memory of its ride;

the black becoming me

and you between my legs.

 

Love in the sky, with eye unblinking,

Watches from her scaffolding-height

My brain and heart so dreaming

That love to me yet might be right;

And more than a mem’ry might this night free,

For if you knew of my love, might you in love be?

 

Sonnet:

 

If a passion can’t find a form fit to touch,

Amid ever-shifting flows not to be moved,

Then why to all must be barred cunning luck such

As even a painter’s skill has never proved?

When I saw you last, the sun made love to you,

A light hue unseen by human eyes before

Caressed like only imagination might do

When on the brightest form, more brightness might pour.

So, what is here drawn for you cannot say it;

All the power feeble in pen I contend

Cannot with the fresh force of me outlay it,

But as that light held you, so do I intend.

When sun shall next behold your face, take warning;

His touch might not be alone this fair morning.

 

 

Poem No. 15

 

How shall you be

when other loves

have made a home of me

 

Of all the will never-be’s

yours will always stay

the sweetest one to me

if love has value to say

 

 

Poem No. 16

 

What shall happen in the years to come

when other loves have found a home in me

and surprise, your face again to me can become

a torment freed forward to look at me.

From all the never-be’s, you will always stay

the song I never sung, the dream I only dreamt,

the sweetest one to me, the one I longed to say,

but on the truth I hung, and all the hope and cobwebs went.

What good the courage to tell you of my love

when you couldn’t love as I hoped you could,

then finding the fool in me, looking like the words above,

I struggled with I began as best I could.

But when the future holds your face to me

A kinder torture I shall never see.

 

Love beyond the power to hold

Beyond every pain of me

Forever wants and wants again

I’ll want you as long as I can

But of misery I have told

To kiss the fingers that

In love and love again

Bring you to me

How shall your face then be met

Torment and the sweetest

Through changing memories when it comes

Grief to hold

Like a checking vision sent

The loveliest unrequited

From this time, to there to-come

I’ll kiss each finger and

Will the future make the better of me

Think them the best

With all the loves I could not hold

Since you I could not.

Will they all the better see

When they hold

The meaning of what love has told

Your face to me,

For when it comes to there

If love has warmed to me,

Against you

Then precession we will seem

They must be weighed

To the very act of love.

For if pain needs compare

Beyond the power to hold

None will match what

I’ll want and want again.

What your love has to say.

 

 

Poem No. 17

Several years later . . .

 

I found an old poem,

A sonnet I had sketched,

And restudied it again,

And it was strange to see

That messenger of the morn,

That had caused me so much pain,

Was able to open a fresh wound –

What love had been,

It was again.

 

 

~

 

 

 

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Endnotes:

[4] “Sweetest Grief to Hold” is a collected section of love poetry written for a Japanese guy only a couple years younger than I, and whom everyone knew as Jimmy. I met him while he was bartending at a ‘gaijin bar’ – which means a weekday watering hole and weekend disco catering to local and international residents. This club, named De-Ja-Vu, was in the Kichijohji section of Tokyo, where I lived. We became friends, and although straight, I came out to him. A mutual friend of ours had already revealed my feelings for him, which seemed to only make us closer.

Wonderful person, he became the muse for my debut novel, and was the model for the fictional Dean in the book. The Round People may be found here in its entirety:

 

 

https://gayauthors.org/story/ac-benus/theroundpeople-anovel/

The epigraph appearing on page 47 is a Japanese translation of the opening stanza to poem No. 1: “If I wrote some words of love to you / Would you fall into their open meaning? / Caress them for their good intentions...”

[5] “ . . . to dream myself alive” makes poetic reference to Oliver Wendell Holmes’ An Evening Thought.

 

 

Oh, when love’s first, sweet stolen kiss

Burned on my boyish brow,

Was that young forehead worn as this?

Was that flushed cheek as now?

Were that wild pulse and throbbing heart

Like these, which vainly strive,

In thankless strains of soulless art

To dream themselves alive?

 

 

 

 

 

 

http://www.public-domain-poetry.com/oliver-wendell-holmes/an-evening-thought-written-at-sea-20202

[6] “Love in the sky, with eye unblinking” For a longer elaboration on the motorcycle ride this poem memorializes, see the chapter titled 2 am from my novel The Round People. The love in the sky here is a reference to the planet Venus active in the early morning sky; she is its messenger too.

 

 

https://www.gayauthors.org/story/ac-benus/theroundpeople-anovel/6

 

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