He would not stay for me, and who can wonder
A. E. Housman, 1859 – 1936

He would not stay for me, and who can wonder?
He would not stay for me to stand and gaze.
I shook his hand, and tore my heart in sunder,
And went with half my life about my ways.

The Dreams of the Dreamer
By Georgia Douglas Johnson

The dreams of the dreamer
Are life-drops that pass
The break in the heart
To the soul’s hour-glass.

The songs of the singer
Are tones that repeat
The cry of the heart
‘Till it ceases to beat.

Georgia Douglas Johnson was born in Atlanta, Georgia, on September 10, 1880. Her collections of poetry include The Heart of a Woman (Cornhill Company, 1918) and Share My World (Halfway House, 1962). She died in 1966.

If Tears Could Build A Stairway
Author: Unknown

If tears could build a stairway,
and memories a lane.
I would walk right up to Heaven
and bring you back again.

A thousand words won’t bring you back,
I know because I’ve tried;
And neither will a million tears,
I know because I’ve cried.

Remembering you is easy,
I do it every day.
My missing you is heartache
that never goes away.

No farewell words were spoken,
No time to say “Goodbye”.
You were gone before I knew it,
and only God knows why.

My heart still aches with sadness,
and secret tears still flow.
What it meant to love you –
No one can ever know.

But now I know you want me
to mourn for you no more;
To remember all the happy times
life still has much in store.

Since you’ll never be forgotten,
I pledge to you today~
A hollowed place within my heart
is where you’ll always stay.

No one knows who wrote this poem, and there are numerous variations, but if you’ve lost someone dear to you then you know how this poem covers many of the emotions of loss. I usually don’t post anonymous poems, but a dear friend sent me this one (actually a variation of it). After she sent it, I knew I wanted to use it. It’s feelings that I have felt over and over.

Q
Hannah Sanghee Park, 1986

May I master love, undo its luster
do in the thing that makes us lust?

May I speed through the body’s sinew
to marrow? Or is toiling a part of

the gaining of trust? May I pare and narrow
your body down, and open it to my

cupidity’s arrow? May I find my
response to body’s unanswered call,

(if the want leaves you wanting, at all)?

&A
Hannah Sanghee Park, 1986

Being a matter
of importance, there

is no mastering
this but to bind you,

thrash and all, to the
mast. O you won’t reach

irresistible song,
but the rope will teach

you the body’s give.
Go down to the bone,

then tell me again
there what matters. It

will give you every
-thing you need to know

about what I cannot tell you and then,
just maybe then, could it be enough.

About This Poem

“This is a two-part poem, the ‘Q’ of a ‘Q-and-A.’ The speaker is urgent, urging this line of inquiry to get to the heart of the matter. ‘And-A’ will answer in the way all matters of the heart are answered: with patience.” – Hannah Sanghee Park

Hannah Sanghee Park is the author of “The Same-Different,” which won the 2014 Walt Whitman Award and is forthcoming from Louisiana University Press in 2015. She attends the Writing for Screen & Television Program at the University of Southern California School of Cinematic Arts and lives in Los Angeles.

To me, fair friend, you never can be old (Sonnet 104)
by William Shakespeare

To me, fair friend, you never can be old,
For as you were when first your eye I ey’d,
Such seems your beauty still. Three winters cold,
Have from the forests shook three summers’ pride,
Three beauteous springs to yellow autumn turn’d,
In process of the seasons have I seen,
Three April perfumes in three hot Junes burn’d,
Since first I saw you fresh, which yet are green.
Ah! yet doth beauty like a dial-hand,
Steal from his figure, and no pace perceiv’d;
So your sweet hue, which methinks still doth stand,
Hath motion, and mine eye may be deceiv’d:
For fear of which, hear this thou age unbred:
Ere you were born was beauty’s summer dead.
In this poem, Shakespeare uses his first memories of meeting his lover as inspiration for this poem. This sonnet makes it clear that the passion he feels for his male lover (possibly the Earl of Southhampton) is one of the most intense experiences of his life. His “fair friend” is the most important thing in his life. Their love is eternal, and his lover is eternal, both in beauty and spirit.

The three Aprils and three Junes suggest that the two were together for just three years. There was also a three years age difference between the 18 year old Shakespeare and the 21 year old Southampton at the time of Shakespeare’s marriage to Anne Hathaway. Some critics of this method of interpreting the three years argue that the poet’s use of ‘three’ years specifically may be simply a poetic convention (based on the significance of the number three in the Bible) and not a literal reference to the time he has spent with his lover. 

Whatever the case may be, Saturday, April 23, 2016 marked the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death. Today, actually marks the 452 year of his baptism which is the closest evidence we have to knowing Shakespeare’s date of birth.

Tattoo
by Nick Flynn

You do know, right,
that between the no-

longer & the still-
to-come

you are being continually
tattooed, inked

with the skulls of
everyone

you’ve ever loved—the you
& the you

& the you & the you—you don’t
sit in a chair, thumb

through a binder, pick a
design, it simply

happens each time you
bring your fingers to your face

to inhale him back into you . . .
tiny skulls, some of us are

covered. You, love, could

simply tattoo an open
door, light

pouring in from somewhere
outside, you

could make your body a door
so it appears you

(let her fill you) are made
of light.

About This Poem

“A parenthetical appears in the last couplet of this poem, an aside I have no memory writing ‘(let her fill you),’ interrupting the hermetic seal of the poem, a wind blowing through an open door, just before we leave.”—Nick Flynn

Nick Flynn is the author of My Feelings (Graywolf Press, 2015). He teaches at the University of Houston and splits his time between Houston, Texas, and Brooklyn, New York.