Because National Poetry Month hasn't yet ended

[randy_byers]

I Love You

I love you I can say nothing else
the music has entranced me I
love you the music knows better than I
do how much I love you it is as
clear as dawn's early light I love
you and whether or not you love me
can't matter you are dead but I
still love you and nobody else
but you you are stuck with my dumb
adoration just the way this CD must
play the same song again and again
I love you dude I love you

Tom Disch (1940-2008)

Comments

[holyoutlaw.livejournal.com]

That's heart wrenching. Did he write it after his lover died?

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

I guess I really don't know. Certainly by the time he posted it to his LiveJournal it was after Naylor's death, but I have no idea when he composed it or whether it was published previously. Nor can I find the date of Naylor's death after cursory googling, so I don't know how long after his death this poem was posted.

[holyoutlaw.livejournal.com]

I always figured (with no evidence to support or contradict) that his poetry postings were soon after writing the poem.

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

I figured it the same way, but I don't know for sure and was also thrown off by my inability to ascertain when Naylor died. When I first read the poem the day he posted it, I read it as a primal expression of drunken sentiment, but now I'm struck by the artistry of it -- the way that "it is as clear as dawn's early light" suggests the poet has been up all night thinking about his lost love. So now I suspect it was more consciously crafted than I originally assumed. It's still a lot rawer emotionally than the other poetry of Disch's I've read.

[maryread.livejournal.com]

nice

kinda cummings, both theme and syntax

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

hmm now that you mention it

In the Wilds There's a Grass Mat

[ron-drummond.livejournal.com]

from The Book of Songs, c. 1000 BCE



In the wilds there's a grass mat
damp with dew, damp and cool,
and there's you, O so beautiful:
eyes crystalline, face exquisite.
We happened upon one another
and O you gave all that I wanted.

In the wilds there's a grass mat
thick with dew, thick and cool,
and there's you, O so beautiful:
face exquisite as crystalline eyes.
We happened upon one another,
and hidden away here, we shine.



.

Re: In the Wilds There's a Grass Mat

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

Yeah, songs. I thought the Disch had a songlike quality too, with all the repetition. "I love you" as refrain.