Try this one by U.A. Fanthorpe....
THE ABSENT-MINDED LOVER'S APOLOGY
I would like you think I love you warmly
Like brown cat yawning among sheets in the linen cupboard.
I would like you to think I love you resourcefully
Like rooftop starlings posting chuckles down the flue.
I would like you to think I love you extravagantly
Like black cat embracing the floor when you pick up the can-opener.
I would like you to think I love you accurately
Like Baskerville kern that fits its place to a T.
I would like you to think I love you with hurrahs and halleujahs
Like dog whippetting at you down the intricate hillside.
I would like you to think I love you wittily
like
pottery Cox that lurks in the fruit-bowl under the Granyy Smiths.
I would like you to think I love you pacifically and for ever
Like collared doves on the whitebeam's domestic branch.
I would like you to think I love you chronologically
like second hand solemnly navigating the clock.
And O I want to love you, not in the absent tense, but in the here and the now
Like a present-minded lover.
(from Hand in Hand, an anthology of love poems compiled by carol Ann Duffy)
Vivek Narayanan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
How is it possible not to love this poem? (I say this not just
because I have someone in mind.)
Frank O'Hara, "Having a Coke with You"
is even more fun than going top San Sebastian, Irun, Hendaye,
Biarritz, Bayonne
or being sick to my stomach on the Travesera de Gracia in
Barcelona
partly because in your orange shirt you look like a better
happier St. Sebastian
partly because of my love for you, partly because of your love
for yoghurt
partly because of the fluorescent orange tulips around the
birches
partly because of the secrecy our smiles take on before people
and statuary
it is hard to believe when I'm with you that there can be
anything as still
as solemn as unpleasantly definitive as statuary when right in
front of it
in the warm New York 4 o'clock light we are drifting back and
forth
between each other like a tree breathing through its spectacles
and the portrait show seems to have no faces in it at all, just
paint
you suddenly wonder why in the world anyone ever did them
I look
at you and I would rather look at you than all the portraits in
the world
except possibly for the Polish Rider occasionally and anyway it's
in the Frick
which thank heavens you haven't gone to yet so we can go
together the first time
and the fact that you move so beautifully more or less takes
care of Futurism
just as at home I never think of the Nude Descending a Staircase or
at a rehearsal a single drawing of Leonardo or Michaelangelo
that used to wow me
and what good does all the research of the impressionists do
them
when they never got the right person to stand near the tree
when the sun sank
or for that matter Marino Marini when he didn't pick the rider
as carefully
as the horse
it seems they were all cheated of some
marvelous experience
which is not going to go wasted on me which is why I'm
telling you about it.
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