Poetry – Smehur

As Meat Loves Salt: On the meaning of the title

This is the second post in the series about the book As Meat Loves Salt by M. McCann, which has wounded me so deeply that months after reading it, I still can’t pass a full hour awake without thinking about it. In the first post, I made some introductory remarks and then talked about the cover and the blurb. In this one, I’ll talk about the title, and what it means.

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A Wish

By C. G. Rossetti

I wish I were a little bird
That out of sight doth soar,
I wish I were a song once heard
But often pondered o’er,
Or shadow of a lily stirred
By wind upon the floor,
Or echo of a loving word
Worth all that went before,
Or memory of a hope deferred
That springs again no more.

Image: Butterfly II by getcarter

The Garden of Proserpine

By A. C. Swinburne

Here, where the world is quiet;
         Here, where all trouble seems
Dead winds’ and spent waves’ riot
         In doubtful dreams of dreams;
I watch the green field growing
For reaping folk and sowing,
For harvest-time and mowing,
         A sleepy world of streams.

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[i carry your heart with me(i carry it in]

i carry your heart with me(i carry it in

my heart)i am never without it(anywhere

i go you go,my dear;and whatever is done

by only me is your doing,my darling)

i fear

no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want

no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)

and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant

and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows

(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud

and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows

higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)

and this is the wonder that’s keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)

E. E. Cummings

Dream Love

I did not deem it half so sweet
To feel thy gentle hand,
As in a dream thy soul to greet
Across wide leagues of land.

Untouched more near to draw to you
Where, amid radiant skies,
Glimmered thy plumes of iris hue,
My Bird of Paradise.

Let me dream only with my heart,
Love first, and after see:
Know thy diviner counterpart
Before I kneel to thee.

So in thy motions all expressed
Thy angel I may view:
I shall not on thy beauty rest,
But beauty’s self in you.

George William Russell
Image: Hengki24 @ DeviantArt

Spring Forward, Fall Back

In November, the hours are slower;
winding down weather, the fresh lather
of a first snow. The winter,
with its months of hospital afternoons

waits huddled just over the border.
And ice will make all the distances
that much further. Speak now, kiss now
before the river freezes altogether.

Troy Jollimore