I know of no short poem in the English language that packs so much magic and memorability into so few lines, except perhaps for Anon’s masterpiece (mistress-piece?), the early 16th-century lyric known as Western Wind.īoth poems share a deceptive simplicity of diction and seductive cadence, the evocation of the natural world as the proper theatre of love, and an air of the mysterious – but the Graves lyric, I think, reaches even farther and deeper into the psychic hinterland of besotted love than does the earlier poem. She tells her love while half asleep by Robert Graves She tells her love while half asleep, In the dark hours, With half-words whispered low: As Earth turns in her winter sleep And puts out grass and flowers Despite the snow, Despite the falling snow. Ailbhe Ní Ghearbhuigh's latest collection is The Coast Road (Gallery Press, 2016) Is seinnim seoithín do mo leannán tonn ar thonn leathrann ar leathrann, mo thine ghealáin mar bhairlín thíos faoi mo rogha a thoghas féin ón iasacht. Ailbhe Darcy's two collections are Imaginary Menagerie (2011) and Insistence (due May 2018), both with Bloodaxeįor unadulterated sensuality, I refer you to any number of poems by Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill, although Fáilte bhéal na Sionna don iasc does end on a surprisingly tender note: I don't suppose a marriage could amount to much if it didn't have a pair of infatuated teenagers hidden in it. There are many fine poems about the grown-up parts of love, but it's as infatuated teenagers that we learn romance, and as infatuated teenagers that we practice romance, all the rest of our lives.
I should probably feel embarrassed at telling Ireland that this is my favourite love poem, but am unabashed.
(Love is monomaniacal, love is appalling, love is secret, love is childish, love rips you from the bosom of your family, love is woozy, love is ravishing, love is scrumdiddlyumptious.) By then it had already been echoing around inside me for years, telling me the truth about love.
I met my future husband at 19, and I wrote this poem in a notebook for him. Ailbhe Darcy What other words could there be for what I felt, at 13 or so, when I laid eyes on a certain "gold, dark boy", but Chimborazo, Cotopaxi? Sure, these words may at times have been arbitrarily attached to other, more mountainy objects, but here, in this poem, they find their true home.
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