“i’ll wipe the salt off of my skin/ admit that i got it wrong/ and there is grey between the lines”

For Poetry Monday:

Love, Louis Untermeyer

You close your book and put it down,
    As one might drop a tiresome task;
And, with what tries to be a frown,
    You turn and ask:

“How can you care one hour for me
    Unless your love is all a sham?
‘Childish and cheap’—but can I be
    More than I am?

"Your poet knows that love delights
    Only its equals, near or far ...
‘We love the things we love,’ he writes,
   ‘For what they are.’”

You serious child, how can you place
    Such utter credence in a song?
It is, I grant, a lovely phrase;
    But it is wrong.

Why look, my darling, at the world
    Rolling in blood and murderous flame.
And what’s this life? A brief torch hurled
    To darkness, whence it came.

The world is easy to revile
    Where much is false and little true.
And yet we live in it, and smile.
    —And love it, too.

Cease, then, to talk of wrong or right;
    Finalities are cold and far.
We love the things we love in spite
    Of what they are.


Untermeyer (1885-1977) was a poet, anthologist, and critic. The quote in stanza 3 argued with is from Robert Frost’s “Hyla Brook.”

---L.

Subject quote from Leave a Trace, CHVRCHES.