The Rain

by Robert Creeley

All night the sound had

come back again,

and again falls

this quiet, persistent rain.

What am I to myself

that must be remembered,

insisted upon

so often? Is it

that never the ease,

even the hardness,

of rain falling

will have for me

something other than this,

something not so insistent—

am I to be locked in this

final uneasiness.

Love, if you love me,

lie next to me.

Be for me, like rain,

the getting out

of the tiredness, the fatuousness, the semi-

lust of intentional indifference.

Be wet

with a decent happiness.
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Chance Meeting

by Susan Browne

I know him, that man

walking- toward me up the crowded street

of the city, I have lived with him

seven years now, I know his fast stride,

his windy wheatfield hair, his hands thrust

deep in his jacket pockets, hands

that have known my body, touched

its softest part, caused its quick shudders

and slow releasings, I have seen his face

above my face, his mouth smiling, moaning

his eyes closed and opened, I have studied

his eyes, the brown turning gold at the centers,

I have silently watched him lying beside me

in the early morning, I know his loneliness,

like mine, human and sad,

but different, too, his private pain

and pleasure I can never enter even as he comes

closer, past trees and cars, trash and flowers,

steam rising from the manhole covers,

gutters running with rain, he lifts his head,

he sees me, we are strangers again,

and a rending music of desire and loss—

I don’t know him—courses through me,

and we kiss and say, It’s good to see you,

as if we haven’t seen each other in years

when it was just a few hours ago,

and we are shy, then, not knowing

what to say next.

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Old Love and New by Sara Teasdale In my heart the old love Struggled with the new, It was ghostly waking All night through. Dear things, kind things That my old love said, Ranged themselves reproachfully Round my bed. But I could not heed them, For I seemed to see Dark eyes of my new love Fixed on me. Old love, old love, How can I be true? Shall I be faithless to myself Or to you?

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