On Raglan Road - that much i know

(love this one! recommended by Dean. picture taken by him, too - somewhere downtown Disney.

love poems are often a direct outpour of emotion. as love is. powerful, but simple, too. we love "whole-heartedly". obstacles abound, but, more often than not, external. this love story, however, is a complex one about inner conflicts. as the first stanza says. there is enough doubt, or warning, about the desire from the very beginning. on Raglan Road... so what? emotion still overwhelms. takes him to the Grafton Street. when all is over, he is left on an unnamed "quiet" street, lick wounds and reflect... bitterness? yes. but more directed to self. the beauty of a true love? he gives her "gifts of the mind". he gives us a portion of that, too. and it amplifies....)

On Raglan Road

by Patrick Kavanagh

On Raglan Road on an autumn day I met her first and knew

That her dark hair would weave a snare that I might one day rue;

I saw the danger, yet I walked along the enchanted way,

And I said, let grief be a fallen leaf at the dawning of the day.

On Grafton Street in November we tripped lightly along the ledge

Of the deep ravine where can be seen the worth of passion's pledge,

The Queen of Hearts still making tarts and I not making hay -

O I loved too much and by such and such is happiness thrown away.

I gave her gifts of the mind I gave her the secret sign that's known
To the artists who have known the true gods of sound and stone

And word and tint. I did not stint for I gave her poems to say.

With her own name there and her own dark hair like clouds over fields of May

On a quiet street where old ghosts meet I see her walking now

Away from me so hurriedly my reason must allow

That I had wooed not as I should a creature made of clay -

When the angel woos the clay he'd lose his wings at the dawn of day.