Borrowed Love Songs
“Borrowed Love Songs” take their lyrics from e.e. cummings’s poem that begins. “love is more thicker than forget,” Louise Bogan’s “To Be Sung on the Water” and Emily Dickinson’s “Wild Nights”
love is more thicker than forget
-e.e. cummings
love is more thicker than forget
more thinner than recall
more seldom than a wave is wet
more frequent than to fail
it is most mad and moonly
and less it can unbe
than all the sea which only
is deeper than the sea
love is less always than to win
less never than alive
less bigger than the least begin
less littler than forgive
it is most sane and sunly
and more it cannot die
than all the sky which only
is higher than the sky
To Be Sung on the Water
-Louise Bogan
Beautiful, my delight,
Pass, as we pass the wave,
Pass, as the mottled night
Leaves what it cannot save,
Scattering dark and bright,
Beautiful, pass and be
Less than the guiltless shade
To which our vows were said;
Less than the sound of the oar
To which our vows we made,--
Less than the sound of its blade
Dipping the stream once more.
Wild Nights
-Emily Dickinson
Wild nights --
Were I with thee
Wild nights should be
Our luxury!
Futile – the winds --
To a Heart in port –
Done with the Compass –
Done with the Chart!
[Wild Nights – extended verses]
Wild tongues
Wild eyes
Wild species
‘round the tribes
Wild language
Wild thought
Giving room
To what we’ve not
Give them space
Within our souls
Brave the way
To other roles
Learner listener
Weaver guide
Not the master
More the scribe
Let their knowings
Guide our ways
Wild hours
Wild days …
Return to “Wild Nights” (1st verse)
Rowing in Eden
Ah, the Sea!
Might I but moor – Tonight -
In thee!