I wrote this.
Well, sort of.
This is a villanelle ~ which is a poem with a very tight structure and pattern of repeated lines ...
and the repeated lines and the last two here are ripped off from another poem
but I SOOOO wanted to use the last two lines in a poem for my lovely wife that I took them
and wrote the rest myself!
Lie down beside me if it’s good for you.
I’ll give you such a good time, honey,
but I won’t stay if you don’t want me to
Passion grows simply, crystal clear and new.
A pair of joyful lovers, face to face,
Lie down beside me if it’s good for you.
You give yourself freely, I know that’s true
We choose to love and be here every day.
I won’t stay if you don’t want me to.
A bright and careless rapture drapes us two,
Lucky in love and loving our own ways.
Lie down beside me if it’s good for you.
“It’s Cancer!” takes the old and spawns a new.
Our life becomes a strange; a tortured maze.
I won’t stay if you don’t want me to
It grabs my guts and forces out vile spew.
It takes me down to shadows low and base.
Lie down beside me if it’s good for you.
It It It It It It It and me and you,
Yoked in an uneven three-legged race.
I won’t stay if you don’t want me to
Long vigils at my bedside shape your view.
There is no competition for your place,
Lie down beside me if it’s good for you.
As life shifts in an endless ebb and flo,
One thing’s secure in surging time and space:
That I will stay and I am going to
Lie down beside you and be good for you.
Take Heart .... space to do a bit more philosophical thinking
7 comments:
Beautiful
It's lovely, suze
anneinbristol x
spiritual & lovely.
Cousin Poe. xx
Moving. Really touching.
Thanks for your comments, someone, elsewhere, said she found the two repeated lines contradictory.
My response to that is this:
I don't, personally, think they are contradictory, any rate .. I think they are facets of the same thing which is offering choices to your partner .. and that was quite important to the way I wrote my version
B and I have often said, over the years, that we stay together cos we choose to, fresh each day, not cos it's just a habit and we "have to stay together" just cos we have done for a long time, or cos we once committed to it --
it's abou re-committing on a regular basis, to me, and knowing why you're still together for reasons based on more than existing patterns
and that is seriously challenged by long-term illness ..
why stay with an ill person? she's not the woman you first laid down with .. or is she?
so I can offer this: I will back out / I will go if that's the right thing to do, if I'm too changed, no longer suitable for you ...
or you can lie down with me if it still suits you to ....
and of coures, I might go cos I might die .. my life-expectancy has been seriously called in to question
but I'm seriously trying not to go and committing to staying!
I like the tension between those two lines...... you played with them very effectively, and I think the poem really expresses both love, and the struggle to stay.
I'm adding this that someone else wrote one a messageboard I use:
if she loves you -- it won't change how she feels about you, I promise you. Cancer and indeed any serious illness can test the truth of any relationship, but honey - if she loves you, truly *loves* you, she'll be there through the retching, the tiredness of chemo, the lack of appetite., the lack of lust, the desperate realism of possible bereavement, the thick, the thin, the strength, the fear, the weakness, and the desperate need for a shoulder to cry on. The moments when you need to appear stronger than you are, the wigs, the sallow skin, the woe-is-me-why-is-it-me pontifications, the desperate love of life despite the doctor's statistical 'realism'.
Cancer doesn't make you worth investing in, honey- it makes you human. Nothing more, nothing less. And somebody who truly loves you won't blame you for leaving her this way if you do, and she won't love you any less for being blighted with one of life's most unfortunate, but indiscriminating battles. Soldier on, you deserve love. Just remember, she does too - it will be hard for her too.
Bless you.
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