Poets' Corner: What lips my lips have kissed

Two Men Kiss, Hongtao Huang at Fine Art America

A new feature for Tuesdays on the Blue Truck:  random poems I like.  Not necessarily biographical or sociopolitical, just good stuff.

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Edna St. Vincent Millay 

Sonnet XLIII

What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why,

I have forgotten, and what arms have lain

Under my head till morning; but the rain

Is full of ghosts tonight, that tap and sigh

Upon the glass and listen for reply,

And in my heart there stirs a quiet pain

For unremembered lads that not again

Will turn to me at midnight with a cry.

Thus in the winter stands the lonely tree,

Nor knows what birds have vanished one by one,

Yet knows its boughs more silent than before:

I cannot say what loves have come and gone,

I only know that summer sang in me

A little while, that in me sings no more.

Italian sonnet form                                                  1920

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