The love poem (frida)

Till love exhausts itself, longs
for the sleep of words--
           my mistress’ eyes--
to lie on a white sheet, at rest
in the language--
            let me count the ways--
or shrink to a phrase like an epitaph--
           come live
with me--
or fall from its own high cloud as syllables
in a pool of verse--
           one hour with thee.

Till love gives in and speaks
in the whisper of art--
           dear heart,
how like you this?-
love’s lips pursed to quotation marks
kissing a line--
           look in thy heart
and write--
love’s light fading, darkening,
black as ink on a page--
           there is a garden
in her face.

Duffy, Carol Ann. “The love poem.” Rapture. London: Picador, 2005. 58-59. Print.

- upper sec

- love, struggle to write

- imagery, rhyme, self-reflexivity, poetic form and line breaks

- students identify the lines from other poems by poets cited in Duffy poem for comparative exercise