Monday, October 01, 2012

Take Hands

via The Paris Review


Take hands.
There is no love now.
But there are hands.
There is no joining now,
But a joining has been
Of the fastening of fingers
And their opening.
More than the clasp even, the kiss
Speaks loneliness,
How we dwell apart
And how love triumphs in this.



-- Laura Riding

"Take Hands" from The Poems of Laura Riding: A New Edition from the 1938 Collection by Laura (Riding) Jackson. Copyright © 1938, 1980. Reprinted with the permission of Persea Books. In conformity with the late author's wish, her Board of Literary Management asks us to record that, in 1941, Laura (Riding) Jackson renounced, on grounds of linguistic principle, the writing of poetry: she had come to hold that "poetry obstructs general attainment to something better in our linguistic way-of-life than we have."

1 comment:

k said...

Oh my. This- post, poem, and post-script, is just breathtaking.