Love poem for old married people?

February 14, 2023 3:42 PM

What's a great love poem to read to your spouse if you've been married for umpteen years but NOT Robert Browning's "Grow Old Along With me"?
posted by mono blanco to Human Relations (18 answers total)

Not specifically about marriage, but I find Frank O'Hara's love poem, Having a Coke With You, to be quite charming.
posted by FencingGal at 4:19 PM on February 14, 2023 [11 favorites]

Not for every marriage, but Alan Dugan´s Love Song: I and Thou.
posted by bricoleur at 4:34 PM on February 14, 2023 [3 favorites]

Burns's “"John Anderson my jo, John"”.

Also Neat Little Domestic Life, by Kevin Barnes / of Montreal. It's a song, but it works as a poem too
posted by scruss at 4:38 PM on February 14, 2023 [4 favorites]

U.A. Fanthorpe: "Atlas", "7301". Could also try the backlog of suggestions for wedding readings and poetryisnotaluxury on Instagram.
posted by dreamyshade at 4:39 PM on February 14, 2023 [1 favorite]

Shakespeare, Sonnet 116. Love's not Time's fool.
posted by Pallas Athena at 4:45 PM on February 14, 2023 [4 favorites]

“Touch Me” by Stanley Kunitz is exquisite.
posted by alicat at 5:37 PM on February 14, 2023 [6 favorites]

In Defense of Our Overgrown Garden
BY MATTHEA HARVEY
posted by oldnumberseven at 6:47 PM on February 14, 2023 [6 favorites]

"John Kinsella's Lament
for Mrs. Mary Moore"
posted by Jane the Brown at 7:02 PM on February 14, 2023

At a Waterfall, Reykjavik by Eileen Myles
posted by Isingthebodyelectric at 8:00 PM on February 14, 2023 [3 favorites]

On a Train by Wendy Cope
posted by Isingthebodyelectric at 8:02 PM on February 14, 2023 [2 favorites]

A DEDICATION TO MY WIFE
by T.S. Eliot
To whom I owe the leaping delight
That quickens my senses in our wakingtime
And the rhythm that governs the repose of our sleepingtime,
the breathing in unison.
Of lovers whose bodies smell of each other
Who think the same thoughts without need of speech,
And babble the same speech without need of meaning...

No peevish winter wind shall chill
No sullen tropic sun shall wither
The roses in the rose-garden which is ours and ours only

But this dedication is for others to read:

These are private words addressed to you in public.
posted by ojocaliente at 8:46 PM on February 14, 2023 [3 favorites]

Wm B Yeats When you are old
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face;
also his The Song of Wandering Aengus
posted by BobTheScientist at 12:23 AM on February 15, 2023 [1 favorite]

Brel's Chanson des Vieux Amants.
posted by Capt. Renault at 7:33 AM on February 15, 2023 [1 favorite]

“To keep your marriage brimming
With love in the loving cup,
Whenever you’re wrong, admit it;
Whenever you’re right, shut up”
Ogden Nash, A Word to Husbands
posted by rongorongo at 8:31 AM on February 15, 2023 [2 favorites]

Patagonia
Kate Clanchy

I said perhaps Patagonia, and pictured
a peninsula, wide enough
for a couple of ladderback chairs
to wobble on at high tide. I thought

of us in breathless cold, facing
a horizon round as a coin, looped
in a cat’s cradle strung by gulls
from sea to sun. I planned to wait

till the waves had bored themselves
to sleep, till the last clinging barnacles,
growing worried in the hush, had
paddled off in tiny coracles, till

those restless birds, your actor’s hands,
had dropped slack into your lap,
until you’d turned, at last, to me.
When I spoke of Patagonia, I meant

skies all empty aching blue. I meant
years. I meant all of them with you.
posted by Sweetchrysanthemum at 9:49 AM on February 15, 2023 [4 favorites]

Marvin Bell's to Dorothy

he was the poetry daddy when I was at IA
posted by brujita at 1:18 PM on February 15, 2023 [2 favorites]

True Love by Sharon Olds
posted by Martha My Dear Prudence at 2:16 PM on February 15, 2023 [4 favorites]

William Carlos Williams' Asphodel That Greeny Flower (excerpted at the preceding link).
posted by diodotos at 10:02 PM on February 16, 2023