Category

Unrequited Love

Showing 1-20 of 209 results
  • Poem

    poetry-magazine

    Wulf ond Eadwacer

    By Unknown
    Lēodum is mīnum swylce him mon lāc gife;
    willað hȳ hine āþecgan gif hē on þrēat cymeð.
    Ungelīc is ū…
  • Poem
    By John Tickhill
    Translated By Eric Weiskott
    In springtime, chief of all seasons,
            in May when new joys rise and flourish,
                    the sun is lord and messenger at once and sends down to us
            to rouse our bodies and be merry:
    humankind to...
  • Poem
    By John Tickhill
    In a sesone of somere þat souerayne ys of alle,
    Þat was þe myry monþ of May when many myrthys spryng,
    Þe sonne ys somnore and syre and sendyth tyl vs doun,
    And byddyth vs bisy for to be oure bodys for to glade;
    Man for to myrth hym in al maner wys,
    Bestys for to buske ham on bentys tyl abyde,
  • Poem
    By J. V. Cunningham
    There is no stillness in this wood.
    The quiet of this clearing
    Is the denial of my hearing
    The sounds I should.

    There is no vision in this glade.
    This tower of sun revealing
    The timbered scaffoldage is stealing
    Essence from shade.

    Only my love is love’s ideal....
  • Poem
    By Unknown
    Translated By Roy M. Liuzza
    It's as if someone should give a gift to my people—
    they will kill him if he comes to the troop.
    It is otherwise for us.
    Wulf is on an island, I on another.
    Fast is that island, surrounded by fen.
    The men on the...
  • Poem
    By Hoa Nguyen
    A student at the military school  1956
    and a literary teacher at the nearby high school
    fall in love       Cute:

    each day after school the military student left
    a love letter on her door   Thao (an orphan)
    wrote back and left a love letter reply...
  • Poem
    By Mirabai
    Translated By Jane Hirshfield
    O friends, I am mad
    with love, and no one sees.

    My mattress is a sword-point,
    how can I sleep
    when the bed of my Beloved
    is spread open elsewhere?

    Only those who have felt the knife
    can understand the wound,
    only the jeweler
    knows the nature of the...
  • Poem

    poetry-magazine

    Bruises

    By Christopher Malec
    We met at Burger King...                        so I thought I could have us my way

    If I had known you were gonna drive through more than once,
    I would’ve made the first...
  • Poem
    By Noor Naga
    There are people to live for and people to die            for I comfort myself: there are people to sleep with and people to wake with            there are fifty thousand years...
  • Poem
    By Tommye Blount
    you ask, because you have
    everything and nothing
    or no one, not even a man
    like me, will destroy that;
    because I am the germ
    of what you fear
    of finding in yourself;
    because I am a bug
    to be avoided by any means—
    an inconsequential body;
    because whatever music...
  • Poem
    By Mohja Kahf
    Your heart is a wall on which I knocked
    looking for a door, a latch
    a windowsill, a flowerpot

    Everything I brought to the wall dried up
    and blew away for lack of answer:
    tulip bulbs, my worry for you, some children

    Sometimes I pounded it...
  • Poem
    By Tianru Wang
    How convenient for Cui Hao
    that the one who left was an immortal.
    If  only we could all have his good fortune.
    When I looked, I saw you perched
    between the wings of the crane. I was so shortsighted;
    it didn’t even cross my mind
    that...
  • Poem
    By Eduardo C. Corral
              His beard: an avalanche of   honey,
                       an avalanche
    of  thorns. In a bar too close to the Pacific,
                         ...
  • Poem
    By Noah Baldino
    On the days we don’t talk, I watch the dog do foolish frantic loops alone around the park.

    This morning, late brittle fall, she’s taken a stick and made it her treasure.

    It’s far too big. One end’s lodged between her back...
Newsletters

Sign up for Poetry Foundation newsletters

Sign Up