Rapture Quotes

Question 1

You

Answer 1

1) Uninvited, the thought of you stayed too late in my head,
2) like a charm, like a spell//Falling in love//is glamorous hell;
3) There you are//on the bed, like a gift, like a touchable dream.

Question 2

Hour

Answer 2

1) Love’s time’s beggar, but even a single hour,
2) For thousands of seconds we kiss; your hair//like treasure on the ground;
3) Time hates love, wants love poor,//but love spins gold, gold, gold from straw.

Question 3

Rapture

Answer 3

1) unacred blue,//not paradise, goes nowhere endlessly.
2) our lives can drift//far from our selves, while we stay trapped in time,//queuing for death?
3) Then love comes; like a sudden flight of birds//from earth to heaven after rain.

Question 4

Elegy

Answer 4

1) - that love, which wanders history,//singled you out in your time?
2) Love loved you best; lit you//with a flame, like talent, under your skin;
3) press their thumbs to the scars//of your dates,

Question 5

Betrothal (19)

Answer 5

1) I will be yours, be yours
Make me
2) I’ll bloom in the fire
3) I’ll be ash in a jar, for you//to scatter my life.

Question 6

Love (24)

Answer 6

1) Love is talent, the world love’s metaphor.
2) The night//is empathy, stars in its eyes for tears.
3) the moon ache and fret//for the earth. When morning comes, the sun, ardent,//covers the trees in gold, you walk//

Question 7

New Year (30)

Answer 7

1) I drop the dying year behind me like a shawl//and let it fall.
The urgent fireworks fling themselves//
2) Your breath//is midnight’s, living, on my skin, across the miles between us,//fields and motorways and towns, the million lit-up little homes.
3) the days and nights far out
Time falls and falls through endless space, to when we are.

Question 8

Wintering (32)

Answer 8

1) that trick we have of turning love to pain.//Grey fades to black. The stars begin their lies,
2) Dawn mocks me with a gibberish of birds.
3) as pain turns back again to love, like this,//your flower kiss,//and winter thaws and melts, cannot resist.

Question 9

Answer

Answer 9

1) your eyes a sightless marble to my touch,
2) your tongue a red-hot poker in your throat,
your fingers burning pungent brands on flesh,
3) or if you were none of these, but really death,//the answer is yes, yes.

Question 10

Write (37)

Answer 10

1) my face//reddened, blackened, whitened to ash,//
2) water’s voice swearing its love love love in my ears,//as I drowned in belief.
3) kick me alive; the stars like a mob of light,//chanting a name, yours.

Question 11

Grief

Answer 11

1)
2)
3)

Question 12

Ithaca (42)

Answer 12

1) I pulled off my stiff and salty sailor’s clothes,// slipped on the dress of the girl I was, //and slid overboard.//
2) your name,//which I chanted again in my heart,//like the charm it was, bringing me back//
3) wading in, waist-high, from the shallows at dusk,//dragging my small white boat.

Question 13

Epiphany (48)

Answer 13

1) Not close my eyes to the light//when the light//is in my head,//
2) when days, nights,//sightless of you, sightless of thee,//are hours with the dead,
3) or believe when belief//is a light gone out yet burning, gold, red.

Question 14

The Love Poem (49)

Answer 14

1)

2) and write - //love’s light fading, darkening,//black as ink on a page -//
3) like a prayer,//both near and far,//near and far - //the desire of the moth//for the star.

Question 15

Over (52)

Answer 15

1) No stars in this black sky, no moon to speak of, no name//or number to the hour,
2) without spell or prayer,//endure this hour, endless, heartless, anonymous,//the death of love?
3) I hear a bird begin its song,//
a gift, the blush of memory.