Of Love and Desire is a rich collection of love poems from Louis de Bernières, written over a lifetime, and capturing its many forms – from rapture, infatuation, urgency, to sorrow, heartache and disillusion.
Poetry was de Bernières’ first and greatest literary love, a passion evident in the musicality and emotion of his poems, which are full of stories and the truth of lived experience. This, his second collection, bears the mark of many influences, from the classical Persian poets, to Neruda, to Quintus Smyrnaeus, to Brian Patten.
Beautifully illustrated by Donald Sammut, this is an indispensable companion on the lover’s journey.
Louis de Bernières is the best-selling author of Captain Corelli’s Mandolin, which won the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize, Best Book in 1995. His most recent books are The Dust That Falls From Dreams, Birds Without Wings and A Partisan’s Daughter, a collection of stories, Notwithstanding, and a collection of poetry, Imagining Alexandria.
POETRY
Imagining Alexandria
A Walberswick Goodnight Story
FICTION
The Dust that Falls from Dreams
Notwithstanding: Stories from an English Village
A Partisan’s Daughter
Birds without Wings
Red Dog
Sunday Morning at the Centre of the World
Captain Corelli’s Mandolin
The Troublesome Offspring of Cardinal Guzman
Señor Vivo and the Coca Lord
The War of Don Emmanuel’s Nether Parts
NON-FICTION
The Book of Job: An Introduction
This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorized distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.
Epub ISBN: 9781473511712
Version 1.0
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VINTAGE
20 Vauxhall Bridge Road,
London SW1V 2SA
Harvill Secker is part of the Penguin Random House group of companies whose addresses can be found at global.penguinrandomhouse.com.
Copyright © Louis de Bernières 2016
Illustrations © Donald Sammut 2016
Louis de Bernières has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this Work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
First published by Harvill Secker in 2016
www.vintage-books.co.uk
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 9781846558849
CONTENTS
Cover
About the Book
About the Author
Also by Louis de Bernières
Dedication
Title Page
Epigraph
I Leaned Down from the Saddle
For Laura Anadyomene Cytheraea
Having Failed to Make Her Enjoy Fishing
I Travelled South
On the Last Night when Love Was Lord
He Swears
She Swears
Angel
The Curse of Wings
Mistakes
Hippodamia, Daughter of Briseus
The Man Who Fell in Love with the Moon
For Sylvie, Who Believed in Reincarnation
This Beach
He Thinks She Thinks
Raven
Ah, Francesco
Tus Ojos de Selva
Osiris Praises His Wife
I Travelled Miles
Doves
After Petrarch
Letter to Afrodite
Terminus
The Nymph of the Pool Justifies What She Did to Hylas
Letter to Paula
The Woman Taken in Adultery
I Am Jealous
A Short Night
I Go to the Beach
By the Time You Get to the Gate
If I Had Known
The Tomb of Laothoe
The Spear
Afrodite’s Reply
It Is Time
This Lock of Hair
Lines Written in Bath, November 2013
And Now He’s Gone
Skeleton Service
I Am at War with Time, the Villain
On Arthur’s Seat
Romance in a Bargain Bookshop
Last Autumn
A Warning
Your Graceful Path
On The Hacienda Balcony
His Steadfast Eyes
It Seems to Me
Pinprick
You Came to See Me in St Andrews
Arab Couple Inadvisedly Holding Hands in Dubai
Bridge, Don’t Move
All My Salty Memories
Gypsy Girl
And When in Bitter Rage
Her Disobedient Feet
A Tropical Passion (1)
Sonnet: I’ll Make No Hymn
Already
Should You Go
He Is Undeterred
You Entered in My House
That Wild Cry
I Will Not See You
Three Haikus
On Giving a Silver Heart to a Cruel Lady
The Little Paradise
As the Child
Sybille
For Tishani
Message to Rumi
You Have Returned
The Bed
Poem on the Back of a Scrap
Achilles Mourns Penthesileia
For Fear of Paradise
A Tropical Passion (2)
These Verses
His Love for You
How Once, When Young
A Time before Sleep
Put Out the Light
Another Prayer to Afrodite
In Colombia
Acknowledgements
Copyright
Dedicated to my Father, Piers
Car l’esprit ne sent rien que par l’ayde du corps.
RONSARD
I leaned down from the saddle,
Took the cup from your hand
And drained away the wine.
You said that in the mountains
I’d find what I was after
If I was tired of life.
You said the high white clouds
Would freeze the darkness out
And wash my tarnished soul.
I leaned down from the saddle,
Returned the cup to your hand
And gave you three bronze coins.
You said that, should I pass that way,
You’d keep aside some wine
As rich, as fine as this.
It’s you I envy, with your maiden eyes that gaze
On Greece for the first time; the casual flick
Of the lighthouse, the Cyprus trees like