I came across this article in my Twitter stream today, which pretty much gets to the heart of the matter:
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/journal/article.html?id=182917
The poem to come was published a few years back by a small journal, The Tusculum Review, in Tennessee. And yes, the love poem is one of the most difficult things to write, I guess because you always risk ridiculousness and purple prose with anything that has to do with an intangible like the feeling of love. It is OK to be ridiculous in the feeling, but poetry is that most earnest of art forms, where you don't want to suck.
Like many real life romances, this one had an introduction, a bridge, chorus, refrain...and an end. Interestingly, I never did get to drink a good Georgian wine - but the rest came true:
Lines Composed While Listening To Barber's Adagio
Because the strings pulled from the cello of this my heart
have been snapped too sharp, used too much but without precision
Because these, your long silences, sound tender as a newly healed wound like some nameless elegance
Because your moods like leonine clouds that track over the sky this October night sustain me like tears and I would give you more than words; poor notes, theories of that which could be and that which will never be
Because these lines like bold strophes of abstract art might a little shock you
Because the rhythm of your voice, its poetry, its own abstraction has found itself lying among the pleasures in my thoughts
Because I do not know the true color of your eyes: dark like sherry or some sparkling foreign wine with solemn lilt I know nothing of
Because the days grow long because longing has its own grace because time is short because this aimless song these relations of words are nothing
but ceasing echoes.
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