#AtoZChallenge ‘U’ #NationalPoetryMonth ‘Union Square’ by Sara Teasdale #amwriting #poem

This year to celebrate National Poetry Month and to take part in the April A-Z Blogging Challenge, I’ll be posting two poems a day, one written by me and another poem written by one of my favourite poets. The title or first word of both poems will begin with the corresponding letter in the Blogging Challenge.

Today I offer you two light hearted poems about unrequited love. Union Square by Sara Teasdale and Plans, by Luccia Gray.

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Union Square BY SARA TEASDALE (1884-1933)

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With the man I love who loves me not,

I walked in the street-lamps’ flare;

We watched the world go home that night

In a flood through Union Square.

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I leaned to catch the words he said

That were light as a snowflake falling;

Ah well that he never leaned to hear

The words my heart was calling.

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And on we walked and on we walked

Past the fiery lights of the picture shows —

Where the girls with thirsty eyes go by

On the errand each man knows.

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And on we walked and on we walked,

At the door at last we said good-bye;

I knew by his smile he had not heard

My heart’s unuttered cry.

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With the man I love who loves me not

I walked in the street-lamps’ flare —

But oh, the girls who ask for love

In the lights of Union Square.

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Union Square is a light-hearted approach to a girl’s search for love. While many of the girls in Union Square are looking for fun, and perhaps earning money in exchange for their favours, the girl in the poem says she’s in love and she’s looking for commitment, yet the man she’s with ‘loves her not’, perhaps because he’s mistaken her intentions, which is why she says he doesn’t hear her, or perhaps because he doesn’t love her, or isn’t prepared to commit. In any case, he girl is a realist. She’s aware that he doesn’t love her, and yet, although there’s a lament, the tone is light. The reader gets the impression she’ll keep looking, and maybe one day she’ll find the person who will love her, too. I like the way the girl is empowered. She’s not going to wait around and cry all day. Lack of love is treated in a humorous, natural way. Hey, it’s not the end of the world, there are plenty more fish in the sea, the girl seems to say.  

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I’ve taken the same theme, a relationship that doesn’t progress because the man is not in love with the woman, and dealt with it in a light-hearted way, too. We make plans, we cancel plans, then we make new plans, and life goes on…

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Plans by Lucia Gray

She thought she found,

Her true love at last.

They walked hand in hand,

Making plans.

She thought she’d met,

The man of her dreams.

She whispered, He kissed her,

Making plans.

Much later she learned

He loved her no more.

She was sad, he was sorry,

Cancelling plans. 

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