Poetry about missing someone resonates with a profound sense of absence and longing. These verses often explore the pain of separation, the longing for reunion, or the echoing silence left by someone’s departure.
The poet uses vivid imagery and emotive language to convey the visceral feeling of missing someone, striking a chord with anyone who has ever yearned for a loved one’s presence.
These poems offer an exploration of absence, capturing the profound impact that individuals have on our lives even when they’re no longer present.
‘A Memory’ by Lola Ridge describes a speaker’s memories of a specific emotional night she spent with the listener on the shore of a tropic sea.
I remember
The crackle of the palm trees
Over the mooned white roofs of the town…
The shining town…
Pound’s ‘The Sea of Glass’ is an image-rich poem that depicts lovers meeting amid rainbows in the sea.
I looked and saw a sea
roofed over with rainbows,
‘Dove, Interrupted’ is a poem consisting of complex emotions and a heightened sense of being. Though the self seems “opaque”, Brock-Broido presents it translucently.
Don’t do that when you are dead like this, I said, Arguably still squabbling about the word inarguably. I haunt Versailles, poring through the markets of the medieval.
‘The Anactoria Poem’ is a widely read love poem in which Sappho uses the story of Helen of Troy to speak on the nature of beauty.
Some say thronging cavalry, some say foot soldiers,
others call a fleet the most beautiful of
sights the dark earth offers, but I say it's what-
ever you love best.
Romano’s ‘When Tomorrow Starts Without Me’ offers solace in grief, exploring love and afterlife, reassures that loved ones remain forever.
When tomorrow starts without me
And I’m not here to see
If the sun should rise and find your eyes
All filled with tears for me
‘The Wife’s Lament’ by Anonymous is a multi-layered poem in which a speaker expresses her deep sorrow over her husband’s departure.
I make this song of myself, deeply sorrowing,
my own life’s journey. I am able to tell
all the hardships I’ve suffered since I grew up,
but new or old, never worse than now –
Lawrence’s ‘Bei Hennef’ describes the effect twilight has to clear a speaker’s mind and make him see the strength of his love.
The little river twittering in the twilight,
The wan, wondering look of the pale sky,
This is almost bliss.
‘Romance Sonámbulo’ by Federico García Lorca is a mournful and beautiful dream sequence in which the poet longs for something unattainable.
Green, how I want you green.
Green wind. Green branches.
The ship out on the sea
and the horse on the mountain.
‘Long Distance II’ by Tony Harrison is an elegiac poem that describes a father’s way of grieving the death of his wife and his child’s reaction to his futile actions.
Though my mother was already two years dead
Dad kept her slippers warming by the gas,
put hot water bottles her side of the bed
and still went to renew her transport pass.
‘Time does not bring relief; you all have lied’ by Edna St. Vincent Millay tells of an emotionally damaged woman, seeking relief from heartbreak.
Time does not bring relief; you all have lied
Who told me time would ease me of my pain!
I miss him in the weeping of the rain;
I want him at the shrinking of the tide;
‘After’ by Marston captures the eternal ache of loss, where brief joys transition to lasting sorrow, reflecting on grief’s permanence.
A LITTLE time for laughter,
— A little time to sing,
— A little time to kiss and cling,
And no more kissing after.
‘I cannot live with You’ by Emily Dickinson is a poem about marriage. The speaker spends the lines declaring why she can’t “live with you” and her various related concerns.
I cannot live with You –
It would be Life –
And Life is over there –
Behind the Shelf
‘Marie Curie to Her Husband’ imagines how the eponymous scientist might’ve coped with the sudden death of her spouse.
The equations are luminous now.
They glimmer across my page,
across the walls
across the pillow
‘Death of a Teacher’ by Carol Ann Duffy is a moving poem. In it, the poet discusses a personal loss she suffered and how it affected her.
The big trees outside are into their poker game again,
shuffling and dealing, turning, folding, their leaves
drifting down to the lawn, floating away, ace high,
on a breeze. You died yesterday.
In ‘Longing,’ readers will find a brief discussion of life after death and the future of one’s body and soul.
I am not sorry for my soul
That it must go unsatisfied,
For it can live a thousand times,
Eternity is deep and wide.
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