Prompt: Love
“Love means to learn to look at yourself the way one looks at distant things, for you are only one thing among many.” — Czeslaw Milosz
Love.
Love is the simultaneous birth and death of poetry.
A brilliant love poem can move one to tears. A mediocre love poem can move one to vomit.
I hope that, with your response this prompt, you can move one to think about love in a new way.
Czeslaw Milosz articulates love as connectivity, James Baldwin as risk of madness, Emily Dickinson as a blend of past, present and eternity, Rilke as manic passion to outlast the utter breaking of himself. W.H. Auden muses on the unrequited love of stars. T.S. Eliot articulates love as a return to Eden, but not in an idyllic sense, but as a paradox: “the fire and rose are one.” William Carlos Williams describes love in emotive color. These poems are below. . .of course this the very tip of the iceberg.
If you have favorite poems/poets that serve as inspiration, feel free to share in your responses. It’s been a treat for me to discover poets through your writings — thanks Sylvia Wohlfarth, spent some time with Ben Okri this week!
Along this line, if you have suggestion for Rumi poems, I would love (pun intended) to see those. I picked up a volume by Coleman Barks, but I don’t think it was the best place to start (translation of a translation, it’s beautiful, but I get a nagging feeling that the nuance of the original is lost) — would love some advice!
Czeslaw Milosz — The World
Love
Love means to learn to look at yourself The way one looks at distant things For you are only one thing among many. And whoever sees that way heals his heart, Without knowing it, from various ills - A bird and tree say to him: Friend.
Then he wants to use himself and things So that they stand in the glow of ripeness. It doesn’t matter whether he knows what he serves: Who serves best doesn’t always understand.
(Czeslaw Milosz, Collected Poems)
THE GIVER (FOR BERDIS) By James Baldwin
If the hope of giving is to love the living, the giver risks madness in the act of giving.
Some such lesson I seemed to see in the faces that surrounded me.
Needy and blind, unhopeful, unlifted, what gift would give them the gift to be gifted? The giver is no less adrift than those who are clamouring for the gift.
If they cannot claim it, if it is not there, if their empty fingers beat the empty air and the giver goes down on his knees in prayer knows that all of his giving has been for naught and that nothing was ever what he thought and turns in his guilty bed to stare at the starving multitudes standing there and rises from bed to curse at heaven, he must yet understand that to whom much is given much will be taken, and justly so:
I cannot tell how much I owe.
Morning might come by Accident - Sister - Night comes by Event - To believe the final line of the Card would foreclose Faith - Faith is Doubt.
Sister — Show me Eternity, and I will show you Memory — Both in one package lain And lifted back again — Be Sue — while I am Emily — Be next — what you have ever been — Infinity.
Rainer Maria Rilke The Book of Hours II, 7
Extinguish my eyes, I’ll go on seeing you. Seal my ears, I’ll go on hearing you. And without feet I can make my way to you, without a mouth I can swear your name. Break off my arms, I’ll take hold of you with my heart as with a hand. Stop my heart, and my brain will start to beat. And if you consume my brain with fire, I’ll feel you burn in every drop of my blood.
*Rilke was a secretary for Rodin, and wrote an early art review of the brilliant sculptor’s work.
THE MORE LOVING ONE by W.H. Auden
Looking up at the stars, I know quite well That, for all they care, I can go to hell, But on earth indifference is the least We have to dread from man or beast.
How should we like it were stars to burn With a passion for us we could not return? If equal affection cannot be, Let the more loving one be me.
Admirer as I think I am Of stars that do not give a damn, I cannot, now I see them, say I missed one terribly all day.
Were all stars to disappear or die, I should learn to look at an empty sky And feel its total dark sublime, Though this might take me a little time.
Love Song
I lie here thinking of you: — the stain of love is upon the world!
Yellow, yellow, yellow it eats into the leaves, smears with saffron the horned branches that lean heavily against a smooth purple sky!
There is no light only a honey-thick stain that drips from leaf to leaf and limb to limb spoiling the colors of the whole world — you far off there under the wine-red selvage of the west!
T.S. Eliot Little Gidding
With the drawing of this Love and the voice of this Calling
We shall not cease from exploration And the end of all our exploring Will be to arrive where we started And know the place for the first time.
Through the unknown, unremembered gate When the last of earth left to discover Is that which was the beginning; At the source of the longest river The voice of the hidden waterfall And the children in the apple-tree
Not known, because not looked for But heard, half-heard, in the stillness Between two waves of the sea. Quick now, here, now, always — A condition of complete simplicity (Costing not less than everything) And all shall be well and All manner of thing shall be well When the tongues of flames are in-folded Into the crowned knot of fire And the fire and the rose are one.
Previous prompt: Like Me
Brilliant responses, thank you all!
Guérin Asante Sylvia Wohlfarth Dennett Anna Rozwadowska Lindsay Lonai Linegar Carver Bain Michelle Muses Aaska Ejaz Chiedza Kikumi LB Blue Fences kurt gasbarra
Jo Ann Harris FILZA CHAUDHRY Suwimali Bandara Kurt Gasbarra Crystal E.Wild Flower Sarah Book Amy Jo Reynolds antoinette nevitt Dennett Joe Váradi Austin Briggman Dana Sanford Shringi Kumari Anisesh Tracy Aston wimpy af Ashwini Dodani Vaishali Paliwal Leah J.🕊 Tapan Avasthi Maymuuna Seth Cason Brian Fehler Simon Heathcote Sonam Arora Nadine Morsch Ngang God’swill N. Lisa Tomey Shobha Roy D. E. Fulford poetsarah Gretchen Lee Bourquin 💗POM-poet!💗 Joey L. Sara Stasi Abigail Siegel M.J. Falke Samantha Lazar
%22%3E){kind=link}
