Paolo and Francesca by Anselm Feuerbach

 

THE OPEN ROAD

peace, love, happiness & understanding

 

February 18, 2021

 

February 14th was Valentine’s Day. Our Bibliophiles Unanimous Zoom gathering celebrated by reading love poems. Here are some of the poems we shared and some we didn’t. But first, some wisdom from the tag on my Yogi Tea bag, and then a story of young love:

 

You don’t need love, you are love.

 

—anonymous sage employed by the Yogi Tea Company

*

 

In fifth grade I developed this major crush on a sixth-grader named Wendy. She always had the prettiest face and the nicest smile; everybody thought so. So I started kissing rocks and throwing them at her.

 

—John, Connecticut, b. 1959, from Up To No Good: the rascally things boys do, edited by Kitty Harmon

*

 

Love to faults is always blind,

Always is to joy inclin’d,

Lawless, wing’d & unconfin’d,

And breaks all chains from every mind.

 

 

—William Blake  (1757-1827)

*

 

THESEUS

 

Lovers and madmen have such seething brains,

Such shaping fantasies, that apprehend

More than cool reason ever comprehends.

The lunatic, the lover, and the poet

Are of imagination all compact.

One sees more devils than vast hell can hold:

That is the madman. The lover, all as frantic,

Sees Helen’s beauty in a brow of Egypt.

The poet’s eye, in a fine frenzy rolling,

Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven.

And as imagination bodies forth

The forms of things unknown, the poet’s pen

Turns them to shapes and gives to airy nothing

A local habitation and a name.

Such tricks hath strong imagination,

That if it would but apprehend some joy,

It comprehends some bringer of that joy.

Or in the night, imagining some fear,

How easy is a bush supposed a bear?

 

—William Shakespeare (1564-1616), from A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act V, scene i.

*

 

i carry your heart with me(i carry it in

my heart)i am never without it(anywhere

i go you go,my dear;and whatever is done

by only me is your doing,my darling)

                                                      i fear

no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want

no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)

and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant

and whatever a sun will always sing is you

 

here is the deepest secret nobody knows

(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud

and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows

higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)

and this is the wonder that’s keeping the stars apart

 

i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)

 

—e. e. cummings (1894-1962)

*

 

I Loved You Before I Was Born

 

I loved you before I was born.

It doesn’t make sense, I know. I saw your eyes before I had eyes to see.

And I’ve lived longing 

for your ever look ever since.

That longing entered time as this body. And the longing grew as this body waxed.

And the longing grows as the body wanes.

The longing will outlive this body. I loved you before I was born.

It doesn’t make sense, I know. Long before eternity, I caught a glimpse

of your neck and shoulders, your ankles and toes.

And I’ve been lonely for you from that instant.

That loneliness appeared on earth as this body. 

And my share of time has been nothing 

but your name outrunning my ever saying it clearly. 

Your face fleeing my ever

kissing it firmly once on the mouth. In longing, I am most myself, rapt,

my lamp mortal, my light 

hidden and singing.  I give you my blank heart.

Please write on it

what you wish.  

 

—Li-Young Lee – 1957- 

*

 

The Song of Wandering Aengus

 

I went out to the hazel wood,

Because a fire was in my head,

And cut and peeled a hazel wand,

And hooked a berry to a thread;

And when white moths were on the wing,

And moth-like stars were flickering out,

I dropped the berry in a stream

And caught a little silver trout.

 

When I had laid it on the floor

I went to blow the fire a-flame,

But something rustled on the floor,

And someone called me by my name:

It had become a glimmering girl

With apple blossom in her hair

Who called me by my name and ran

And faded through the brightening air.

 

Though I am old with wandering

Through hollow lands and hilly lands,

I will find out where she has gone,

And kiss her lips and take her hands;

And walk among long dappled grass,

And pluck till time and times are done,

The silver apples of the moon,

The golden apples of the sun.

 

—William Butler Yeats  (1865-1939)

*

 

This Is Just To Say

 

I have eaten

the plums

that were in

the ice box

 

and which

you were probably

saving

for breakfast

 

Forgive me

they were delicious

so sweet

and so cold

 

–William Carlos Williams  (1883-1963)

*

 

What We’re Doing Here 

 

This is why we are here—

not merely to survive

but to fall in love

with the white-breasted hawk

and the rainbow fish,

with the lonely sidewalk

and the shadows of ourselves,

fall in love with the hands

of the woman wearing yellow

and the girl who loves chocolate

and the boy who loves cars

and the man who makes us want to be

a better version of ourself.

 

We are here to fall into unmanageable love—

to love beyond reason, beyond

fact, beyond certainty. We are here

to lose all our ideas about love

and know it as the next choice

we make, the next word

we say, the next invitation

we offer ourselves.

 

We are here to love

the world and each other

the way whales love water,

the way blue loves a peacock,

the way night blooming jasmine

loves night.

 

–Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

*

 

I Knew a Woman

 

I knew a woman, lovely in her bones,

When small birds sighed, she would sigh back at them;   

Ah, when she moved, she moved more ways than one:   

The shapes a bright container can contain!

Of her choice virtues only gods should speak,

Or English poets who grew up on Greek

(I’d have them sing in chorus, cheek to cheek).

 

How well her wishes went! She stroked my chin,   

She taught me Turn, and Counter-turn, and Stand;   

She taught me Touch, that undulant white skin;   

I nibbled meekly from her proffered hand;   

She was the sickle; I, poor I, the rake,

Coming behind her for her pretty sake

(But what prodigious mowing we did make).

 

Love likes a gander, and adores a goose:

Her full lips pursed, the errant note to seize;

She played it quick, she played it light and loose;   

My eyes, they dazzled at her flowing knees;   

Her several parts could keep a pure repose,   

Or one hip quiver with a mobile nose

(She moved in circles, and those circles moved).

 

Let seed be grass, and grass turn into hay:   

I’m martyr to a motion not my own;

What’s freedom for? To know eternity.

I swear she cast a shadow white as stone.   

But who would count eternity in days?

These old bones live to learn her wanton ways:   

(I measure time by how a body sways).

 

–Theodore Roethke  (1908-1963)

 *

On Valentine’s Day, Jude Russell played Offenbach’s Barcarolle for us, sung by Anna Netrebko & Elīna Garanča, from Tales of Hoffmann. Here’s a link:

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0u0M4CMq7uI

*

 

VII

 

I don’t love you as if you were a rose of salt, topaz,

or an arrow of carnations that propagates fire:

I love you as certain dark things are loved,

secretly, between the shadow and the soul.

 

I love you as the plant that doesn’t bloom,

but carries in itself the light of hidden flowers;

thanks to your love, a certain dense fragrance,

risen from the earth, lives darkly in my body.

 

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where;

I love you simply, without problems or pride:

I love you in this way because I don’t know any other way of loving

 

but this, where there is no I or you—

so close that your hand on my chest is my hand,

so close that when I fall asleep, it is your eyes that close.

 

—Pablo Neruda (1904-1973), from One Hundred Love Sonnets

*

 

Re-Statement of Romance

 

The night knows nothing of the chants of night.

It is what it is as I am what I am:

And in perceiving this I best perceive myself

 

And you. Only we two may interchange

Each in the other what each has to give.

Only we two are one, not you and night,

 

Nor night and I, but you and I, alone,

So much alone, so deeply by ourselves,

So far beyond the casual solitudes,

 

That night is only the background of our selves,

Supremely true each to its separate self,

In the pale light that each upon the other

throws.

 

–Wallace Stevens  (1879-1955)

*

 

We Two, How Long We Were Fool’d

 

We two, how long we were fool’d,

Now transmuted, we swiftly escape as Nature escapes,

We are Nature, long have we been absent, but now we return,

We become plants, trunks, foliage, roots, bark,

We are bedded in the ground, we are rocks,

We are oaks, we grow in the openings side by side,

We browse, we are two among the wild herds spontaneous as any,

We are two fishes swimming in the sea together,

We are what locust blossoms are, we drop scent around lanes mornings and evenings,

We are also the coarse smut of beasts, vegetables, minerals,

We are two predatory hawks, we soar above and look down,

We are two resplendent suns, we it is who balance ourselves orbic and stellar, we are as two comets,

We prowl fang’d and four-footed in the woods, we spring on prey,

We are two clouds forenoons and afternoons driving overhead,

We are seas mingling, we are two of those cheerful waves rolling over each other and interwetting each other,

We are what the atmosphere is, transparent, receptive, pervious, impervious,

We are snow, rain, cold, darkness, we are each product and influence of the globe,

We have circled and circled till we have arrived home again, we two,

We have voided all but freedom and all but our own joy.

 

—Walt Whitman  (1819-1892)

*

 

When they first meet, these two amazing young lovers spontaneously compose a sonnet–a sure sign that they are well-matched:

 

ROMEO

If I profane with my unworthiest hand

This holy shrine, the gentle sin is this:

My lips, two blushing pilgrims, ready stand

To smooth that rough touch with a tender kiss.

JULIET

Good pilgrim, you do wrong your hand too much,

Which mannerly devotion shows in this;

For saints have hands that pilgrims’ hands do touch,

And palm to palm is holy palmers’ kiss.

ROMEO

Have not saints lips, and holy palmers too?

JULIET

Ay, pilgrim, lips that they must use in prayer.

ROMEO

O then, dear saint, let lips do what hands do–

They pray; grant thou, lest faith turn to despair.

JULIET

Saints do not move, though grant for prayers’ sake.

ROMEO

Then move not while my prayer’s effect I take.

[He kisses her.]

Thus from my lips, by thine, my sin is purged.

JULIET

Then have my lips the sin that they have took.

ROMEO

Sin from my lips? O trespass sweetly urged!

Give me my sin again.

[She kisses him.]

JULIET

                                            You kiss by th’ book.

 

And…Juliet’s love is absolute:

 

JULIET

My bounty is as boundless as the sea,

My love as deep. The more I give to thee,

The more I have for both are infinite.

 

–William Shakespeare (1564-1616), from Romeo and Juliet

 

Well, that’s it for now.

 

May we live in love.

Johnny