Rabindranath Tagore – Unending Love

I seem to have loved you in numberless forms, numberless times…

In life after life, in age after age, forever.

My spellbound heart has made and remade the necklace of songs,

That you take as a gift, wear round your neck in your many forms,

In life after life, in age after age, forever.

Whenever I hear old chronicles of love, it’s age old pain,

It’s ancient tale of being apart or together.

As I stare on and on into the past, in the end you emerge,

Clad in the light of a pole-star, piercing the darkness of time.

You become an image of what is remembered forever.

You and I have floated here on the stream that brings from the fount.

At the heart of time, love of one for another.

We have played along side millions of lovers,

Shared in the same shy sweetness of meeting,

the distressful tears of farewell,

Old love but in shapes that renew and renew forever.

Today it is heaped at your feet, it has found its end in you

The love of all man’s days both past and forever:

Universal joy, universal sorrow, universal life.

The memories of all loves merging with this one love of ours -

And the songs of every poet past and forever.

Source for the poem found here.

The first love poem

This is now bone of my bones
And flesh of my flesh;
she shall be called ‘woman’,
for she was taken out of man.

That is why a man leaves his father and mother and is united to his wife, and they become one flesh.

The Bible, Genesis 2:23, 24.

On Love, again

Love is misunderstood to be an emotion; actually, it is a state of awareness, a way of being in the world, a way of seeing oneself and others.

David Hawkins

Le Jardin – Jacques Prévert

It is spring, all trees are maddeningly in bloom and the whole world seems like a huge garden…so here’s a lovely poem, simple and eloquent, about the rapturous moment of being in love, holding our loved one, feeling the eternity in our grasp. And once you have been to Paris, you know why its gardens are just the perfect setting for that…

Des milliers et des milliers d’années

Ne sauraient suffire

Pour dire

La petite seconde d’éternité

Ou tu m’as embrassé

Ou je t’ai embrassée

Un matin dans la lumière de l’hiver

Au parc Montsouris à Paris

à Paris

Sur la terre

La terre qui est un astre.

Jacques Prévert, “Paris est tout petit”, 2009, Le Cherche Midi, Paris.

Check out more of his life and works here, as well as an English translation for this poem here…

Love Song – William Carlos Williams

What have I to say to you
When we shall meet?
Yet—
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 colours
Of the whole world. I am alone.
The weight of love
Has buoyed me up
Till my head
Knocks against the sky.

See me!
My hair is dripping with nectar—
Starlings carry it
On their black wings.
See, at last
My arms and my hands
Are lying idle.

How can I tell
If I shall ever love you again
As I do now?

William Carlos Williams, “Love Song”, first published in “Poems”, 1916.

Love!

 

2 chairs hand in hand in Waynesboro, Virginia, at a friends’ house. August, 2008.

I had this entire post written on the endurance and magnitude of love, beautifully and philosophically written, when just before I wanted to post it, it all went blanc. Call it the moody Monday, that comes after a deboucherous weekend, that does not want to work after my own will.

So, here’s the next best thing:

May you always find someone to share your closest chair with, may you choose your solitude but not your loneliness, and even if that is the case, that you should still find love. In your loved ones, a good friend, your pet or a good book. May you find it in all the unexpected places but mostly in your heart. All day, every day! make it your daily credo and manifesto. To love because it’s your choice, because you can, because it is your ultimate freedom.

Because in truth, nothing and no one can stop you from loving, even though that love may not be reciprocated. Love still, in spite of that. The rewards will come, in ways magnified thousands of times, way beyond your comprehension. Just try! try it for 21 days, or 3o days. Make it your habit :) to just love and give unconditionally to all there is and lives around you. Birds, trees, cars, streets, people, neighbours, cafe shops, work places and coworkers, bosses and exes. Because this capacity it’s in you and to love is a verb, an attitude and an action.

So there you go, you can still love even though you may not be in the perfect relationship, or even with a partner, or with your kids near, or parents, or whatever and whoever else you think you need to love in order to be happy and feel loved back. You are love and love is already within you!

Happy Love Day, every day!

Tenderness

Auguste Rodin, “The Kiss”, 1880-1881. Photo taken in San Francisco at the SFMOMA – Museum of Modern Art, Rodin exhibition. August, 2008.

Love in our choices…

Our love lies in our choices.

That’s when you truly show how you feel about someone. It’s not your words, it’s your choices; the every day little choices that you make to ensure that you are, in some way, with your loved one/s, that you are a part of their lives, that they are a part of yours. And then, the big ones. The big, life changing choices and decisions you take to make sure that they will be a part of your life in the future or…through the choices that, sadly, you do not make.

You can’t fake it, you can’t feign it, because your actions and choices will speak louder than your words and will betray them. They will show what and how you really feel about someone.

When it comes down to it, what do you choose? What do you choose TO DO? How do you manifest your love? What is your natural inclination? What is it that you do and don’t do naturally, for your loved ones?… now that is something to think about, indeed.

I’ve been reminded of this quite often lately…

Kiss

Pigeons kissing on the steps of Sacre Coeur Cathedral, Paris, France. March, 2010

Tracy Chapman – The Promise

Another beautiful love song…so simple yet so powerful! :)