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Neruda’s Sonnet XVII: I Do Not Love You…

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I do not love you as if you were salt-rose or topaz,

or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off.

I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,

in secret, between the shadow of the soul.

 

I love you is the plant that never blooms

but carries in itself the light of hidden flowers;

thanks to your love a certain solid fragrance,

risen from the earth, lives darkly in my body.

 

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

I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride;

so I love you because I know no other way.

 

than this: where I does not exist, nor you,

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

so close to your eyes close as I fall asleep.

This will be my last entry on Neruda, because this is my favorite poem.

It takes my breath away every time I read it. There is something so simple and elegant about Sonnet XVII; and ineffable quality to this love. It’s not a showy love, not like jewels or bright flowers. This is deeper than the surface things. This beloved is not flower but the force behind the flower blossoming. A secret not because the poet is ashamed, but because this is love cannot be expressed.

But as dark and mysterious this person is, the poet insists his feelings are straightforward, “without complexities of pride.” Just the oneness of two people in love.

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Neruda’s Sonnet III: Bitter Love

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Bitter love, a violet with its crown

of thorns in a thicket of spiky passions,

spirit of sorrow, corolla of rage: how did you come

to conquer my soul? What  via dolorosa brought you?

 

Why did you pour your tender fire

so quickly, over my life’s cool leaves?

Who pointed the way to you? What flower,

what rock, what smoke showed you where I live?

 

Because the earth shook—it did—, that awful night;

then dawn filled all the goblets with its wine;

the heavenly sun declared itself;

 

while inside, a ferocious love wound around

and around me— till it pierced me with its thorns, it sword,

slashing a seared road through my heart.

In my last entry on Pablo Neruda, I didn’t really spend a lot of time on his life, mostly because I knew I wasn’t finished sharing his poems.

Neruda is mostly remembered in the US for his political poetry. Partly because he was a very high-ranking politician in communist Chile (he was nominated to be president), but also because his romantic works were not translated into English. His first book of poems, Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair, (which I’ve not gotten my hands on yet, but are apparently very racy) was published when he was in his late teens in 1924 and not translated into English until 1969. My favorite collection, 100 Love Sonnets had to wait until 1986 thirteen years after Neruda’s death (possibly by assassination) before it was translated by Steven Tapscott.

I don’t pretend to understand the political situation in post-World War II, then Cold War Era South America, especially for left-leaning intellectuals, so I don’t hold any pro-Stalin statements against Neruda. Because he was a communist (which nearly cost him his Nobel Prize, got him exhiled from Chile, and possibly cost him his life) his poetry was demonized during his lifetime, especially in the United States.

But the quality of his art – he was called the greatest poet of the century by Gabriel García Márquez – transcends personal failings and politics. This poem, Sonnet III, Bitter Love, pretty much sums up my views on the power that  love, even when it is reciprocated, has to invade and devastate a person’s life.

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Neruda’s Sonnet XX: My Ugly Love

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I will confess my first encounter with Pablo Neruda happened when I was eight years old and I was making fun of my sister, who is inescapably romantic. I would torment her by following her around reading from her books of love poetry as gushy and maudlin as I could.

But I remember coming to Neruda’s Sonnet XX, “My Ugly Love” and suddenly my silliness ran dry. There was something transcendent and unexpected about this sonnet that even at eight I couldn’t make light off. Quickly I turned the page and went on to ham-up “How do I Love Thee” (which is easy to make fun of though it’s also quite good), but I stole the book later and re-read that poem again and again.

Here is that poem, translated by Steven Tapscott:

 

My ugly love, you’re messy chestnut.

My beauty, you are pretty as the wind.

Ugly: your mouth is big enough for two mouths.

Beauty: your kisses are fresh as new melons.

 

Ugly: where did you hide your breasts?

They’re meager, too little scoops of wheat.

I’d much rather see two moons across your chest,

two huge proud towers.

 

Ugly: not even the seed contains things like your toenails.

Beauty: flower by flower, star by star, wave by wave,

Love, I’ve made an inventory of your body:

 

My ugly one, I love you for your waist of gold;

my beauty, with a wrinkle in your forehead.

My Love: I love you for your clarity, your dark.

 

Sonnet XX, like all of the sonnets in Cien Sonetos de Amor, is written about one woman Neruda’s wife Matilde Urrutia. While even the most doting of husbands shouldtred carefully before calling his wife mi fea, my ugly one, there’s something exquisitely honest in this poem. This is a lover who does not care if his beloved is unkempt, or invisible, or had an unattractive body and hideous feet. He loves her for her wrinkles and for her imperfections. He loved her for her entire person, even, perhaps especially, for the parts of her that she deems too ugly to show others.

I think that’s the best kind of love any person can ask for.

Though I think any of us would be happy for a partner willing to write 100 poems about us.

 

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Batter my heart, three-person’d God

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Batter my heart, three-person’d God; for you
As yet but knock; breathe, shine, and seek to mend;
That I may rise, and stand, o’erthrow me, and bend
Your force, to break, blow, burn, and make me new.
I, like an usurp’d town, to another due,
Labour to admit you, but O, to no end.
Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend,
But is captived, and proves weak or untrue.
Yet dearly I love you, and would be loved fain,
But am betroth’d unto your enemy:
Divorce me, untie, or break that knot again,
Take me to you, imprison me, for I,
Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.

John Donne is probably best known for his poem “Death Be Not Proud” which is an incredibly triumphant sounded about the power of the soul over death. There’s a great play called Wit by Margaret Edson that centers a modern scholar’s death and her relationship to this poem.  Donne is also the poet who gave us the phrases “no man is an island” and “for whom the Bell tolls” and “catch a falling star” (which according to Wikipedia, who I have zero faith in, inspired Neil Gaiman to write Stardust).

Donne, was born in 1572, was notorious ladies man until he married Anne More when he was about thirty. This marriage was disastrous for the couple as both of their fathers disapproved of the match; Donne was actually imprisoned for this “illicit marriage.” Shortly afterward, the marriage was proved valid, but Donne had lost his job, his station, and his faith in the Catholic Church.

But he never lost his faith in God (eventually he wrestled through his self-doubt and grief over Anne’s death to become an Episcopal priest). His early poems which were almost entirely romantic often used sacred imagery; while his later poems love letters to God. Many scholars criticized Donne’s poetry for mixing the sensual love with sacrosanct and I suspect most were not published until after his death so he would not be persecuted as a heretic.

My favorite of Donne’s poems is Sonnet 14: Batter my Heart, because of the mixture of violent sexual imagery with a divine prayer. While it’s not a love poem, per say, I referenced this poem in Uninvited Love and figured I would include it here.

The sonnet begins with an appeal to a gentle God to stop being so kind. This is not a speaker who wants his faith tested, but one who wants the divine to shatter him and create him again stronger and more secure in his faith. In order to stand, he begs to be thrown to the ground and broken.

In the next phrase, God’s enemy has captured this poet’s reason and pillaged and plundered him like a “usurp’d town.” He appeals to God to save him from this marriage to the Devil by asking the divine to steal him back, enslave him, and rape him.  It’s one of my favorite lines in poetry:

“Take me to you, imprison me, for I,
Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.”

 

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Every Romance Author Should Read Rumi

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Come, seek, for search is the

foundation of fortune: every

success depends upon

focusing the heart.

Your task is not to seek for love,

but merely to seek

and find all the barriers within

yourself that you have built

against it.

The heart has its own

language.  The heart knows a

hundred thousand ways to speak.

 No conversation about love poems could be complete without discussing Rumi.

If he was alive today Jalāl ad-Dīn Muḥammad Rūmī  would have lived in Afghanistan. A 13th-century Sunni Muslim and Islamic poet, Rumi was so devout in his faith that he wrote in Quatrain, No. 1173: “I am the servant of the Qur’an as long as I have life. I am the dust on the path of Muhammad, the Chosen one. If anyone quotes anything except this from my sayings, I am quit of him and outraged by these words.”

Like the Christian poet of the 16th century, John Donne, Rumi’s love poetry is sometimes indistinguishable from his religious meditations. This might explain why Rumi has some of the simplest yet most profound words of love that I have ever read.

 

The Ache and Confusion

Near the end you saw rose and thorn together,

Evening and morning light co-mingling.

You have broken many shapes and stirred

their colors in the mud.

Now you sit in the garden not doing a thing,

Smiling. You have felt the ache

and confusion of a hangover, yet

you take again the wine that’s handed you.

 

The amazing things about Rumi is how accessible the language is, especially considering Rumi lived from 1207 to 1273. I’m sure quite a bit of the simplicity is the result of the talents of the translators who have bring the poetry of Rumi to the English language from his native Persian, but I also think Rumi chose to write simply so that every could understand the words and instead dwell on meaning of his often short and always profound poems.

 

Let the lover be disgraceful, crazy,

absent-minded. Someone sober

will worry about events going badly.

Let the lover be.

 

Roses are Red

Sonnet 23: As An Unperfect Actor

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William Shakespeare

As an unperfect actor on the stage,
Who with his fear is put beside his part,
Or some fierce thing replete with too much rage,
Whose strength’s abundance weakens his own heart;
So I, for fear of trust, forget to say
The perfect ceremony of love’s rite,
And in mine own love’s strength seem to decay,
O’ercharg’d with burthen of mine own love’s might.
O! let my looks be then the eloquence
And dumb presagers of my speaking breast,
Who plead for love, and look for recompense,
More than that tongue that more hath more express’d.
   O! learn to read what silent love hath writ:
   To hear with eyes belongs to love’s fine wit.

 

This is another Shakespeare that’s been adapted by Rufus Wainwright (also fuckin’ awesome) and one that sums up my entire feelings on love and the difficulty expressing it.

Willy does a nifty thing here, by breaking up his metaphors.  The opening image is of an actor who fails to stay in character because of his fear and lack of practice. I guess even in Shakespeare’s day, people felt pressured to act and behave in particular way and something as world altering as love, throws off all out easy habits and forces us into new roles. The same langue of theater is used a few lines down in “so, I for fear of trust, forget to say, the prefect ceremony of love’s rite.” I’m not sure if the fear of trust means this actor does not trust himself, will not be trusted by his would-be lover, or that this poet fear to trust the would-be lover with the confession of his passion.  Knowing Shakespeare, it could mean all three. He’s cool that way.

The second image from the third line, that fierce thing who’s own strength weakens his heart is so familiar to me. The image conjures an animal who’s lost control and in trying to express his passions does it too forcefully and destroys his own cause. That metaphor is picked up again in line 7 with “And in mine own love’s strength seem to decay, O’ercharg’d with the burden of my own love’s might.” This beast is burdened by the un-confessed love and decaying with that secret.

This interspersed metaphors serve to undercut the next section of the poem. The poet, in his writing, cannot keep his ideas straight, and yet he pleads for his books, his written words to express his love clearly.

At the final turning of the sonnet, he writes “Oh, learn to read what silent love hath writ: to hear with eyes belongs to love’s fine wit.” The poet surrenders to his love, knowing that he cannot use his own voice or his own written words to express his devotion.  He has to appeal to the lover to learn a new way of understanding, to look beyond his muttering and his roaring to hear “love’s fine wit.”

 

Roses are Red

Sonnet 40: Take all my loves

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William Shakespeare

Take all my loves, my love, yea, take them all:
What hast thou then more than thou hadst before?
No love, my love, that thou mayst true love call—
All mine was thine before thou hadst this more.
Then if for my love thou my love receivest,
I cannot blame thee for my love thou usest;
But yet be blamed if thou this self deceivest
By wilful taste of what thyself refusest.
I do forgive thy robb’ry, gentle thief,
Although thou steal thee all my poverty;
And yet love knows it is a greater grief
To bear love’s wrong than hate’s known injury.
    Lascivious grace, in whom all ill well shows,
    Kill me with spites, yet we must not be foes.

Shakespeare’s Sonnet 40 is one of my favorites, not only because my favorite musician Rufus Wainwright used the lyrics in a song (though this song is fuckin’ awesome and certainly doesn’t hurt), but because it’s one of the most sensual.

The key to this one is understanding the double meaning of the word “love.” I first picked up on this here, “Then if for my love, thou my love recievest, I cannot blame thee for my love thou usest.” This idea translates, roughly, ‘I love you, so I won’t blame you if we have sex.’ Hot.

This cast a new light for me on the first four lines and made me realize that when the bard says, “take all my love,” he does mean All. In this poem “love” is not only from the heart, but from the body.  This makes the first fours lines mean, roughly speaking, “once we fuck will you have more love than you started with? No, because I already had all my love and pretty damn truly.”

The poet immediately forgives the gentle thief for taking all his ability to love, even though, he does not trust his love. He fears that the object of his affection will deceive him with another by willfully tasting what “thyself refusest” and he readily admits that this lover can hurt him more than any enemy.

My favorite line of the poem is “lascivious grace, in whom all ill well shows/ Kill me with spites, yet we must not be foes.” This poet’s self-awareness astonishes me. He knows he’s in love with a bad person. His lover is someone who kills him with spites and the poet, depending on how a reader interprets “ill well shows”, is either painfully aware that his lover’s darkness is plainly visible or he’s so blinded by love that the bad appears to be good. For all those warning signs, this poet knows he cannot look at his lover as an enemy.

It’s actually not a very healthy relationship…

Here’s Rufus’s song: