#7: on love and poetry
"a cherry tree / blooming in old age / is something to never forget" - Basho
When I think about love, I think about poetry.
Like love, poetry is a mystery. No matter how hard you try to make sense of it, it eludes you.
Like love, the poem you need arrives when you least expect it to, transforming your life in small and big ways. It softens you, changes your worldview, makes you pay attention to the tiny details of your ordinary life - the aroma of your morning coffee, the first signs of spring, the playlist you listen to on your daily commute.
Like love, poetry makes space for the emotions that transcend your understanding. It won’t attempt to solve your problems or point towards the light at the end of the tunnel. Instead, when the world ceases to make sense, it will hold your hand.
Like love, poetry will take on different forms throughout your life. More often than not, it will surprise you. You’ll spend several years filling your notebooks with rhymes and free-verse, only to realise that what you’ve been looking for is a haiku.
Like love, poetry requires trust. And courage. It requires you to surrender to a force that’s bigger than you, one that you can’t control. Some poems you read will shatter you. Some poems you write will never see the light of day. Some poems will make you wonder if you should walk away from poetry for good.
But to build barriers against poetry is a disservice to yourself and the world. To live without your heart broken open - to both beauty and pain - is to not live at all.
Here are some poems that have broken my heart open this week :)
Instructions for the Journey by Pat Schneider
The self you leave behind
is only a skin you have outgrown.
Don't grieve for it.
Look to the wet, raw, unfinished
self, the one you are becoming.
The world, too, sheds its skin:
politicians, cataclysms, ordinary days.
It's easy to lose this tenderly
unfolding moment. Look for it
as if it were the first green blade
after a long winter. Listen for it
as if it were the first clear tone
in a place where dawn is heralded by bells.
And if all that fails,
wash your own dishes.
Rinse them.
Stand in your kitchen at your sink.
Let cold water run between your fingers.
Feel it.
But Under the Silence of What We Say to Each Other by Tennessee Williams
But under the silence of what we say to each other,
is the much more articulate silence of what we don’t say to each other,
a storm of things unspoken,
coiled, reserved, appointed,
ticking away like a clock attached to a time-bomb:
crash, fire, demolition
wound up in the quietly,
almost tenderly,
small, familiar things unspoken.
Adult by Linda Gregg
I've come back to the country where I was happy
changed. Passion puts no terrible strain on me now.
I wonder what will take the place of desire.
I could be the ghost of my own life returning
to the places I lived best. Walking here and there,
nodding when I see something I cared for deeply.
Now I'm in my house listening to the owls calling
and wondering if slowly I will take on flesh again.
Letter by Joseph Fasano
Tonight, as you walk out
into the stars, or the forest, or the city,
look up
as you must have looked
before love came,
before love went,
before ash was ash.
Look at them: the city’s
mists, the winters.
And the moon’s glass
you must have held once
in beginning.
That new moon
you must have touched once
in the waters,
saying change me, change
me, change me. All I want
is to be more of what I am.
And finally, a haiku by Basho
a cherry tree
blooming in old age
is something to never forget
Have you come across a poem that has broken your heart recently? If yes, please share it with me! I’d love to hear from you.
As ever, thank you for your time and attention.
With love,
Pooja
Cicada
by Hosho McCreesh
Sick of his own face,
sick of his skin, of the dark,
he crawls outside himself
to sing–
a better poet than most