Love Poems

[Saffron]

realiz:

Yes, Jealousy is painful.

I wonder if,
when we aren't jealous anymore,
we've stopped loving with such intensity,
better for us, but still less,
less, the need to possess

I think that it is possible to love just as intensely as a jealous lover but, without jealousy. I believe jealousy comes from insecurity and low self-esteem. As I think about this, I think maybe the jealous lover's intensity is something other than love. It is fear of loss and the intense desire to possess. Love is definitely not about possessing.

[GentleReader9]

Saffron wrote:

I think that it is possible to love just as intensely as a jealous lover but, without jealousy. I believe jealousy comes from insecurity and low self-esteem. As I think about this, I think maybe the jealous lover's intensity is something other than love. It is fear of loss and the intense desire to possess. Love is definitely not about possessing.

The music of true thoughts beautifully set to words, as is only to be expected when Saffron is speaking. I think that the greatest love poems, and plays and narratives about love in general, treat the topic that love is greatest when it is able to bear renunciation of possession for the good of the beloved or for some higher good which is more important than the individuals involved. As Rick says in Casablanca.... oh, something about a hill of beans. You know what I mean.

[realiz]

I think maybe the jealous lover's intensity is something other than love.

I agree about this being a need to posess. The ironic thing about intense jealousy is that is often causes the loss of the very thing it is trying so hard to hold on to.

GR9:

....love is greatest when it is able to bear renunciation of possession for the good of the beloved

I think parents have this type of love very often, but it is not as often found in the more romantic forms of love, especially young love. As we grow older, I think our love matures, our self confidence increases, our need to posess decreases, and we can discover what this means.

[Penelope]

The Birth Of Jealousy
Ella Wheeler Wilcox

With brooding mien and sultry eyes,
Outside the gates of Paradise
Eve sat, and fed the faggot flame
That lit the path whence Adam came.
(Strange are the workings of a woman’s mind.)

His giant shade preceded him,
Along the pathway green, and dim;
She heard his swift approaching tread,
But still she sat with drooping head.
(Dark are the jungles of unhappy thought.)

He kissed her mouth, and gazed within
Her troubled eyes; for since their sin,
His love had grown a thousand fold.
But Eve drew back; her face was cold.
(Oh, who can read the cipher of a soul.)

‘Now art thou mourning still, sweet wife?’
Spake Adam tenderly, ‘the life
Of our lost Eden? Why, in THEE
All Paradise remains for me.’
(Deep, deep the currents in a strong man’s heart.)

Thus Eve: ‘Nay, not lost Eden’s bliss
I mourn; for heavier woe than this
Wears on me with one thought accursed.
IN ADAM’S LIFE I AM NOT FIRST.
(O woman’s mind! what hells are fashioned there.)

‘The serpent whispered Lilith’s name:
(’Twas thus he drove me to my shame)
Pluck yonder fruit, he said, and know,
How Adam loved HER, long ago.
(Fools, fools, who wander searching after pain.)

‘I ate; and like an ancient scroll,
I saw that other life unroll;
I saw thee, Adam, far from here
With Lilith on a wondrous sphere.
(Bold, bold, the daring of a jealous heart.)

‘Nay, tell me not I dreamed it all;
Last night in sleep thou didst let fall
Her name in tenderness; I bowed
My stricken head and cried aloud.
(Vast, vast the torment of a self-made woe.)

‘And it was then, and not before,
That Eden shut and barred its door.
Alone in God’s great world I seemed,
Whilst thou of thy lost Lilith dreamed.
(Oh, who can measure such wide loneliness.)

‘Now every little breeze that sings,
Sighs Lilith, like thy whisperings.
Oh, where can sorrow hide its face,
When Lilith, Lilith, fills all space?’
(And Adam in the darkness spake no word.)

[giselle]

After a few poems about the raunchier aspects of love (love as cannibalism, jealousy, possession) .. I’d like to apply the gentle salve of Tagore to all this nasty love, with these three short, compassionate, yet passionate, poems.

First, a few details from his biography: Tagore was married in 1883, two years before the first poem, his wife passed away in 1906 and he lived until 1941 without remarrying. The third poem was written the year before he passed away and I think it could be read as a poem about love or a poem about life and death, or perhaps a poem about fleeting love and fleeting life.


The Kiss (1885)

Lips’ language to lips’ ears.
Two drinking each other’s heart, it seems.
Two roving loves who have left home,
pilgrims to the confluence of lips.
Two waves rise by the law of love
to break and die on two sets of lips.
Two wild desires craving each other
meet at last at the body’s limits.
Love’s writing a song in dainty letters,
layers of kiss-calligraphy on lips.
Plucking flowers from two sets of lips
perhaps to thread them into a chain later.
This sweet union of lips
is the red marriage-bed of a pair of smiles.


On the Nature of Love (1896)

The night is black and the forest has no end;
A million people thread it in a million ways.
We have trysts to keep in the darkness, but where
Or with whom – of that we are unaware.
But we have this faith – that a lifetime’s bliss
Will appear any minute , with a smile upon its lips.
Scents, touches, sounds, snatches of songs
Brush us, pass us, give us delightful shocks.
Then peradventure there’s a flash of lightening:
Whomever I see that instant I fall I love with.
I call that person and cry: ‘This life is blest!
For your sake such miles have I traversed!’
All those others who came close and moved off
In the darkness – I don’t know if they exist or not.


Coming and Going (1940)

Love came
with such quiet steps
I thought her a dream.
I didn’t ask her to sit down.
When she took her leave, no sooner had she opened the door
than I heard the sound
I rushed out to call her back.
By then she was a bodiless dream
fading into the night’s dark,
in the far path her lamp-flame
a reddish mirage.

Poems and bio from I Won't Let You Go, Selected Poems by Rabindranath Tagore, translated by Ketaki Kushari Dyson

[giselle]

penelope

I think you're being cheeky......just because I said, 'appreciate'

Yes I think there's a little 'cheek' going on here but all in good fun ... don't worry I'm not 'taking the mickey!' I always wanted to use that one in a sentence. I really like your British expressions. Keep it up!

[realiz]

the gentle salve of Tagore to all this nasty love, with these three short, compassionate, yet passionate, poems.

Thanks for the poems and the little bit of background. I am trying to figure out On the Nature of Love. Is it saying that love hits us suddenly, at a certain time of life and the person close to us at that time will be the one our feelings settle on? Or is it about fate, that we, moving in the darkness, will eventually come across that person meant for us to love and in that moment we will know.

I like the third one and I wonder if it is about his marriage which was cut short by the death of his wife and looking back he sees how brief the years really were. Or perhaps, there was another love, later, which he did not recognize until it was too late.

[giselle]

I think "On the Nature of Love" could be read either way. My feeling is that Tagore is having a bit of fun with us. I took it in a light hearted way. The hyperbole of lightening strikes and love revealed in the resulting light has a random, accidental feel about it. But then perhaps the coming together of the right people and the resulting lightening is not random, not an accident but predetermined. I like this idea, I'm not a fan of the random universe concept.

I really like "Coming and Going". I read it as referring to his wife, but he also lost other people close to him, a niece I believe and three out of five children who passed away quite young. Some of his other poems have the tone of loneliness, of missing people, not in a self-pitying way but as a fact of his life. And I recall one poem in particular that honours his wife's memory. I think there is a religious/spiritual perspective here as well, but I wouldn't hazard a comment because I don't know anything about his religious beliefs.

[Penelope]

Hindu:

He believed in reincarnation. Recognising a person from another life/lives.

It is a very seductive philosophy/religion.....But very life affirming also....in that he missed his children and wife...but thought, perhaps, they would meet again in future lives and recognise one another.....not quite understanding why.

Seems quite feasible from my life's experience anyway.

[realiz]

There is something very appealing about reincarnation. I think I'd like to believe in it. It would be nice to ponder as you near the end of you life of starting all over again and perhaps doing a much better job.