Love in off-season

Love in off-season . A time when all that crazy mix-up feelings seem to have gone in hibernation. In its absence, the heart beats on as if knowing that the void is just temporary. Or perhaps, it has recognized certainties and has happily grasped at gossamer chances which left it with a lifetime's worth of happy memories.

It is a time of rest, of not wanting, of just letting things be. It is a time to prepare for what may or may not come. But when the time stretches on, the thought of love somewhat fades. And just as shadows begin to cover a fading memory there comes that something that causes all those dormant feelings to resurface.

Love in off-season is not love's end. If nothing else, it is a time to appreciate finding that something that rekindles that belief in love. And when that find turns out to be a Pablo Neruda love sonnet, it's bound to leave an impression.


Love Sonnet XVII
by Pablo Neruda

I don't love you as if you were the salt-rose, topaz
or arrow of carnations that propagate 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 and carries
hidden within itself the light of those flowers,
and thanks to your love, darkly in my body
lives the dense fragrance that rises from the earth.

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, in which there is no I or you,
so intimate that your hand upon my chest is my hand,
so intimate that when I fall asleep it is your eyes that close.


(Thanks to Justine for sharing this sonnet to me.)

***
...and here's another one, by E.E. Cummings

Somewhere I Have Never Travelled

somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond
any experience, your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near

your slightest look easily will unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skilfully, mysteriously) her first rose

or if your wish be to close me, i and
my life will shut very beautifully, suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;

nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility: whose texture
compels me with the colour of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing

(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens; only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands