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 and the soul.
I love you as 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 that
your hand on my chest is my hand, so close that your eyes close as I fall
asleep.
Pablo Neruda
Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit
from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.
In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not
winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is
bloody, but unbowed.
Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the
Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall
find me unafraid.
It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with
punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate,
I am the captain
of my soul.
William Ernest Henley
Sunny days pierce me as surely as biting winds, colliding
with my soul and warming me. It’s as though I’m sitting beside a fire with my
friends, the cool wind nipping at my neck but my eyes are mesmerized by the
embers bright, and the sparks like shooting stars fired back at the heavens – I’m
warmed and unafraid, the master of my destiny. And love surrounds me in just
such a way, the intense fragility (nothing which we are to perceive in this
world equals / the power of your intense fragility - cummings) of our spirits
strengthened like a three-cord rope (And if one can overpower him who is alone,
two can resist him. A cord of three strands is not quickly torn apart –
Ecclesiastes), until we are more than the things we bring.
There is peace in this world, and anger. As the sun rides
high over the sky, and sets in pumpkin and cranberry sauce like a thanksgiving
spill, the storms of night linger over distant Europe, tearing snow up from the
mountains and dashing it violently against the rocks. The herbivore quietly
nibbles at flower stalks while the predator stalks the prey, and what shall we
say, when the beast survives? That the world is not beautiful? But see the
petals, the roses, the sky, the mountains striking even in the night where only
their shadowy silhouettes frame the horizon.
Tonight, I’m enveloped in loving-kindness, and shipped into
sleep, praying the waves are gentle, else I might wrestle with the good night.
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