Sunday, August 14, 2005
A different kind of love*
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.
~ Sonnet XVII by Pablo Neruda ~
Eversince I read this poem in my CW 10 class, I could not forget about it. The shadows of its symbolism haunt my fragile, broken soul every now and then. The more I closed my doors on talking about love, the more it recurred.
Sonnet XVII was most probably the product of an illicit love affair, thus the darkness. It is wrapped in secrecy yet it still manages to convey such strong emotion.
As I read this poem, I hear a young man speaking to me. He speaks softly, whispering the words as if his mouth was a single centimeter away from my ear. I suddenly feel somone caressing my hair with his right and holding my hand with his left, our fingers intertwined. We find comfort in a room no one else knows of, not even my lover. Our love is so strong yet it could never be and it should never have been. Still, our worlds revolve around each other. I am incomplete without him, and he without me.
Again, I am inspired. I am again in love with the thought of loving--of having someone to take care of, of having someone dream of and dream with, of having someone to share the deepest, darkest tenets of my soul with.
Then again, I do not want to situate myself in something like that in Sonnet XVII. I want the same guy who'd do the same things minus the idea of the illicit love affair, of course. ;)
But most of all, I long for a different kind of love*. =P
