Lost Poem
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A Soliloquy On LoveA Soliloquy On Love
~ I
Fresh words, keen, insipient, submerged in silence embark on this journey, a song that will sing the chorus of hearts, an artist that will divine an unpainted masterpiece, a philosopher that will fail to come to a conclusion to this mystery called Love.
And who said we knew, we had understood, gained absolute comprehension of a grandiose sentiment as this to have affected such a poise of self-sufficiency, the all-knowingness that surpasses religion’s offices for the manner in which God was ordained to be worshipped right down to how thin a blade of summer grass could be, or the way ants live, crowded and busy in their tiny spaces, yet creatures, infinitesimal, but possessing all of the earth under their miniscule feet.
How would a poet define Love? Can the sky be measured? Or the flower’s fragrance weighed, confined in terms and restricted number and alphabets undermining the true worth of their very essence? No. Love cannot be defined, it can be only felt and at every moment that we may live it, it might perhaps up to a certain degree be expressed. No more and no less than that. We are only the personified images of God, thus the real original essence can never be truly conveyed through any means of art.
Truth and beauty are brother and sister bounded by the very sacred bond of expression. I am a drop of tear, so said Khalil Jibran, which was a metaphor for rain, and so have we personified our existence with nature, albeit the inconsistency of our characters, the irrational longings, incomprehensible incoherencies, we persist on the continuity of making associations with life-like or still objects in order to pertain a certain degree of value to ourselves. As the Koran states in Yasin, “Glory be to Him, who created everything in pairs; plants, animals and human beings,” it is this complimentary action that produces result, takes effect on the soul, for example the sense of perceiving and understanding, through which knowledge is conceived is an intellectual example of how man comes about with ideas and thoughts, adopting a rational and logical rout i.e. the realm of mental exploration.
The sentiment of Love cannot be put aside as a separate entity, an external component of our existence, it is rather the nucleus around which our actions revolve, our What and Why’s in life center to this pole as would metal objects to a magnet. Why do spiritualists, humanists, poets, writers, philosophers seek the emblem of this divine predicament? Do the unknown depths of such an ocean tempt the curious, compel the daring and mesmerize the silent? They say silence weighs heavier, the words of the silent fewer, the more precious, captivating entire great truths that surround reason, their world an all-encompassing territory of infinite volumes of spiritual existence.
Who climbs, who falls, who has flown, who’s wings clipped, who voluntarily surrendered, gave up liberty, sought refuge waiting for the right time to seek the haven of true life, who live like the strong and deep-rooted trees of the ancient woods, whose tears should not be defined; incomprehensible fates to ordinary lives, who can KNOW, who HAS strength, the capability to STAND, to BE< not to escape, to dissolve, fade, resonate like the old church bells’ sound, who climbs the highest knows the empty spaces, the blueness of the sky, texture of white clouds, the feel of the winds against the face, the harsh reality of nothing but the little inch of footing under one’s feet, nothing beside, ahead or behind to turn back, aside or step forward, but remain as one is, standing aloof, like a distant pole of reason, unshaken by the barrenness of nothing but himself, safe in the solitude of his own voice, content in the narrowness of his little bed. >
This is one brick of the house I am building. It is the little space on which I stand, for as yet I am homeless. Left alone, forgotten, like a stray seed blown aside and grown wild on the road. I sought meaning, understanding, reason, aim, depth, through infinite measureless moments of solitude, through self-questioning, out of a long journey I emerged, a green tree with entangled branches; nameless, surpassing logic and structure, I came to Be, Myself.
Chaos turns its withering arms clasping my soul, turning and twisting my breath, as I become an irrational cause, seeking my origin. Who am I? Whence did I come to be? What is my purpose? Where is Life? Does it lurk somewhere beyond the shadows of the night, under the heavenly starry sky, or am I life personified, destined to further mine the gold in my soul, pass the bar of winter and enter eternal spring. I seek, I am sought, an infinite singleness of heart, sentiments revolve, out of understanding emerges the sole reason I comprehend the art of sustenance, but I am Life, I live, I wither, I fade, and I am reborn. Always fresh, rejuvenated, like the snow melted from mountain-tops, I love, I feel, I respond, I am, I will be, I always was.
“Indelicate is he who loathes/ the fleshy aspect of his clothes,” Theodore Roethke spoke rightly in his poem, Epidermal Macabre. How could man be hindered from his pursuits of reaching towards the higher realms of truth? Does this flesh not stand in our way? But yet we must pass through this world, through the journey that time confines us with our physical bodies that house our spirits. We must wait, and be patient.
When life sheds its leaves of sorrow the soul indeed lives through a barren winter. Time passes by like some occasioned traveler in a deserted road, insensitive sands they fall so quickly out of our hands, were I the eternal box of preserved secrets, I would collect each moment as it began, ornament it in my heart, the beautiful sentiments and their hours of conception.
Life has sweet sounds of melody playing but only if we were to tune our ears to it, and, “only the actions of the just/smell sweet and blossom in their dust.” (Death the Leveller, James Shirley) Who imprints beauty with words on a paper, who hears the heartbeat of humanity? A poet knows the secret of existence, the value of life, the significance of a liberated breath. And Love was Life in abstraction; we invented God, a superior being, so we might feel our own significance, a reason for existence, to be the planets revolving around a supreme sun. Love evolves. It takes different stages and forms until it comes to the level of being termed as Profound, divine.
Love is sacred. We feel through it such multitudinous things that one wouldn’t know where to begin describing them. It warmly envelopes our existence as the fire in a hearth would the room. Lovers caress each other’s souls when they talk, when into each other’s eyes they gaze, those immeasurable depths of feelings, and wish to drown in those pools of eternity. Love replaces sight with sense. All our senses keep a strong vigil so as no moment may go amiss out of their sphere of experience.
Love makes a man greedy for more. For more life, more understanding, in increased measures we tend to seek all of it and grasp it under our very fingers. While writers, poets and philosophers may already have achieved this great eminence of having possessed the highest power of feeling and depth through the genius of expression, it is an interesting thing on the other hand to watch and be the audience of the laymen struggling with such emotions of love, trying vainly to grasp even a minute particle of its essence.
~ II
It began in a moment, lasted a lifetime. It stilled a heartbeat but left infinite memories. I was a lyric you gave me the music, I was a fragrance you preserved me in your scent. Beyond the heavens we drifted in the higher realms, between the intellectual spaces of reason we defined ourselves, entwined like vine to a stem of the firmest roots; I grew clasping you like the only truth.
A moment through which began the journey of a thousand years, the ancient garden of love was unearthed and re-discovered. Our togetherness personified beauty of thought and matter; you were the shore towards which my waves receded at twilight. Closing one chapter at a time, a book of mystery, we held the sacred key to this map of love’s alchemy.
Did you navigate my heart? Course through the rivers of my dreams and wish upon my falling stars? I was but a moonbeam amidst the crowded heavens; we were neither close nor apart. A wave in the sea, I will drift back you need not catch or wait for me. Like chanced strangers on a solitary road, seeking the unsought, I walked the untrodden path, found my counterpart.
We converse through our heartbeats, a silence resonates in between our beings, you turn and look, the sun meeting running brook, and clasping your hands to your heart wonder if you caught the divine birth of a witnessed miracle?
Where do we go? How did it begin, this infinite light, that shone from our eyes, illumined the paths, our poetry we threw like rose petals, playing the child’s game; you love, you love me not. Now I walk as if the world were an illusion, a mercurial mirage of assorted thoughts, existing on the frail wings of an uncertain life, I the bird that flew in your skies.
I that have no matter, or meaning, will disappear into the smoke with the wind; carry myself and these ashes of memories like the dried autumn leaves my neighbor in his backyard rakes. The early sun light blushes itself on the timid leaf, the last that did not fall, orange so full of life that dried and withered unable to sustain more. It sways, dances, entranced I see it fall, touch softly the ground, the pebbles, the end, is near. Cycle of physical existence, so short, so narrow, susceptible to confinement of dreams, imprisoned breaths, is this life nothing more than the yes and no, black and white, heaven and hell, good and bad story?
Where does a man balance himself? Why must he take sides, is there no neutral selfless positive existence? Must I be another truth they did not believe, a chaos perfectly ordered. Madness so beautiful they could only dream, I became a martyred reason for the silences of my dreams. Why was I a girl misinterpreted just because we spoke different languages?
- Lost Poem
October 29, 2005
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