Wednesday, February 13, 2008

How well do you know the people you love?

Last month, I was in Indy for the Rainmakers Main Event and took the opportunity to go to Barnes and Noble afterward.


I adore bookstores and love nothing more than to spend 4-5 hours just sitting, looking at books. (For Mother's Day, in 2002 or so, my gift was to spend 8 hours in the bookstore by myself.)


The town I live in is not sizable enough for a big bookstore like a Barnes and Noble or Borders. So, when I'm in Indy, I enjoy browsing.

Looking at the Valentine's display, I found an incredible book of poetry - with my new favorite poet, Pablo Neruda. One of Neruda's poems is posted below.

And then, I found these books:





I think I know my husband pretty well. And, there are plenty of times that he knows things about me that I don't know about myself. (The first time I remember realizing that he could predict my preferences we were at the Ohio State Fair looking at wedding cakes. He knew which one would be my favorite before I had decided for myself what my favorite was.)

So, these books caught my eye. No matter how well you know someone there is always more to know. The only problem with the books is that I don't even know what some of my answers are. One of the questions in the Do You Know Your Wife book is what is her favorite music group. Well, honestly, I don't know what my favorite music group is anymore... maybe Jeff knows...


Two Love Poems and a Lost Love Poem for you:


i carry your heart with me

i carry your heart with me(i carry it in
my heart)i am never without it(anywhere
i go you go,my dear; and whatever is done
by only me is your doing,my darling)
i fear
no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want
no world(for beautiful you are my world,
my true)and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;
which grows higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)

ee 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 color 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

ee cummings



Tonight I can write the saddest lines

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.

Write, for example,'The night is shattered
and the blue stars shiver in the distance.'

The night wind revolves in the sky and sings.

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.

Through nights like this one I held her in my arms
I kissed her again and again under the endless sky.

She loved me sometimes, and I loved her too.
How could one not have loved her great still eyes.

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
To think that I do not have her. To feel that I have lost her.

To hear the immense night, still more immense without her.
And the verse falls to the soul like dew to the pasture.

What does it matter that my love could not keep her.
The night is shattered and she is not with me.

This is all. In the distance someone is singing. In the distance.
My soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.

My sight searches for her as though to go to her.
My heart looks for her, and she is not with me.

The same night whitening the same trees.
We, of that time, are no longer the same.

I no longer love her, that's certain, but how I loved her.
My voice tried to find the wind to touch her hearing.

Another's. She will be another's. Like my kisses before.
Her void. Her bright body. Her inifinite eyes.

I no longer love her, that's certain, but maybe I love her.
Love is so short, forgetting is so long.

Because through nights like this one I held her in my arms
my soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.

Though this be the last pain that she makes me suffer
and these the last verses that I write for her.

Pablo Neruda

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