Sunday, May 29, 2005

If You Forget Me

It's hard to write love poetry without sounding sappy or just plain demented. What is there about the most powerful of passions that seems to erode brain cells and cause an absolute torrent of glurgacious imagery, borrowed sentiment and purple prose? How can you ever know what is real feeling and what is just the clanging and clanking of empty words?

Forgive me, I'm fresh from lurking around someone's website in horrified fascination. And I badly need an antidote ... so want to share this poem by Neruda with you. If you go away, so be it, I will get on with my life and little by little I will forget you, the poet says.

How restrained he is! How pragmatic!

Can it ever be as easy as this? (Not in my experience! I turn into a bunny-boiling harpy when love comes crashing down around my ears!)

Ah but the ending. There is the strongest declaration of love and it moves me to tears each time I read it:

if each day,
each hour,
you feel that you are destined for me
with implacable sweetness,
if each day a flower
climbs up to your lips to seek me,
ah my love, ah my own,
in me all that fire is repeated,
in me nothing is extinguished or forgotten,
my love feeds on your love, beloved,
and as long as you live it will be in your arms
without leaving mine.


I think :

Poetry is an icebox
In which words are kept fresh
Until needed by an anxious heart.


And my heart right now needed the salve of this poem.

Just as it wanted to pass on the message in words more eloquent than I could ever couch them.

9 comments:

Kak Teh said...

uwaaaaaaaaahhhh! when will anyone write me something like that? the last time He wrote was entitled: You don't look nice when you cry...
and I cried even more...and i looked even worse!

bibliobibuli said...

I don't know whether to laugh or cry reading your post, Kak Teh. I have a similar situation to report on the home front. Why do (most anyway) men not get it?

Allan Koay 郭少樺 said...

shit, after reading this post, i went and wrote a love poem to my gf last nite.

thank goodness she likes it!

bibliobibuli said...

Good for you! Now aren't you going to post it?

Allan Koay 郭少樺 said...

erm, MALU LAH!

Anonymous said...

how must i describe
the feelings that i seem to hide
from my true love, my hope, my pride
lest i leave her with plenty to gripe?

what words should i use
to show deep thoughts not obtuse?
for i am poor in vocabulary
i might abuse what's in the dictionary

let's say i've found the right words
must i shout them out to be heard
or should i draft them in wordpad
so the words won't sound oh so bad?

should i type in large fonts
add underlines, exclamation points
use upper cases for greater emphasis
write a love story, not a lame analysis?

should i write like Shakespeare
make use of words i seldom hear
explore all feelings i hold so dear?
and hope she won't have it up to here!

or should i keep it curt like a haiku?
she won't get hurt with a simple "i love you"
the simple truth i hope she would see
no words can describe the feelings i have in me

bibliobibuli said...

naxeri - am just thrilled to bits to find a poem here and such a fun one too ... many thanks

Anonymous said...

Poetry is an icebox
In which words are kept fresh
Until needed by an anxious heart.


so true.
:)

bibliobibuli said...

Just realised that the last line is better with "hungry heart".