love's philosophy

Nothing calls for a love poem quite like spring! Here's one by Percy Bysshe Shelley. The photographs above were taken by yours truly last year in Fort Greene Park. 

LOVE'S PHILOSOPHY

by P.B. Shelley 

The fountains mingle with the river

And the rivers with the ocean,

The winds of Heaven mix for ever

With a sweet emotion;

Nothing in the world is single,

All things by a law divine

In one spirit meet and mingle - 

Why not I with thine?

See the mountains kiss high Heaven

And the waves clasp one another;

No sister-flower would be forgiven

If it disdained its brother;

And the sunlight clasps the earth,

And the moonbeams kiss the sea - 

What are all these kissings worth

If thou kiss not me?

As far as the Romantics go, Keats has always been my favorite, but Shelley ain't bad here. Not bad at all! 

Although I studied Shelley in college, I did not discover this poem until years later in the wrapper of a chocolate bar. Needless to say, I fell in love with this poem instantly. 

I am not so crazy about the line, "No sister-flower would be forgiven/If it disdained its brother" for the clearly antiquated anti-feminist message it conveys (Ain't nothing romantic about the absence of consent!). However, overall, the poem is beautiful and its images do speak to the harmony and union possible in love and physicality. 

Just look at the use of the word "clasp"! The waves clasp one another! The sunlight clasps the earth! Oh! Love it!

And then there is the final couplet! Who could ever forget these lines? "What are all these kissings worth/If thou kiss not me?"

The poem seems especially appropriate for springtime. The pear tree blossoms outside my window are kissing each other! The sunlight clasps the pavement! The bus kisses the curb and nearly runs us over! I will be walking around Brooklyn, identifying all the things that are kissing and clasping each other all season long. 

aguapanela

Photo Credit: "La Aguapanela"article from Semana.com on 24.6.06

Make aguapanela for someone you love. Lower a brick of sugar into the pot, turn up the flame, and let the water boil until it is black. Stir and taste; be sure that it remains sweet. When it's not too rich, but still strong, add milk and let it warm. Cut cheese, soft and white, queso de hoja or mozzarella, if you're making it in this country.

Serve two cups and you drink first. Let the cheese sink to the bottom and soak until it is the color of amber, and melting. He should save you the last few drops and say Mmm before he hands you his cup.

Ask him what it's good for and he'll say, “Hunger, remembering – hasta para curar enfermedades.”

It is like the guarapo you drank as a child from Styrofoam cups on a polluted beach in Orlando where you tried to invoke enough Spanish to say thank you and Que Dios te bendiga to everyone you met: your grandfather, your cousins, and strangers, like the man who cut the stalk and stripped back the flesh, lowered it into a machine so you could eat.

Aguapanela is the color of your skin in the sun. He will taste the sucrose and fructose, the caña on your tongue, after.  This will remind you of home. Save what is left for tomorrow. 

In two years, you will meet his grandmother. On a rainy night in Bogotá, she will make aguapanela for you, and say: This is what love is like. Seeping the panela in water and letting it dissolve. She will instruct you to drink from the pot with your hands. It is sweet, and it burns. 

- NC, prose poem on a whim, March 10, 2010

persimmons by li-young lee

In sixth grade Mrs. Walker
slapped the back of my head
and made me stand in the corner  
for not knowing the difference  
between persimmon and precision.  
How to choose

persimmons. This is precision.
Ripe ones are soft and brown-spotted.  
Sniff the bottoms. The sweet one
will be fragrant. How to eat:
put the knife away, lay down newspaper.  
Peel the skin tenderly, not to tear the meat.  
Chew the skin, suck it,
and swallow. Now, eat
the meat of the fruit,
so sweet,
all of it, to the heart.

Donna undresses, her stomach is white.  
In the yard, dewy and shivering
with crickets, we lie naked,
face-up, face-down.
I teach her Chinese.
Crickets: chiu chiu. Dew: I’ve forgotten.  
Naked:   I’ve forgotten. Ni, wo:   you and me.
I part her legs,
remember to tell her
she is beautiful as the moon...


The verses above make up the first three stanzas of the poem Persimmons by Li-Young Lee. View the full text of the poem here. I rediscovered this piece while looking through the Norton Anthology of Poetry I read for a high school poetry class. 


The poem is beautiful. I love pieces that link food to memory, family, language, who we are, where we have been, and who we have been. Another good food/identity poem is Patricia Smith's When the Burning Begins, which is about hot water cornbread, her childhood, and her relationship to her father, loss, and the creative power of poetry. 

subway love haiku

underground we part

on platforms made for these times

when love shudders, dies.

As a young woman who came of age in New York City and on New York City trains, many of my most spiritual, most romantic, most heartbreaking, and most formative moments have taken place underground. The subways offer such a rich cross-section of people; the conversations and encounters in their cars range from uplifting to terrifying to lasting. I wrote this haiku on the platform of the Q train at a station in Manhattan after I could not bring myself to make amends with someone I love. I just got on the train and let the tracks put even greater distance between us.

Perhaps you have felt something similar? Perhaps you write haikus? Haikus are great.