Love Poems

From Mystics to Contemporary Interpretations

[Note: This may be too long a post to read and may be cut off. If so, please read it on Substack].

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February 14 is Valentine’s Day.

I don’t like Valentine’s Day. It feels commercial and made up like this is the ONE day we should do something special for those we love. Are we really so busy and distracted that we need to put a date on the calendar to remind us to love those around us?

I suppose the permission to eat lots of chocolate and buy myself flowers is somewhat redeeming…ah, no. I eat chocolate and have been buying myself flowers for years (before Miley Cirus told the women of the world we could do that for ourselves).

Love, however, is not Valentine’s Day. I’m all about love in the most expansive sense of the world. I believe that the power of love is limitless. I devoted my memoir to the quest for love, the spiritual kind, because it is the thing that can restore our soul and our sense of connection to all living beings. I believe it is the only power that might save us from our self-imposed extinction. Where love is present, there is no room for hate.

I’m not one for romcoms, but love poems make me swoon. So, in honor of LOVE, I’d like to share some of my favorite love poems, and I’d love for you to share some of your favorites in the comments. Poetry (like music) expresses the emotions that are so difficult to grasp. Emotions cannot be rationalized, only felt. Love is the emotion that breaks my heart open, sometimes joyfully and sometimes painfully.

I love Hafiz’s poetry on love because he speaks of divine, infinite, liminal, soul-bending love.

Let’s begin with this one…

There is a beautiful creature

living in a hole you have dug.

So at night

I set fruit and grains

and little pots of wine and milk

beside your soft earthen mounds

and I often sing.

But still, my dear,

you do not come out.

I have fallen in love with Someone

who hides inside you.

We should talk about this problem–

otherwise, I will never leave you alone.

Hafiz from I Heard God Laughing: Renderings of Hafiz

And this well-known one:

Even after all this time

The Sun never says

To the earth,

"You owe me. "

Look what happens with a love like that,

It lights the Whole Sky.

And then there is Rumi and his Beloved, another mystic poet.

In this poem, he asks the question, “What is love?” and his poem renders love timeless. So many layers of interpretation in his poem.

No Expectations – RUMI

A spirit that lives in this world
and does not wear the shirt of love,
such an existence is a deep disgrace.

Be foolishly in love,
because love is all there is.

There is no way into presence
except through a love exchange.

If someone asks, But what is love?
answer, Dissolving the will.

True freedom comes to those
who have escaped the questions
of free will and fate.

Love is an emperor.
The two worlds play across him.
He barely notices their tumbling game.

Love and lover live in eternity.
Other desires are substitutes
for that way of being.

How long do you lay embracing a corpse?
Love rather the soul, which cannot be held.

Anything born in spring dies in the fall,
but love is not seasonal.

With wine pressed from grapes,
expect a hangover.

But this love path has no expectations.
You are uneasy riding the body?
Dismount. Travel lighter.
Wings will be given.

Be clear like a mirror
reflecting nothing.

Be clean of pictures and the worry
that comes with images.

Gaze into what is not ashamed
or afraid of any truth.

Contain all human faces in your own
without any judgment of them.

Be pure emptiness.
What is inside that? you ask.
Silence is all I can say.

Lovers have some secrets

That they keep.

Another wise, spiritual poet, Kahlil Gibran, writes of love in The Prophet.

Love gives naught but itself and takes

naught but from itself.

     Love possesses not nor would it be

possessed;

     For love is sufficient unto love.

     When you love you should not say,

“God is in my heart,” but rather, “I am

in the heart of God.”

     And think not you can direct the course

of love, for love, if it finds you worthy,

directs your course.

     Love has no other desire but to fulfil

itself.

     But if you love and must needs have

desires, let these be your desires:

     To melt and be like a running brook

that sings its melody to the night.

     To know the pain of too much tenderness.

     To be wounded by your own under-

standing of love;

     And to bleed willingly and joyfully.

     To wake at dawn with a winged heart

and give thanks for another day of loving;

     To rest at the noon hour and meditate

love’s ecstasy;

     To return home at eventide with grati-

tude;

     And then to sleep with a prayer for the

beloved in your heart and a song of praise

upon your lips.

What of love that never dies, that continues in the breath of your beloved, whispers in the breeze, and in memories of long walks on sandy beaches? Pablo Neruda’s poem, “When I Die I Want Your Hands on My Eyes,” is a testimony to the unselfish, unconditional love that cannot be touched by death.

When I die, I want your hands on my eyes:

I want the light and the wheat of your beloved hands

to pass their freshness over me one more time

to feel the smoothness that changed my destiny.

I want you to live while I wait for you, asleep,

I want for your ears to go on hearing the wind,

for you to smell the sea that we loved together

and for you to go on walking the sand where we walked.

I want for what I love to go on living

and as for you, I loved you and sang you above everything,

for that, go on flowering, flowery one,

so that you reach all that my love orders for you,

so that my shadow passes through your hair,

so that they know by this the reason for my song.

Anne Morrow Lindbergh, in Gift From the Sea, speaks of a love that is free, fluid, and impermanent, another viewpoint on love and relationships. The imagery of dancers barely touching while dancing together feels like a wonderful paradox. She writes:

When you love someone you do not love them all the time, in exactly the same way, from moment to moment.  It is an impossibility.  It is even a lie to pretend to.  And yet this is exactly what most of us demand. We have so little faith in the ebb and flow of life, of love, of relationships.  We leap at the flow of the tide and resist in terror its ebb.  We are afraid it will never return.  We insist on permanency, on duration, on continuity; when the only continuity possible, in life as in love, is in growth, in fluidity - in freedom in the sense that the dancers are free, barely touching as they pass, but partners in the same pattern.

Echoing the theme of a love that is free, James Kavanaugh writes in There Are Men Too Gentle to Live Among Wolves about the search for a lover that shares a desire to wander the mystery of life, explore the self, and dream together.

I am one of the searchers. There are, I believe, millions of us. We are not unhappy, but neither are we really content. We continue to explore life, hoping to uncover its ultimate secret. We continue to explore ourselves, hoping to understand. We like to walk along the beach, we are drawn by the ocean, taken by its power, its unceasing motion, its mystery and unspeakable beauty. We like forests and mountains deserts and hidden rivers, and the lonely cities as well. Our sadness is as much a part of our lives as is our laughter. To share our sadness with one we love is perhaps as great a joy as we can know - unless it be to share our laughter. We searchers are ambitious only for life itself, for everything beautiful it can provide. Most of all we love and want to be loved. We want to live in a relationship that will not impede our wandering, nor prevent our search, nor lock us in prison walls; that will take us for what little we have to give. We do not want to prove ourselves to another or compete for love. For wanderers, dreamers, and lovers, for lonely men and women who dare to ask of life everything good and beautiful. It is for those who are too gentle to live among wolves.

Rupi Kaur, a contemporary poet with thousands of IG followers, asks for a partner who is present in the type of lover I need. She expresses what so many women seek in a partner: a partner with whom she can rest and not be the caretaker, the empath, the fixer. This, too, is love.

I need someone

Who knows struggle

As well as I do

Someone willing to hold my feet in their lap

On days it is too difficult to stand

The type of person who gives

Exactly what I need

Before I even know I need it

The type of lover who hears me

Even when I do not speak

Is the type of understanding I demand

I realize I could go on and on so I’ll show some restraint and end here. I hope I’ve introduced you to some poets you did not know of or hadn’t read.

Love is complex, profound, and multi-faceted. It is difficult to express what love truly is. Poets for eons have been captivated by Eros, and I’m sure that will continue.

Please feel free to share your favorite poems/poets and what their work means to you.

Wishing you Love in whatever way you need to open your heart today and every day - not just on Valentine’s Day.

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Photo by Pixabay: https://www.pexels.com/photo/stone-artwork-326612/