To Wait for Love

I know. It has been ages since I last posted. You might have forgotten that you subscribed to this page…lol. The trouble I have is one we know all too well: time. Life has a way of getting in the way, and the things we started doing with such diligence gradually fall into obscurity. We tell ourselves that time will return once certain obligations are fulfilled. Ironically, new obligations take their place like a dark spiral of work. Ultimately, one has to be firm and protective of their time to ensure that passions like these don’t fall by the wayside. I hope to do better in this regard…

Anyway, I wrote this poem about five years ago while I was still an undergraduate in Frankfurt. Thinking back, it is hard to recall what sparked me to write this. What I do recall is that it felt like the best thing I had ever written. On top of that, I have had little luck getting it published and have kept it safe in a drawer, much like Kafka did with many of his stories. Gradually, I am coming to terms with the idea of surrendering my art to the world irrespective of whether it listens or wants to listen, for the greater shame is to produce something and it never sees the light of day because you could never get it published the way you wanted to. Perhaps that is the greater tragedy.

Enjoy

“Daughters of Jerusalem, I charge you:
Do not arouse or awaken love until it so desires.”
 – Songs of Solomon 8:4 – 

Love, is it you who keeps me up at night,
As my mind’s eye – blinded – pursues the Pleiades?
For so long, I toiled for Rachel’s hand
Only to awaken next to Leah? It seems that
These nights are moored to my heart’s strings,
Tugging lyrics of longing. Look at my ploughed heart:

“Acres of land are sown with promises of 1. Corinthians 13
- who God is and what I am meant to be - but
you see the stars. You see how they pull my heart to mind,
coveting behind the coming sunlight. You see the hourglass.
You see how the nights are wasted in yearning. How long must I endure?

As one of those inclined to the abyss of the mind, 
I wonder, Love, if I’ll receive you when you arrive.
It is more likely that the foxes might come to the field
Or Cupid’s arrow might strike. Like the story of Igaluk,
I would have chased Malina as the moon after the sun
And return home to hear that Love had come and gone.”

Love, are you really the highest good, the absolute Truth?
Dogma barks that love is evermore, but Mars and Venus
Experience that which Vulcan wishes for: bursting pomegranates
Of romance, red currents of seduction. All dangling gems over the bed.
I know my worries are wild, but so are our times. Bite its fruit
And taste the GMOs. Love these days is too aesthetic, too succulent, 
 
Too on demand. The Vulcan slams his hammer religiously.
The good Christian waits in celibacy. Both love morality,
Yet the Will of God, O promised One, has been grinding 
another man’s grain. So these mosaic precepts jaundice my eye,
for upon their skin, I see the oils of fornication or infidelity.

So brazen it’s bronzing is that I see myself. I am as they are. The same. 
How many nights did I enjoy the ambience of moonlit love?
Love, you watched it all, as the sun blanketed her body with light,
As my thoughts dressed passion with reason. I justified it all
Not as luxeria but as the path to true love, your godly love.

Now one too many nights have passed. The pearl moon
Is golden, and my harvest is riddled with foxes and weeds.
In simple speech, should ancient law still scale love? 
Outside of higher consciousness, in the pits of our lowness,
I see people seek love in hopes of wholeness. If not for pleasure 
Then for company. Can you not hear the fear of loneliness?

It bellows in glances that linger too long. It is felt in a touch
That holds you too strong. It is heard in a voice that muses in song. 
I cannot ennoble love when its pedestal is exasperated
With fears of various kinds. No, no, I cannot exalt it all.
Rather I must disparage these notions of love.