Love as you love

Human sorrow was described by Kahlil Gibran as "When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight."

What do you do when you are in sorrow? Do you read, Do you cry or if you are ashamed of crying then do remember what Charles Dickens said "We need never be ashamed of our tears."

Each generation has its own sorrow singer who sings sorrow in poetry and perhaps the simple act of poem being written is more sorrowful than poem being read and felt. Such one for whom I feel pain yet devour myself in reading him is Pablo Neruda.

What do you do when the words you want to say are not heard nor you find your word being understood? Do you keep uttering those painful verses of yours whose value depreciates with each word being heard casually. 

I perhaps in that moment prefer to read and let's assume what would Neruda have done in those moments, perhaps in hope that his words would be listened. He wrote in one of  his poem:- 

"So that you will hear me my words sometimes grow thin as the tracks of the gulls on the beaches.

Necklace, drunken bell for your hands as smooth as grapes.

And I watch my words from a long way off.

They are more yours than mine.

They climb on my old suffering ivy.

It climbs the same way on damp walls.

You are to blame for this cruel sport.

They are fleeing from my dark lair.

You fill everything, you fill everything.

Before you they are peopled in the solitude that you occupy,and they are more used to my sadness than you are.

Now I want them to say what I want to say to you and to make you hear as I wasn't you to hear me.

The winds of anguish still hauls on them as usual.

Sometimes hurricanes of dreams still knock them over.

You listen to other voices in my painful voice Lament of old mouths, blood of old supplications.

Love me, companion. Don't forsake me. Follow me.

Follow me, companion, on this wave of anguish.

But my words become stained with your love.

You occupy everything, you occupy everything.

I am making them into an endless necklace for your white hands, smooth as grapes."

One of our biggest fear have being what if no one remembers us or what if those for whom we care don't remember us? This fear is what might have led W.H. Auden to write

" And none will hear the postman’s knock

Without a quickening of the heart.

For who can bear to feel himself forgotten?"

Neruda wrote in his poem "IF YOU FORGET ME":- 

"I want you to know

one thing.

You know how this is:

if I look

at the crystal moon, at the red branch

of the slow autumn at my window,

if I touch

near the fire

the impalpable ash

or the wrinkled body of the log,

everything carries me to you,

as if everything that exists,

aromas, light, metals,

were little boats that sail

toward those isles of yours that wait for me.

Well, now,

if little by little you stop loving me

I shall stop loving you little by little.

If suddenly

you forget me

do not look for me,

for I shall already have forgotten you.

If you think it long and mad,

the wind of banners

that passes through my life,

and you decide

to leave me at the shore

of the heart where I have roots,

remember

that on that day,

at that hour,

I shall lift my arms

and my roots will set off

to seek another land.

But

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."

What is the saddest line you ever read or wrote? Was it related to you being a failure, was it being related to you being loosing someone or was it being for not getting your favourite book in your nearest local bookstore? What is the saddest line you ever wrote or for a moment perhaps think over what will be saddest line you will ever write? 

Incase you are afraid with thoughts like would you be able to write then remember, "There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you " as said maya Angelou.

Neruda wrote his saddest lines, they were :- 

"Tonight I Can Write Tonight I can write the saddest lines.

Write, for example, “The night is starry and the stars are blue and 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, and sometimes I loved her too.

How could I 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 starry 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 tries to find her as though to bring her closer 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 for certain, but how I loved her.

My voice tried to find the wind to touch her hearing.

Another's. She will be another's. As she was before my kisses.

Her voice, her bright body. Her infinite eyes.

I am no longer in love with her, that's certain, but maybelove 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 she makes me suffer and these the last verses that I write for her."

Let us for a moment think about why do we like someone or something? What is it about them or those things that we admire  love and probably try to cherish and if being asked we want to preserve those things unless those asking for being preserved are the one destroying everything. 

Perhaps same thought is represented by Virginia Woolf in her lines:- 

"How then did it work out, all this? How did one judge people, think of them? How did one add up this and that and conclude that it is liking one felt, or disliking?"

Can't say for others but surely what Neruda liked about his lover can be understood from his poem  "I Like For You To Be Still" :- 

I like for you to be still: I as though you were absent, and you do not hear me far away and my voice does not touch you.

It seems as though your eyes had flown away and it seems that a kiss had sealed your mouth As all things are filled with my soul you emerge from the things, filled with my soul.

You are like my soul, a butterfly of dream, and you are like the word Melancholy.

I like for you to be still, and you are still far away, It sounds as though you were lamenting, a butterfly cooing like a dove.

And you hear me from far away, and my voice does not reach you:

Let me come to be still in you silence.

And let me talk to you with your silence that is bright as a lamp, simple as a ring.

You are like the night, with its stillness and constellations.

Your silence is that of a star, as remote and candid.

I like for you to be still: it is though you were absent, distant and full of sorrow as though you had died.

One word then, one smile, is enough.

And I am happy, happy that it's not true.

What do you remember about someone? Good memories only or mostly bad experiences to hate them? Or some cocktail of better and worse part of memory..

How do you remember someone? By reading or by writing for them or by weeping alone at midnight with books ...?

Margaret Mitchell, the author of Gone with the Wind said :- 

"What’s broken is broken—and I’d rather remember it as it was at its best than mend it and see the broken places as long as I live…I’m too old to believe in such sentimentalities as clean slates and starting all over."

Pablo Neruda remembered as :- 

"I Remember You As You Were I remember you as you were last autumn.

You were the grey beret and the still heart.

In your eyes the flames of twilight fought on.

And the leaves fell on the water of your soul.

Clasping my arms like a climbing plant the leaves garnered your voice, that was slow and at peace.

Bonfire of awe in which my thirst was burning.

Sweet blue hyacinth twisted over my soul.

I feel your eyes traveling, and the autumn is far off: grey beret, voice of bird, heart like a house, towards which my deep longings migrated and my kisses fell, happy as embers.

Sky from a ship, Field from the hills:

Your memory is made of light, of smoke, of a still pond!

Beyond your eyes, farther on, the evenings were blazing.

Dry autumn leaves revolved in your soul."

But still don't you get the simple question? What do you do to remember them? Do you?

Notes:- Poems of Pablo Neruda and various quotes used are from public domain.

Abhishek Tripathi

27th July, 2021