Heard this last night on NPR

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-22-2009
Heard this last night on NPR
3
Mon, 02-15-2010 - 3:37pm

Two writings on affairs:

"Love Poems"
by Lon Otto.

He has written her a Saint Valentine's Day love poem. It is very beautiful. It expresses, embodies a passionate, genuine emotion, emotion of the sort he had hardly realized himself capable of, tenderness that is like the tenderness of a better man.

At the same time, the imagery is hard, diamond-clear, the form intricate yet unobtrusive. He says the poem out loud to himself over and over. He cannot believe it. It is so good.

It is the best poem he's ever written. He will mail it to her tonight. She will open it as soon as it arrives, cleverly timed on Saint Valentine's Day. She will be floored. She will be blown away by its beauty and passion. She will put it away with his other letters, loving him for it as she loves him for his other letters.

She will not show it to anyone, for she is a private person, which is one of the qualities he loves in her.

After he has mailed the poem to her, written out in his interesting hand, he types up a copy for his own files. He decides to send a copy to one of the more prestigious literary magazines, one into which he has not yet been admitted. He hesitates about the dedication, which could lead to embarrassment, among other things, with his wife.

In the end, he omits the dedication. In the end, he decides to give a copy also to his wife. In the end, he sends a copy also to a woman he knows in England, a poet who really understands his work. He writes out a copy for her, dedicated to her initials. It will reach her a few days late, and she will think of him thinking of her a few days before Saint Valentine's Day.

This was also on the NPR site:

Poem #20
by PABLO NERUDA

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, sometimes I loved her too.
How could one 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 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 no longer love her, that's certain, but maybe I love 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 that she makes me suffer
and these the last verses that I write for her.

iVillage Member
Registered: 02-15-2010
Mon, 02-15-2010 - 4:33pm

Thanks! That second poem hit some spots for me... trying REAL HARD on NC day one after a 2 year A... Not... fun...

(first post by the way!)

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-22-2009
Mon, 02-15-2010 - 7:49pm

Congratulations for two days NC and welcome! My therapist once said to me (I think it originally came from Yoda - lol) "there is no try, you either do or do not." So think of that as you continue "trying." What really happens is you DO. Just take it one day at a time and do not think about the future right now. Live in the moment.

BTW, I tried for a long time and now I'm doing. I like this much better now that the initial pain has subsided.

wishing you all the best,
NewDawn

No memory of having starred atones for later disregard, or keeps the end from being hard. - Robert Frost
iVillage Member
Registered: 02-15-2010
Tue, 02-16-2010 - 12:22pm

Thanks NewDawn!

Day 2 NC... There is no try... only do!