The theme for this year is “Love Among the Ruins.” On February 13, I found myself among the ruins of a mansion which South Pacific used as Emile de Becque’s plantation home. “Dites Moi” and “Some Enchanted Evening” were both filmed here, or hereabouts.
“Love Among the Ruins” is unfortunately relevant this year for other reasons. People of every political persuasion believe our world is broken or about to break, and everybody has their own causes and their own solutions. There’s no convincing anyone of anything, least of all the good intentions of those who disagree with them, and that’s the brokenness right there. I used to hear people say that fear is the opposite of love, and while that’s often the case, I now think division is the truer opposite. Those who stoke and nurture division are those who haven’t learned to love properly.
Here’s my own position, something I know deep in my heart: love is the only way forward.
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This year I’m featuring poems of romantic love, and that’s offered with apologies. A lack of preparation rather than intention led to this narrow focus. I’m a big believer in Valentine’s Day as a celebration of all forms of love, romantic love not even being the most important. But it is what it is.
Poems are printed in full at the bottom of the post.
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We’ll start with the sexiest poem and cool off from there. “i like my body when it is with your” by e.e. cummings is so open and sweet and specific it’s almost uncomfortable to read. It’s like peeking in the window as two people have sex for the first time.
The way the lover creates his own language and syntax to describe sexual acts speaks of discovery, pleasure, and joy. Pass me the smelling salts—
i like, slowly stroking the, shocking fuzz
of your electric fur, and what-is-it comes
over parting flesh
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In “El Beso” poet Angelina Weld Grimke dramatizes a single moment in what seems to be a very dramatic relationship.
The poem is cinematic—a wide angle lens takes us from a night sky to an extreme close-up of a mouth about to kiss, and then zooms out again. The kiss, too, reads like a movie kiss, overheated and probably noisy—
Your mouth,
And madness, madness,
Tremulous, breathless, flaming,
The space of a sigh;
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In the days before Instagram-envy, before the time that even happy couples can feel they aren’t as happy or as hip as those they Follow, lovers were smug, sure that they alone had the world on a string. Ezra Pound takes us back in “The Garrett.”
If you’re lucky enough to wake up to someone you love best in the world, keep these lines close at heart to ponder your good fortune—
Nor has life in it aught better
Than this hour of clear coolness,
the hour of waking together.
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W.B. Yeats wrote “Politics” in 1938 when the Spanish Civil War was in full swing and WWII on the brink.
In feeling desire he not only escapes a violent reality, he calls up a time when nothing existed for him but the pursuit of love
And maybe what they say is true
Of war and war’s alarms,
But O that I were young again
And held her in my arms.
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Finally, at the entrance to the trail that leads to the ruins, I left Franz Wright’s “To.” It’s a painful poem for Valentine’s Day, to be sure.
The poem makes me think there’s an alternate explanation for why hearts are drawn with arrows shot through. In loving someone, truly loving them, we embrace their suffering and take it on as our own.
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Happy Valentine’s Day, readers! Spread love like butter on dry toast.
Link here to watch the lovely “Some Enchanted Evening” with Mitzi Gaynor and Rossano Brazzi. And here are the full texts of all the poem posted above—
i like my body when it is with your
by e.e. cummings
i like my body when it is with your
body. It is so quite new a thing.
Muscles better and nerves more.
i like your body. i like what it does,
i like its hows. i like to feel the spine
of your body and its bones, and the trembling
-firm-smooth ness and which i will
again and again and again
kiss, i like kissing this and that of you,
i like, slowly stroking the, shocking fuzz
of your electric fur, and what-is-it comes
over parting flesh… And eyes big love-crumbs,
and possibly i like the thrill
of under me you so quite new
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El Beso
by Angelina Weld Grimké
Twilight—and you
Quiet—the stars;
Snare of the shine of your teeth,
Your provocative laughter,
The gloom of your hair;
Lure of you, eye and lip;
Yearning, yearning,
Languor, surrender;
Your mouth,
And madness, madness,
Tremulous, breathless, flaming,
The space of a sigh;
Then awakening—remembrance,
Pain, regret—your sobbing;
And again, quiet—the stars,
Twilight—and you.
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The Garrett
by Ezra Pound
Come let us pity those who are better off than we are.
Come, my friend, and remember
that the rich have butlers and no friends,
And we have friends and no butlers.
Come let us pity the married and the unmarried.
Dawn enters with little feet
like a gilded Pavlova,
And I am near my desire.
Nor has life in it aught better
Than this hour of clear coolness,
the hour of waking together.
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Politics
by W.B. Yeats
How can I, that girl standing there,
My attention fix
On Roman or on Russian
Or on Spanish politics?
Yet here’s a travelled man that knows
What he talks about,
And there’s a politician
That has read and thought,
And maybe what they say is true
Of war and war’s alarms,
But O that I were young again
And held her in my arms.
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To
by Franz Wright
Before you were I loved you
and when you were born
and when you took your first step
Although I did not know
good luck I want to say
lone penguin keep sturdily waddling
in the direction of those frozen mountains sister
of desolate sanctity
I want to scream
Although I did not know you
I loved you later on
as just a weedy thing
a little skeleton I loved
Both long pre-you a child myself and as a man in retrospect
I loved and I was there
while they were raping you I loved although
like God
that’s all that I could do—