Love

Love is a nectar pressed from a
silvery grape
plucked from the Unseen
just hanging ever so slightly
over the Garden wall into

this world. The vine has
many delicious souls incorporated into its
maze. The arbor is the place for
bells. Each touch of wisdom’s
wind matures the grapes, and their
fermentation is love.

We cannot talk about love in the street-digger’s ditch.
We can’t talk about it
hip-deep in mud, with the
stink of the
world on our clothes.
Then it is only the loud
laughter of
quick relief, not the

arduous journey.

We have to talk about love in the
place where the
pure drunks congregate who know the
bell-clear Name of the
Beloved, and are
not afraid. It is a
place of proclamations, and
lack of all restraint. It is a
place where the next world’s boughs hang
close to the earth within
easy reach.

Slender herons fly across the silhouette of love’s foliage
at angles in a white sky.
Love is a scent that has
the gaunt-eyed standing at
newly opened doors
begging for
audience.
Love weaves hair into Renaissance knots
with tiny neon flowers
only the wisest bees
discover to sip its nectar.
Love is a terrible wave only the
most intrepid navigator
dares enter. Let us not

talk about love. It
cannot be mentioned in the
marketplace. In the
boardrooms of America
love has gone astray, and the
object misplaced.
Love is a harsh master
jealous of duplicity. Love is a

lone eagle proud on a harsh rock.

Love is a faint glow in the distance on the
high seas, but
enough for the
lone survivor. It is the

pocket of calm between two
rough sheets of sandstorm.

It is the
sandstorm itself.

It is a taste that will test the taster
who gives up all doubts and takes a
leap that leaves a chasm
forever between what he
once was and what he has
now become. Time turns the
gulf into a canyon so wide
there is
no turning back. Love is a

mysterious guide on a mist-filled mountain path
that winds around severe peaks, and
passes caves cut into the
liquid rock-crystal of dream. But it

goes past them.

There is no animal capable, in all its
animal innocence, of
embodying the
full dimension of love. Love is not for
the lower beasts, even though their
loyalty partakes of a
portion of its sea.

No space of creation is without it. Even in the
darkest depths of the sea.

It drives us on.

It takes hold.

It brings some into the
land of a foolishness so
wise only
few understand its
language. Birds
understand it. They stitch the

daylight skies with its
syllables.

The brilliant
light of silence
knows it.

The hopeless lover with

moist eyes

knows it.

---

1986  23 Ramadan (morning) (from Ramadan Sonnets)

Categories: Poems, Love