I would like to start by saying that I know there are 7 continents but, for obvious reasons, Antarctica didn’t make the list.
What is your favourite love poem? Leave it in a comment!
Here we go: 6 continents, 6 love poems! ( all written by either modern or contemporary poets ).
North America
[i carry your heart with me(i carry it in] – E. E. Cummings
i carry your heart with me(i carry it in
my heart)i am never without it(anywhere
i go you go,my dear;and whatever is done
by only me is your doing,my darling)
i fear
no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want
no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)
and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you
here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows
higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that’s keeping the stars apart
i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)
South America
ONE HUNDRED LOVE SONNETS: XVII – Pablo Neruda
I don’t love you as if you were a rose of salt, topaz,
or arrow of carnations that propagate fire:
I love you as one loves certain obscure things,
secretly, between the shadow and the soul.
I love you as the plant that doesn’t bloom but carries
the light of those flowers, hidden, within itself,
and thanks to your love the tight aroma that arose
from the earth lives dimly in my body.
I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where,
I love you directly without problems or pride:
I love you like this because I don’t know any other way to love,
except in this form in which I am not nor are you,
so close that your hand upon my chest is mine,
so close that your eyes close with my dream
Europe
Put out my eyes – Rainer Maria Rilke
Put out my eyes, and I can see you still,
Slam my ears to, and I can hear you yet;
And without any feet can go to you;
And tongueless, I can conjure you at will.
Break off my arms, I shall take hold of you
And grasp you with my heart as with a hand;
Arrest my heart, my brain will beat as true;
And if you set this brain of mine afire,
Then on my blood-stream I yet will carry you.
Africa
Of Love – Ketty Nivyabandi
Falling in love
a flowering of the heart
an opening
a stretch out the world
a sunflower caught in the sky
two eyes closed
a tongue
searching for the sky
for a drop of rain
and the way it curls after finding it.
Falling out of love
a shedding of the heart
a soft wrinkling
a scar
the crisp cool air
that licks the musty room clean after a storm
a closing window too
which must be reopened
for the heart to breathe
all dying isn’t sad
there is the dying that precedes the living
and that’s the secret kind.
Asia
Love: Making a Long Distance Phone Call – Moon In-soo
So it’s raining over there?
It’s bright and sunny here.
Your sadness dries up little by little.
I am slowly getting drenched.
Australia
The Company Of Lovers – Judith Wright
We meet and part now over all the world;
we, the lost company,
take hands together in the night, forget
the night in our brief happiness, silently.
We, who sought many things, throw all away
for this one thing, one only,
remembering that in the narrow grave
we shall be lonely.
Death marshalls up his armies round us now.
Their footsteps crowd too near.
Lock your warm hand above the chilling heart
and for a time I live without my fear.
Grope in the night to find me and embrace,
for the dark preludes of the drums begin,
and round us round the company of lovers,
death draws his cordons in.
Still in the mood for poetry? You should check out this month’s poems: https://mellitus.art.blog/2020/05/18/poems-of-the-month/
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