Was reading my favorite old book of poems by John Donne, and every time I read it I feel strangulated and suffocated. It brings back memories long dead and gone, chases my soul into dark corners where it writhes with the frustrations of unfulfilment.
And yet I get dragged to the book, over and over again like a moth to the flame. Like a sickness I cant quite control , an indulgence I know that will tear strips off my soul, show me naked bare and with nowhere to hide.
I look out of the window, my face bare and all emotions flitting across it. Do I deserve to be tortured so? Why do I keep this book? Is it a relic? Or is it mute testimony to what I am destined to go through.
When I spied it in a fair…..all I thought when I leafed through its pages was-“so much pain and love…I wish someone could love like this for true…I wish I was the fortunate one to receive such love, pure boundless, and unconditional.”
And sighed and never let go of it.
Was reading it today and thought I would share with you some …
When thou sigh’st, thou sigh’st not wind,
But sigh’st my soul away,
When thou weep’st, unkindly kind,
My life’s blood doth decay
It cannot be
That thou lov’st me, as thou say’st
If in thine my life thou waste,
Thou art the best of me….
Call us what you will, we are made such by love;
Call her one, me another fly,
We’re tapers too, and at our cost die
And we in us find the eagle and the dove
The phoenix riddle hath more wit
By us; we two being one are it
So, to one neutral thing both sexes fit.
We die and rise the same, and prove
Mysteries by this love
We can die by it, if not live by love
And if unfit for tombs and hearse
Our legend be, it will be fit for verse;
And if no piece of chronicle we prove,
We’ll build in sonnets pretty rooms
As well a well-wrought urn becomes
The greatest ashes, as half-acre tombs,
Us canonized for love
(One of his dark poems of hate)
The Message
Send home to me my long stray’d eyes to me,
Which O! too long have dwelt on thee;
Yet since there they have learn’d such ill;
Such forc’d fashions,
That they be
Made by thee
Fit for no good sight, keep them still.
Send home my harmless heart again,
Which no unworthy thought could stain
But if it be taught by thine
To make jestings
Of protestings;
And cross both
Word and oath,
Keep it, for ‘tis none of mine.
Yet send me back my heart and eyes,
That I may know, and see thy lies,
And may laugh and joy, when thou
Art in anguish and dost languish
For someone
That will none,
Or prove as false as thou art now.
Eloquent isn’t it? But what feels so special is I connect with his words in an unfathomable way. As though I’ve been through all those emotions, emotions that forced his sensitivity to pen them down…
Its strange how through centuries one sees goodness and love survive. There is an answering call in each one of us…….maybe later in life for most, but for me it came early………..and its presence I call “the waiting”. I know I am not being very coherent and don’t make much sense but for those of you who question the unquestionable…..
There is a certain charm about his poetic style. He delves deeply into the metaphysical, but to me he is just a magician who weaves all thoughts into a fabric that feels so soft and so secure, I’d call his poetry the answer to an idealist’s prayer.
Deep, honest, unconditional, pure…
Hope I have whetted your appetite for his words….and hope many of you find solace in them, like me…over and over again in the years to come.
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