Yugen

A Subtle Kind of Love

He loved her in a distant kind of way, the same way the sun heats the Earth. If she were to disappear completely, he knew through pure logic that it would have no great, disastrous effect on him. He would not cease to be; he would not stop breathing; his heart would not stop beating; the world would not stop spinning. The sun would keep shining, radiating heat, if the Earth were not there. On a certain, purely physical level, her absence would have absolutely zero effect on his person.

And yet…

He loved her in an abstract kind of way, the way a bee loves honey. He wasn’t sure why he wanted to love her, but he wanted to love her just the same. Maybe somebody told him once that he should be in love with somebody, so he felt a need to pick somebody and it just so happened to be her. Maybe. Being in love was nice, sure, but he didn’t need to be.

And yet…

He loved her in a removed kind of way, the way a butterfly’s wings can start a tsunami halfway around the world. He knew that it had an effect on her, but he wasn’t sure how great. On a certain level he was aware that if he were to stop, if he were to disappear, it would have a drastic effect. For him it would be one less flap of his wings, in a manner of speaking, if such a thing were possible without him falling from the sky.

And yet…

He loved her in a subtle kind of way. It wasn’t the kind of love you see in movies, with swelling music and giant gestures and running through the streets to catch a departing train. It wasn’t the kind of love that Byron or Shakespeare wrote about, with flowery language and hyperbole and iambic pentameter. It was still and deep, like water that you might mistake for shallow if you just watched the surface. It was entirely his, not dependent on her own feelings for him, and it would still be there whether she, or him, or everyone else on the world disappeared. It was a subtle kind of love, but it was true.

And she loved him just the same.

i like my body (ee 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.

Poema XV (Pablo Neruda)

I like it when you’re quiet. It’s as if you weren’t here now,
and you heard me from a distance, and my voice couldn’t reach you.
It’s as if your eyes had flown away from you, and as if
your mouth were closed because I leaned to kiss you.

Just as all living things are filled with my soul.
you emerge from all living things filled with the soul of me.
It’s as if, a butterfly in dreams, you were my soul,
and as if you were the soul’s word, melancholy.

I like it when you’re quiet. It’s as if you’d gone away now,
And you’d become the keening, the butterfly’s insistence,
And you heard me from a distance and my voice didn’t reach you.
It’s then that what I want is to be quiet with your silence.

It’s then that what I want is to speak to you your silence
in a speech as clear as lamplight, as plain as a gold ring.
You are quiet like the night, and like the night you’re star-lit.
Your silences are star-like, they’re a distant and a simple thing.

I like it when you’re quiet. It’s as if you weren’t here now.
As if you were dead now, and sorrowful, and distant.
A word then is sufficient, or a smile, to make me happy,
Happy that it seems so certain that you’re present.

i have found what you are like

i have found what you are like
the rain,

        (Who feathers frightened fields
with the superior dust-of-sleep. wields

easily the pale club of the wind
and swirled justly souls of flower strike

the air in utterable coolness

deeds of green thrilling light
                              with thinned

newfragile yellows

                  lurch and.press

-in the woods
             which
                  stutter
                         and

                            sing

And the coolness of your smile is
stirringofbirds between my arms;but
i should rather than anything
have(almost when hugeness will shut
quietly)almost,
               your kiss