Poems of Love

They have something of a bad reputation, don't they? Carrying a whiff of the sentimental, the overwrought, the one-dimensional hyperbole? The scent of the idealized, the self-serving, the hyper-adjectival? Love is not only a difficult emotion to articulate, but a difficult one to imagine.

Nonetheless, a host of authors over at The Guardian -- from Ahdaf Soueif to Jeannette Winterson to Seamus Heaney to Hilary Mantel -- choose their favorite poems of love. So does The Boston Globe: fourteen poems for February 14. The Chicago Tribune looks at the "poetry" of missed connections. And the Poetry Foundation has put together a "sampler" of classic and contemporary poems that it invites you to (it says with a sly wink) share.

And here is one of my favorites, translated by Mark Eisner, that appears in none of those special-for-Valentine's-Day features.

 

One Hundred Love Sonnets: XVII
By 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 dreams.