Valentine’s week and boy do we have the need for some escapism romance!
Yeah, luurve is surely in the air literally (by that I mean there are red hearts, blooms and Valentine special meals advertising their way into our hearts). Hibernating at home, though, is still the thing to do especially seeing as this is the last of the winter months. Bonding in front of the fireplace (something I don’t have), enjoying your partners company wrapped around a blanket watching Netflix, cooking together, recapping a day’s event and making plans together is, I would say, the trending to-do list. And this is where WMC comes to the rescue! How about some poetry for this Fourteenth night?
Sometimes, the heartfelt note you want to pour out to your partner isn’t the heartfelt note that comes out. Unless you can pen down your thoughts and let’s face it not many can be bothered these days because whatever you are feeling can be substituted with an emoji as these are the communicators of the 21st century.
Fortunately, there are innumerable masters out there whose romantic poems can get the job done for you. First, you can’t go wrong with a classic. Second, it’s pretty easy to impress somebody by appearing to know something about poetry. Do something different! It’s not cheesy, it’s unique and special!
Make it a meaningful Feb 14th!
Here are some of our favourites you can borrow;)
Sonnet XXVII: Naked You Are As Simple as one of your Hands
Naked, you are simple as one of your hands,
Smooth, earthy, small, transparent, round:
You have moonlines, applepathways:
Naked, you are slender as a naked grain of wheat.
Naked, you are blue as the night in Cuba;
You have vines and stars in your hair;
Naked, you are spacious and yellow
As summer in a golden church.
Naked, you are tiny as one of your nails,
Curved, subtle, rosy, till the day is born
And you withdraw to the underground world,
as if down a long tunnel of clothing and of chores:
Your clear light dims, gets dressed, drops its leaves,
And becomes a naked hand again.
Pablo Neruda
The Light Wraps You
The light wraps you in its mortal flame.
Abstracted pale mourner, standing that way
against the old propellers of the twilight
that revolves around you.
Speechless, my friend,
alone in the loneliness of this hour of the dead
and filled with the lives of fire,
pure heir of the ruined day.
A bough of fruit falls from the sun on your dark garment.
The great roots of night
grow suddenly from your soul,
and the things that hide in you come out again
so that a blue and palled people
your newly born, takes nourishment.
Oh magnificent and fecund and magnetic slave
of the circle that moves in turn through black and gold:
rise, lead and possess a creation
so rich in life that its flowers perish
and it is full of sadness.
Pablo Neruda
Sonnet I
From fairest creatures we desire increase,
That thereby beauty’s rose might never die,
But as the riper should by time decease,
His tender heir might bear his memory:
But thou, contracted to thine own bright eyes,
Feed’st thy light’s flame with self-substantial fuel,
Making a famine where abundance lies,
Thyself thy foe, to thy sweet self too cruel.
Thou that art now the world’s fresh ornament
And only herald to the gaudy spring,
Within thine own bud buriest thy content
And, tender churl, makest waste in niggarding.
Pity the world, or else this glutton be,
To eat the world’s due, by the grave and thee.
William Shakespeare
Romance
Romance, who loves to nod and sing,
With drowsy head and folded wing,
Among the green leaves as they shake
Far down within some shadowy lake,
To me a painted paroquet
Hath been—a most familiar bird—
Taught me my alphabet to say—
To lisp my very earliest word
While in the wild wood I did lie,
A child—with a most knowing eye.
Of late, eternal Condor years
So shake the very Heaven on high
With tumult as they thunder by,
I have no time for idle cares
Through gazing on the unquiet sky.
And when an hour with calmer wings
Its down upon my spirit flings—
That little time with lyre and rhyme
To while away—forbidden things!
My heart would feel to be a crime
Unless it trembled with the strings.
Edgar Allan Poe
“I admit ”
I admit,
I was afraid
to love.
Not just love,
but to love her.
For she was a stunning
mystery. She carried things
deep inside her that no one
has yet to understand,
and I,
I was afraid to fail,
like the others.
She was the ocean
and I was just a boy
who loved the waves
but was completely
terrified to
swim.
Christopher Poindexter
His & Hers
his life…
An empty canvas space.
That began to show colours
With just a single touch-
From her.
her heart…
An ordinary blue sky
One kiss from his lips
Was enough;
To light up the blue,
With bursting stars!
Clairel Estevez
