Written by Hiliana Arroyo, Guest Writer
I love “The Poem of Love” by Lisel Mueller because of the perspective it adds to the many definitions of love! This piece changes perspectives and adds concrete experiences to abstract concepts. I recommend for everyone to truly read and submerge themselves in this wonderful poem.
The Poem Of Love
By Lisel Mueller, March 1964
Not about her, who turns dancer
in the space he illumines by waiting,
not about his leaping impatience
which praises the dust of her lightness—
but about the contender, the brilliant third,
who trips them and drives them away
to watch him from separate wings:
Not about words fetched and carried
like fruit from one to the other,
not about moments that gush from unorthodox light
and settle into the landscape—
but about words that the wind bites off,
moments burned out in expectation,
arriving piecemeal, dead:
Not about night and the bridge
it stretches from runner to runner,
not about sexual grace—
but about the [narrow opening] between lovers,
wide enough for the swallow that whistles goodbye
to shiver into and wait out the storm
of their forgetful embracing:
If about love at all,
then about love in another country
or love imagine to music—-
more often about things missing or broken,
the boomerang of desire, the heart’s despair,
the shakedown after this spell.
It is not written by lovers.