Let me start off by saying, I love Valentine’s Day. The pink and red cards, the flowers, the heart-shaped cookies, the glitter! I know not everyone shares my affinity for this holiday, it is, after all, known as a Hallmark holiday. And this year, it feels especially hard to celebrate a holiday about love while being socially distanced, but, I promise, it’s still possible. So whether you’re sending love to a friend, a family member, or a loved one, here are three love poems for the socially distanced.
Separation
By W.S. Merwin
Your absence has gone through me
Like thread through a needle.
Everything I do is stitched with its color.
In the Company of Women
By January Gill O’Neil
Make me laugh over coffee,
make it a double, make it frothy
so it seethes in our delight.
Make my cup overflow
with your small happiness.
I want to hoot and snort and cackle and chuckle.
Let your laughter fill me like a bell.
Let me listen to your ringing and singing
as Billie Holiday croons above our heads.
Sorry, the blues are nowhere to be found.
Not tonight. Not here.
No makeup. No tears.
Only contours. Only curves.
Each sip takes back a pound,
each dry-roasted swirl takes our soul.
Can I have a refill, just one more?
Let the bitterness sink to the bottom of our lives.
Let us take this joy to go.
Sonnet XVII
By Pablo Neruda
Translated by Mark Eisner
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.
