Pablo Neruda

Sonnet XVII (100 Love Sonnets, 1960)

I don't love you as if you were the salt-rose, topaz
or arrow of carnations that propagate fire:
I love you as certain dark things are loved,
secretly, between the shadow and the soul.

I love you as the plant that doesn't bloom and carries
hidden within itself the light of those flowers,
and thanks to your love, darkly in my body
lives the dense fragrance that rises from the earth.

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where,
I love you simply, without problems or pride:
I love you in this way because I don't know any other way of loving

but this, in which there is no I or you,
so intimate that your hand upon my chest is my hand,
so intimate that when I fall asleep it is your eyes that close.

Fire

~ By Teilhard De Chardin

"Some day after we have mastered the winds, the waves and gravity, we will harness for God the energies of love; and then for a second time in the history of the world, humans will have discovered fire."

I savor glimmers of transcendence

By Ruskin Bond

http://www.csmonitor.com/2002/1205/p18s03-hfes.html

December 05, 2002

"If there be a heaven on earth, it is this, it is this, it is this!"

The words are inscribed over the entrance to the Hall of Special Audience, in the royal gardens of the Red Fort of Delhi, built by the Emperor Shah Jehan in the 17th century. It is a beautiful pavilion, the walls inlaid with jade and other semiprecious stones; and from the latticed windows one sees the waters of the river Jumna winding placidly across the plain.

In Shah Jehan's time, the river ran much closer to the fort, and I like to think that the emperor, when he found time, strolled along the ramparts of his palace while it was being built. And one evening, as the emperor gazed at the river, something happened to make him feel at peace with the world. He was so moved by the moment that he decided to build his private pavilion on that spot, inscribing on it those imperishable lines.

Such moments come to most of us - moments when we feel deeply moved or inspired, and when time seems to stand still so that we may savor and preserve in our minds a glimpse of eternity. They come but rarely, these glimmers - raindrops on a sunflower, or the fragrance of the first summer rain on parched earth, the song of the whistling thrush emerging like a sweet secret from a dark forest. Or the joy after hearing a child's laughter: moments when heaven is here, compensating for the irritations and petty disasters humans create around themselves. When all the wars are done, a butterfly will still be beautiful.

When I was only 17, I wanted desperately to be a writer. My early efforts did not meet with much success. No one encouraged me or raised my flagging spirits. At the time I was living with relatives in Jersey, one of the Channel Islands off England, and earning £3 a week as a clerk in a grocery store. Late one evening, when I was feeling particularly discouraged, I went for a walk along the seacoast. The tide was in, the sea was rough; and the wind, which was almost a gale, came pouring out of the darkness like a mad genie just released from his bottle. Great waves crashed against the sea wall, and the wind whipped the salt spray across my face. I felt like a small bird caught in a tempest.

And then something touched me, something from the elements took hold of my heart, and the depression left me. I felt as free and powerful as the wind - quite capable of building my own fort, my own private pavilion of words. And I spoke to the genie in the swirling darkness and called out: "Yes, I will be a writer, and no one's going to stop me!"

Well, more than 40 years later, the writing is still happening, though at times it's still a struggle. But whenever I feel like giving up, I try to recapture that moment when earth and sea and sky were one; and then the writing begins again.

Time, place, and emotion must coalesce, hence the rarity of such occasions. Delight cannot be planned for - it makes no appointments! Almost always, it's the unexpected that brings us joy. It may only be a shaft of sunlight, slanting through the pillars of a banyan tree; or dewdrops caught in a spider's web; or the sudden chatter of a mountain stream as you round the bend of a hill. Or an emperor's first glimpse of a winding river and the world beyond.