TIME OF LOVE
When you love me
I drop my polished mask
my smile becomes my own
the moon becomes the moon
and these very trees
of this instant
the sky
the light
presences that open
into vertigo
and are newly born
and are eternal
and your eyes as well
are born with them
your lips that in naming
discover me.
When I love you
I am sure I don’t end here
and that life is transitory
and death a transit
and time a blazing carbuncle
with no worn-out yesterdays
with no future.
---Claribel Alegria
Claribel Alegria’s Time Of Love
How can you not like a poem that utilizes the word “carbuncle”? I’ve found varying definitions of carbuncle, including deep skin inflammation, but the definition I believe Claribel Alegria to be working with is “any rounded red gem.” (Thank you Random House Webster’s College Dictionary) In all seriousness, what is there not to like about this poem? The most remarkable pieces of writing take a complex topic and simplify it, creating points of access for all readers. I think we can all agree that love is certainly a complex topic, and I would argue that Claribel Alegria streamlines love for us. Realizing the influence love exerts on her, the poem’s speaker details just how she changes, how her beloved changes, and how the world around them becomes different because of their love. The usage of carbuncle is just an added bonus.
The poem clarifies just where it’s going to take us in the title (Time of Love) and very first line (“When you love me”). There are no surprises here, we are entering a special moment in the speaker’s existence, a moment that we will come to learn is epiphanous. Her initial reaction to love is to a dropping of her “polished mask.” Love breaks us down to our bare bones, it requires that we come as we are when no one is watching, when we are alone amongst our truths. But love also rewards us, as Alegria’s speaker finds. She comments, “my smile became my own.” It wasn’t at some other instance of material gain or fleeting happiness that she first owned her smile. No, it was when he loved her. This is not to say that the “he” in this case, or any case, holds an immaculate power. Love requires two parties in concert with each other, aware of what is happening among them, yet completely unwilling to divert from their chosen course. In all honesty, those in the gentle grasp of love, such as Alegria and her lover, are powerless to prevent love from altering them. And who would want to resist such a sublime phenomenon?
“The moon becomes the moon / and these very trees / of this instant / the sky / the light / presences that open / into vertigo.” The natural world surrounds us every day; it has yet to go on vacation for well over 2000 years. Yet, we notice little of the world around us unless we are specifically looking. What causes our senses to heighten and focus---Love, of course. The convergence of nature and love in this poem is seamless. Alegria’s previous lines on the trees, moon, sky and light stretch and reach a point where they are “newly born / and are eternal / and your eyes as well / are born with them / your lips that in naming / discover me.” The love that creates her realization of the natural world around her also creates the features of her lover that are responsible for the love. I won’t even pretend that the concepts from that last sentence are clear, still I will offer this bit of explanation: the love that Claribel Alegria guides us through in this poem is reaching her core and in doing so it’s manifesting itself at her beginning, end, and all points in between. This is a poem not just about love, but time also. The ending hones in on the pressure love can exert on time. As Alegria notices, “When I love you / I am sure I don’t end here.” In the poem’s world, time is a red rounded gem, it made beautiful and blazing by love. Maybe the only pure way to reach true immortality is to wholly, and unabashedly love another person, submitting yourself completely to the changes they create in your world and the changes you make in theirs.
No comments:
Post a Comment