Love is a high Mountain stark in
A windy sky: if you would never
Lose your Breath—do not Climb so High.²
Because I Love in a Deformed society—
That is why you find me Deformed!³
Futile—the winds—to a heart in Port.⁴
Permit a place to stand and Love in for a day,
With Darkness and the Death-Hour rounding it.⁵
The Barriers which guard the degrees of
Intimacy are Immensely strong—and yet
Can be Overthrown by a light touch.⁶
Love is a Rainbow that appears
When heaven’s Sunshine lights earth’s Tears—
O dark life’s stormy sky would seem,
If love’s clear rainbow did not Gleam.⁷
Love seeketh not itself to please, nor
For itself hath any care—but for
Another gives its Ease, and builds
Heaven in hell’s despair—⁸⁹¹⁰
One letter of love can turn a cramped cell into
A Wide Horizon, into a Field and a running Stream,
And transform that irascible warden into a Human Being.⁹
Love is Contraband in hell because
Love is Acid—that eats away bars.¹⁰
¹ Giovanni Boccaccio tr. Wayne Rebhorn, The Decameron
² Langston Hughes, Love Song for Lucinda
³ ‘Abdallah Radwan tr. Elmusa & Nye, Deformed
⁴ Emily Dickinson, Wild Nights
⁵ Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Sonnets from the Portuguese 22
⁶ Iris Murdoch, The Black Prince
⁷ Effie Walter Smith, The Rainbow
⁸ William Blake, The Clod & the Pebble
⁹ ‘Abd al-Latif ‘Aql tr. Elmusa & Davies, From Jerusalem to the Gulf
¹⁰ Assata Shakur, Love is Contraband in Hell