Let me Hold your Heart like a
Flower, lest it Bloom & Collapse²
How do I Love thee? Let me Count
The Ways: I Love thee to the Depth,
Breadth & Height my Soul can reach³
I’d rather have the Want of You – the
Rich, Elusive Taunt of you, Forever and
Forever and Forever Unconfessed – than
Claim an Alien Comfort of any other Breast⁴
Lover’s don’t meet somewhere along the way:
They have been in one another’s Souls all along⁵
Whatever Happens, those who have learned to Love
One Another have made their way to the Lasting
World, and will not leave – Whatever Happens⁶
Love is the Only way to Grasp another Human
Being in the Innermost Core of the personality⁷
There is no thing that lasts – not one – when
We have turned to clay, but this: You Love
Me – all the rest fades with the world away⁸
Love, thou art High: I cannot Climb thee –
But, were it Two, who knows but We⁹
The Supreme Sight on this Black
Earth: I say it’s the one you Love¹⁰
¹ E.E. Cummings, I Carry Your Heart With Me
² Anne Sexton, Rapunzel
³ Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Sonnets from the Portuguese
⁴ Angela Morgan, Choice
⁵ Rumi tr. unknown, In One Another’s Souls
⁶ Wendell Berry, Whatever Happens
⁷ Viktor E. Frankl tr. Ilse Lasch, Man’s Search for Meaning
⁸ John Bennett, Her Answer
⁹ Emily Dickinson, Love Thou Art High
¹⁰ Sappho tr. Willis Barnstone, Supreme Sight on the Black Earth