Uncompromising Love

Uncompromising Love

I love you.
I do not love
     your face, your hands, your voice, your words.
I love you!
I do not love you with
     my face, my hands, my voice, my words.
I love you with my whole body,
     the wholeness of you, the you-ness of you, that exotic other
     that loves me, that holds me at heart,
I hold you there too.
I love you, I kiss you,
     every square centimetre of you,
     of my imagination of you,
but is it really you?
or is it a symbol of you that I love?
a symbol of my own creation
     of wholeness, of you-ness, of exotic other.
If it were mere symbol,
then why write these lines to tell you?
except perhaps to keep the symbol alive
filling my whole being with perpetual longing
     that can never be satisfied,
     that is wholly satisfying,
     dangerous
you, I love you!

As dawn heralds the sun,
all my senses are roused
by the thought of your presence,
     haunting me,
I long for the touch of
     your face, your hands, your voice, your poetry,
that I may know you,
as if for the first time
and love you.

—okei (29th August, 2012)

Painting: “He Loves me, He Loves me not…” by Robert Fowler.

Hector said: Okei, how I love your poem. Take care, Hector

okei said: Thank you! Trying to work out what this means myself... The love is uncompromising, but it runs into an existential doubt about who is the Beloved, the "you" that I love. Although the love is whole, the Beloved must be reconstructed because this is the only way to overcome the doubt...in order to check that our idea of the Beloved has not passed into pure imagination... we must experience the parts that make up the whole. And in doing so, we reconstruct our ideal of love also, as in the beginning. So love is continuously being renewed.

Jon said: Indeed. Every time we love, it is the love of All That Is, loving itself. Every desire we have is the desire of the All That Is for itself. 

okei said: Jon, so I take it you prefer the first verse? I agree it's loving the All, but isn't there an uncertainty in the All, a doubt that we really know it? And that doubt can only be overcome by taking apart the All, uncertain of exactly what we will find, and recreating it?

Jon said: I don't think that's possible, Okei. That would make us the subject and The All the object - and, as I understand it, it's the other way round... If life is just a dream and we are the dreamers, then we are subject. But if we are the dreamed, not the dreamers, and if our apparent reality is part of the dream, then we are the object, the receivers of the verb... The very best "explanation" I've ever come across is Perfect, Brilliant Stillness, by David Carse. He had a complete awakening. The book seeks to impart some sense of the reality. I recommend it.

okei said: Thanks for the clarification. And thanks too for the book recommendation!!!

Lin said: ohh... wonderful ..... and you said you didn't get Rumi.
I think you and he both have the same relationship with Love, Beloved
but just express it differently. : )) Just great thanks for sharing.

okei said: Hey, Lin! Thanks so much, and check out this haiku version of one of Rumi's poems which I just did today

http://itsokei.blogspot.co.uk/2012/09/unmarked-boxes-rumi.html