Love Poems and Irony

 

I confess I have become a cynic when it comes to romantic love.  I watch those Hallmark movies and want to hurl when the same formula happens.  Boy meets girl.  Boy and girl don’t hit it off, they rub each other the wrong way and somehow in the space of say, a week or ten days, they find a spark and fall in love.  Or, they have a spark, have fun times, but… one of them manage to tick the other person off, the boy or girl storms out, a month or two passes, they find their way back to each other and… oh!! They can’t be without each other forever and ever amen!

So, I gather by reading this diatribe you have figured out that I have not been lucky in love.  And yet, I do have in my library, a small collection of love poems!  Interesting oxymoron I know.

I collect old books and one of the books I have in my collection is a book titled The Penguin Book of Italian Verse.  It’s a beauty, a first edition published in 1958.  And did I tell you? It smells wonderful! Yes, I smell books as well.  On every page is the Italian verse and then the poem translated into English.  I couldn’t resist.  First of all, the Italian language is love personified.  Rich, melodic, luxurious.  One of the verses I came across went like this: 

“Per divina bellezza indarno mira

chi gli occhi de costei già mai non vide

come soavemente ella gli gira;

non sa come Amor sana, e come ancide,

chi non sa come dolce ella sospira,

e come dolce parla, e dolce ride.”

As you can see, I drew a harpy running after a hapless suitor.  I was having a fit of terrible cynicism at the time of reading this love poem.  This was my response to the beautiful language. The English translation goes like this, in case you are unable to read my handwriting:

“He looks in vain for divine beauty who never saw the eyes of

this fair as she gently turns them; nor does he know how Love

heals and kills who does not know how sweetly she sighs, and how

sweetly talks, and sweetly laughs.”

Don’t get me wrong, I’m happy for those who have found love.  Truly.  And, I’m not the harpy in this picture.  At least, my friends don’t think so, not that I know of! So, I salute the fortunate few that have been lucky in love and for those that have not had to “look in vain for love”.