A POEM FOR VALENTINE’S DAY
Because I am cheap, I usually give my wife a poem for Valentine’s Day, rather than chocolates or flowers. Julie is a crossword puzzle enthusiast. A few years ago I paid tribute to that aspect of her personality with this sonnet:
CROSSWORDS
If only marriages were more like these,
One hundred little clues for men and wives
That lead (if we are smart) with relative ease
To the bottom right-hand corners of our lives.
Alas, when I am down you’re sometimes cross,
My little white squares run into your black.
At other times it’s me who’s at a loss
For soothing words, and you who feels their lack.
Sometimes we put down words before we think
And later find they cannot be erased.
We write them not with pencils but in ink
And in that way the grid becomes defaced.
But nonetheless, I’ll love you, my dear wife,
Till the bottom right-hand corner of my life.
The following year I came up with this little ditty, apparently composed under the influence of Dr. Seuss:
THE YOU INSIDE OF ME
I know a little secret.
I’ll tell it now to you.
I can’t say it’s staggering,
Only that it’s true.
There is a little hideaway
Deep inside my heart,
Where I keep you with me
When we are apart.
You may be on the ocean,
You may be in the air,
You may be over here,
And you may be over there,
But when I need to see you
When I need to talk,
I find that secret hideaway
And give a little knock.
The door, it always opens,
Your face I always see,
It brings great joy and comfort
Instantly to me.
And should you go a-wandering
Far from me someday,
I’ll not take to worrying
All my days away,
I’ll not pace the house at night
Giving way to fears,
I’ll not stumble blindly
Through a rainfall of my tears,
I’ll simply go in search of
The you inside of me,
For I could never ask for
Better company.
Last year, our beloved cat Lydia died right around Valentine’s Day. Instead of composing a love poem I ended up composing a love poem to Lydia. But Julie appreciated it anyway.
LYDIA
You were a sickly stray
Who came from the SPCA.
You couldn’t hear
But you were dear
To me.
From others you sometimes shied
Or else you’d run and hide,
But you were never less
Than a bundle of tenderness
To me.
When you were out at night
I’d flicker the back-porch light,
And as if you heard your name
You ran inside and came
To me.
I knew no better way
To end a trying day
Than to gently stroke your fur
And listen while you’d purr
To me.
Though not by nature gruff,
On occasion you could get rough
If somebody rubbed you wrong,
But you were as sweet as a song
To me.
After eighteen years your stout
Little body was all worn out.
For you, death offered relief
But it offered only grief
To me.
Today I went over to get
Your ashen remains from the vet.
I’ve got them with me here
But they bring little cheer
To me.
Tonight when the stars are all lit
I’ll flicker the porch light a bit
As one last symbolic sign
Of love from this heart of mine
To you.
One of my passions in life is classical Persian literature. Among my favorite books are The Masnavi by Rumi, The Ruba’iyat of Omar Khayyam, The Story of Layla and Majnun by Nizami, Vis and Ramin by Fakhraddin Gorgani, and The Shahnameh by Abolqasem Ferdowsi. One of the greatest works of Persian literature is The Conference of the Birds by Farid Ud-Din Attar. My copy is the Penguin Classics edition, beautifully translated into English by Afkham Darbandi and Dick Davis. The Persian original was composed in the twelfth century in north-eastern Iran and is an allegory of mankind’s search for oneness with God. All of the characters in Attar’s epic poem are birds. The thirty different types of birds in the poem all stand in for different types of humans (the nightingale is a lover, the finch a coward, etc.). Together they go off in search of the legendary king of the birds known as the Simorgh. Specifically the book is an exploration of Sufism, a mystic branch of Islam that is difficult for nonreligious types (like me) to grasp. Basically, Sufism teaches that God is all that exists; every thing and every person is an emanation of God; and the ultimate goal of all things and all people is to progress along a Way which leads to annihilation in God. Contained in The Conference of the Birds are many parables in which the quest for oneness with God is compared to various human exploits, such as the slave’s quest for freedom or a litigant’s quest for justice in a court of law. One of the parables is called “The lover who saved his beloved from drowning,” which Darbandi and Davis translate this way:
A girl fell in a river – in a flash
Her lover dived in with a mighty splash,
And fought the current till he reached her side.
When they were safe again, the poor girl cried:
“By chance I tumbled in, but why should you
Come after me and hazard your life too?”
He said: “I dived because the difference
Of ‘I’ and ‘you’ to lovers makes no sense –
A long time passed when we were separate,
But now that we have reached this single state
When you are me and I am wholly you,
What use is it to talk of us as two?”
All talk of two implies plurality –
When two has gone there will be Unity.
Attar used the parable of the drowning lover to make a point about Sufism. I am not a Sufi, so I decided to adapt Attar’s poem and make it not a parable about Sufism but a straight-forward tale about human romantic love. My inspiration was a packet of letters that I purchased at an antique paper and postcard faire here in Sacramento a few weeks ago. The letters were written in 1943 by a young Alaska woman named Vera Downing to her lover Rudi Becker. In a letter dated August 23, 1943, she wrote: “I went up to Wasilla and stayed with the parents of my former roommate at college. They are really swell people. They run the roadhouse and cocktail bar up there – and that’s just about all there is at Wasilla except some beautiful lakes. I swam every day and burned my face bright red. Another girl from the office was up there on her honeymoon. We went fishing and she fell overboard. She can’t swim so her husband jumped in and saved her life. Very romantic. Would you save me if I fell in?” As soon as I read Vera’s letter I thought of Attar’s poem. With both the letter and the poem in mind, I composed this year’s Valentine’s Day poem for Julie:
THE LOVER WHO RISKED DEATH FOR HIS BELOVED
Adapted from a Sufi parable written by Farid Ud-Din Attar (c. 1145-1220)
A pretty girl fell into a river.
Her lover saw her fall. It sent a shiver
Of terror down his spine. He took a breath
And dove in to deliver her from death.
He fought fatigue, the current, and the cold,
And with tremendous effort he took hold
Of the hand she reached out desperately to him.
He pulled her close and then began to swim
Until the two of them were safe on shore.
“I fell by chance,” she said to him, “but your
Immersion was no accidental fall.
Before I even had a chance to call
For help, you had already made the leap
Beyond the shallows out into the deep.
What prompted you to risk your life to save
Your clumsy lover from a liquid grave?”
“Because,” said he, “between your life and mine
There is no longer any boundary line.
When people fall in love there is no ‘me’
Or ‘I’ or ‘you’ but only ‘us’ and ‘we.’
Had I remained on shore and let you drown
Because I was afraid to be dragged down
To the bottom of the river by your side,
Not only would both ‘us’ and ‘we’ have died,
So too would ‘I’ and ‘me’ have ceased to be,
For I am you as sure as you are me.”
She answered not with words but with a kiss.
Again he was immersed – this time in bliss.
Neither Julie nor I has ever fallen into a river. But if one of us did, I’m sure the other would dive in and attempt a rescue, even at the risk of his or her own life. Today is our 30th Valentine’s Day as husband and wife. We don’t plan to do anything showily romantic. We are going to wander through a flea market during the day, go out to dinner this evening, and afterwards take in a showing of Gerry Marshall’s new romantic comedy Valentine’s Day. A Sufi mystic might find such mundane worldly activities a waste of time, a distraction from the quest for oneness with God. But I’m pretty sure that Vera Downing and Rudi Becker, who eventually married and lived happily ever after until death parted them nearly sixty years later, would approve of our Valentine’s Day plans.