A folk spell for keeping someone who's already gone, and a renunciation of love itself for something larger. Two poets on the different ways devotion gets withheld.
Stephen Dunn's poem opens like a charm — dig up her footprint, plant a marigold, love her. But it curdles by the end. The real power doesn't belong to the devoted lover. It belongs to the one who cares less. That last line lands like a cold truth: the terrible power of the one less in love. You've felt it. Everyone has.
Faiz Ahmed Faiz — one of the great Urdu poets of the twentieth century, writing from Pakistan — takes the opposite turn. He loved completely, and once believed that love was everything. But then he walked into the alleys and open markets and saw what the world actually looked like — bodies sold, centuries of suffering embroidered over in silk. And he found he could not unsee it. The beloved is still ravishing. But there are other sorrows now. Don't ask me, my love, for that love again.
❀
Lovers
To keep the one you want
dig up a footprint of hers
and put it in a flowerpot.
Then plant a marigold, the flower that doesn't fade.
And love her.
If she's distant now
it's for a reason beyond control.
So don't tamper
with the impressions left by her body
when for the last time she leaves your bed.
Just smooth them out and forget her.
Who is not vulnerable to a stronger magic
(the broken glass, the bullets in a yawn),
the terrible power of the one less in love.
That which then was ours, my love,
don't ask me for that love again.
The world then was gold, burnished with light —
and only because of you. That's what I had believed.
How could one weep for sorrows other than yours?
How could one have any sorrow but the one you gave?
So what were these protests, these rumours of injustice?
A glimpse of your face was evidence of springtime.
The sky, whenever I looked, was nothing but your eyes.
If you'd fall into my arms, Fate would be helpless.
All this I'd thought, all this I'd believed.
But there were other sorrows, comforts other than love.
The rich had cast their spell on history:
dark centuries had been embroidered on brocades and silks.
Bitter threads began to unravel before me
as I went into alleys and in open markets
saw bodies plastered with ash, bathed in blood.
I saw them sold and bought, again and again.
This too deserves attention. I can't help but look back
when I return from those alleys — what should one do?
And you are still so ravishing — what should I do?
There are other sorrows in this world,
comforts other than love.
Don't ask me, my love, for that love again.