Love’s Invention, and: Love’s Slave, and: Faces

Love’s invention

If after living, trying to live, I find I can live no more, I’ll dig a hole on a deserted hillside, slip into it, and stop eating, you said.

As if you would stand up and set off for the hills at once if the nation were not at your side, like someone wrenching out his heart and holding it, drunk, you said.

Amazed, like lightning, like lightning, I was obliged to invent love in a flash.

Love’s slave

Like a fish falling into water and drowning, the desert of words incapable of understanding a single one even as they are being swept away by a flood of words, like a stone unable to crawl into a stone, violent masters of love.

As I stumbled for words I was intent only on my stumbling. As I was falling in love with someone I was intent on embracing, and being embraced. Like a stone that has crawled into a stone and lain down, the days when I was a slave to love were good.

Faces

You are reading my expression. I am looking at your face.

You chat away merrily, drinking happily. So I chat away merrily, too, drinking happily.

Then you get drunk and start to weep. So I start to weep, though I am not drunk.

Wiping away your tears, you love yourself. Wiping away my tears, I love your love.

You will soon leave me and return to your home. I will leave you in turn and for a long time lose my way in the dark.

So many expressions unfurl on your face, like sails billowing in the wind. My face catches in those expressions, like an anchor.