Love Is…

To love the delicate grace
of the blue swan and the rose rose;
to love the light of dawn
and the stars opening up
and the smiles prolonging themselves…
To love the tree's plenitude,
to love the music of water
and the sweetness of fruit
and the sweetness of sweet
souls…, to love what's lovable isn't love:
love is to turn oneself into a pillow
for the tiredness of every day;
to put the living sun in the anxious,
blind seed that lost its path
searching for light, imprisoned
in its soil, defeated
by its own soil.. Love is to untangle spider-webs
of roads in darkness:
Love is to be a road and a stop!
Love is this loving of what pains us,
what makes us bleed
inside…
It is to enter the heart
of night and guess
which is the star in gestation… The star's
hope!... To love is loving from the black root.
Love is to forgive, and more than
forgive, to understand…
Love is holding tight to the cross tight, and nailing
oneself to the cross,
and dying and resurrecting…

Love is to resurrect!

—Translated by Ilan Stavans