Still more love poems for Valentine's Day

LETTER TO LERMONTOV

You are distant, alone, and far on the horizon,

obscured, almost nurtured, by the ocean's fog.

Seeking and searching, you are always a stranger:

What did leaving me, losing me, cost?

I would swim with one foot on the sand of the dry land;

I would wait for you, never explore.

But you are the waves, and the wind and its whistle,

and the storm you embrace far from shore.

My few timid ships all cling to the shoreline

too frightened to leave what they know.

You laugh and command them: There is another shore;

the second appears when the first is gone.

So sing, my dear love, of the wide morning's gold sky,

and the call of the azure strand,

and the gull and the salt and the mast that pitches,

and the lure of a foreign land.

I will be your welcome, your country forever;

I'll receive, then release you (adieu).

I will be your native and nurturing homeland

and wait to be called home by you.

LOVE’S COMELY BEHIND

Say, is not all love illicit and blind?

True, it hides, undone, in the mind.

Who knows Allah’s thoughts truly loves

the Self that is Allah’s own wisdom to know,

and you are Allah’s, my milk, sheep, and doves,

unsure yet certain, a dervish in the snow.

Did you, today, attend upon love?

No, intent instead, you will not find.

Who knows Allah’s thoughts truly loves

the Self that is Allah’s own wisdom to know,

and you are Allah’s, my milk, sheep, and doves,

unsure yet certain, a dervish in the snow.

Greedily, you eat and fruit is gone.

Pulp devoured, you hold the rind.

Who knows Allah’s thoughts truly loves

the Self that is Allah’s own wisdom to know,

and you are Allah’s, my milk, sheep, and doves,

unsure yet certain, a dervish in the snow.

You have lost your love? O, sing, fool:

Now gaze upon love’s comely behind.

Who knows Allah’s thoughts truly loves

the Self that is Allah’s own wisdom to know,

and you are Allah’s, my milk, sheep, and doves,

unsure yet certain, a dervish in the snow.

I love love’s desert and its snow.

I, Larissa, dervish, a lover signed.