Image courtesy: Laura Chouette, Unsplash

Hello all,

Sanaa here (aka adashofsunny)

Today, we are running LIVE for the first one hour of the bar or so. If you wish to join in to read out your poem, just link up, and you will be called upon to do so in respective order. Here is the link below:

https://meet.google.com/win-asic-uqv

If you don’t feel like reading that’s all right too! You can just listen.

A few words of advice:

We are using Google Meet, which means that you should be able to click on the link and run it in the browser, but if that doesn’t work download the app and run it on your smartphone or tablet.

I recommend that you use a headset for the best experience, and please mute your microphone when you are not talking.

Around the end of November I am reminded of poems by Pablo Neruda, who writes in a variety of styles, including surrealist poems, historical epics, overtly political manifestos, a prose autobiography and passionate love poems such as the ones in his collection, Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair (1924).

Here is one of my favorites by Neruda:

XVII (I do not love you…)

I do not love you as if you were salt-rose, or topaz,
or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off.
I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,
in secret, between the shadow and the soul.

I love you as the plant that never blooms
but carries in itself the light of hidden flowers;
thanks to your love a certain solid fragrance,
risen from the earth, lives darkly in my body.

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where.
I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride;
so I love you because I know no other way

than this: where I does not exist, nor you,
so close that your hand on my chest is my hand,
so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep.

His poems are wonderful aren’t they? Do let me know your favorite one in the comment section. For now let’s link up one poem!

I look forward to welcoming you on Google Meet.