Sunday, August 10, 2014

My Eyes So Soft

My Eyes So Soft

Don't surrender your loneliness so quickly.
Let it cut more deeply. 

Let it ferment and season you 
as few human ingredients can. 

Something missing in my heart tonight
has made my eyes so soft, 
my voice so tender,
my need of God,
so absolutely clear. 

        Heartbreak can be the most devastating loneliness, it's probably second only to loss of life. The thing is that loss of something does make our need for God more clear, it makes our hearts yearn for something permanent, something not "just passing through". It's when we begin to consider ourselves citizens of His kingdom, instead of this earth, that we are able to deal with loss, with pain, with doubt, with betrayal, and with loneliness.
        Again, tying Hafiz's words with those of another poet's, Neruda wrote in “Tonight I Can Write”: “Tonight I can write the saddest lines
Write, for example,
“The night is starry and the stars are blue and shiver in the distance”
Through nights like this one I held her in my arms
I kissed her again and again under the endless sky
Tonight I can write the saddest lines
To think that I do not have her
To feel that I have lost her
To hear the immense night, still more immense without her
And the verse falls to the soul like dew to the pasture
What does it matter that my love could not keep her
The night is starry and she is not with me.”
            Isn't it amazing what this poem draws out of you and makes you feel? 

Just to See You Smile (1997), Tim McGraw

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