Lunatic Heart
#100
This poem was inspired by my current state of mind and by one of the pieces of music closest to my heart: Adagio for Strings by Samuel Barber. Maybe a bit touch of Schopenhauer. Lol.
I have always felt things deeply and often all at once. Sorrow and hope, love and loss, beauty and despair rarely exist separately for me.
I grew up writing poetry in Farsi, my native language, and I still find it much easier to express myself there. This is one of my first serious attempts to capture those emotions in English. It may not be perfect, but it is sincere.
I have looked too long
into the machinery of time
to believe in permanence.
The years devour everything.
The faces I love.
The houses I remember.
The voices that once made
the world feel inhabited.
Even joy arrives wounded,
already carrying
the seed of its departure.
And still…
what a magnificent madness
to love at all.
To gather fragile things
against the chest
and call them eternal.
To watch the darkness advance
and answer it
with affection.
Sometimes I think
the heart is a lunatic,
wandering through a burning city
searching for flowers.
Sometimes I think
it is the only sane thing
within us.
For what are we,
if not creatures condemned
to lose everything,
yet foolish enough
to kneel beside the suffering,
to remember the forgotten,
to love the doomed,
and to call this burden
a privilege?
The stars are cold.
Time is merciless.
I know.
I know.
I know.
Yet tomorrow,
when the sun spills gold
upon the earth once more,
I will rise again
with this incurable tenderness,
this beautiful affliction,
and carry my sorrow forward
like a banner