We Will Not Call it Love by Lisa Zaran
As the benediction of soul
transforms unwittingly
to feelings of flesh
The heart will ripen
in anguish.
We will not call it love.
We will try to find
a simple square of passion
and focus all our energies
on that.
As our patient stares
look knowingly at one another.
We will soul gaze
but we will not call it love.
We will violate time
by not adhering to our ages.
We will invent a new age, new time.
The hours will turn
but we will not turn with them.
We will simplify our terms
of spiritual space.
We will not be invaded.
We will suffer the consequences
of being called strange
but we will know in our hearts
that strangeness is lost somewhere
and does not apply to us.
We will admit fault but not guilt.
We will revel in our happiness
and our bliss will become our curtain
our door, our private room.
We will sing from our hearts
an inaudible symphony
which no one can hear but us.
Yet, we will not call it love
for to do so would be a simplification,
a downplay of soul, a half naked
half dressed emotion.
Our days are immortal.
Our time together is a Genesis.
This is only the beginning.
Lisa Zaran is an American poet, essayist, occasional interviewer and the author of six collections. Her first book, the sometimes girl, was recently the focus of a year long translation course in Germany. She is the founder and editor of Contemporary American Voices, an online journal of poetry, which has now been approved to be used as the subject of study for a translation course in Germany.
