Status Updates From Poems to Fall in Love With

The Orange - Wendy Cope

At lunchtime I bought a huge orange –
The size of it made us all laugh.
I peeled it and shared it with Robert and Dave –
The got quarters and I had a half.
And that orange, it made me so happy,
As ordinary things often do
Just lately. The shopping. A walk in the park.
This is peace and contentment. It’s new.
The rest of the day was quite easy.
I did all the jobs on my list

A Lost Language

There is a language on my tongue
that I didn’t even know lived there.
I call it by your love, I call it you.

It is all the softness
I learned about you
and all the seconds you meant to me.

Tell me how to untangle
and unlanguage you
from my lips

when my you
are caught on my tongue
in every single word I speak

—Nikita Gill—

An there she lulled me asleep,
And there I dream’d – Ah! woe betide!
The latest dream I ever dream’d
On the cold hillside

I saw pale kings and princes too,
Pale warriors, death-pale were they all;
Who cried – ‘La Belle Dame sans Merci
Hath thee in thrall’

I saw their starved lips in the gloam
With horrid warning gaped wide,
And I awoke and found me here
On the cold hill’s side.

Love and Friendship - Emily Brontë

Love is like the wild rose briar,
Friendship, like the holly tree
The Holly is dark when the rose briar blooms,
But which will bloom most constantly?

The wild rose briar is sweet in spring,
Its summer blossoms scent the air
Yet wait till winter comes again
And who will call the wild-briar fair?

Then scorn the silly rose-wreath now
And deck thee with the holly’s sheen

Because there are things you cannot know before you experience them.
Because no study can prepare you for the joys or the trials.
Because nobody else's love, nobody else's marriage, is like yours,
and it's a road you can only learn by walking it,
a dance you cannot be taught,
a song that did not exist before you began, together, to sing.

I don’t believe in an interventionist God
But I know, darling, that you do
But if I did I would kneel down and ask Him
Not to intervene when it came to you
Not to touch a hair on your head
To leave you as you are
And if He felt He had to direct you
Then direct you into my arms

You have the conviction of all two-year-olds.
I wish I had such certitude.

بالقناعةِ التي يملكها الطفل ذو العامين
ذاك اليقين الذي أتمنىٰ لو أملكهُ!