People say once a hunter killed an antelope
that had already taken another route.
He ran until his sandals tore,
instead, the antelope never glanced backward.
And behind him, another man pursued his shadow,
calling his name,
but he had ears attuned to the hooves
disappearing into dust.
Thus it is with love:
a chain that doesn't touch,
a song that both voices sing
to another silence.
I put water into a jar already cracked,
while mine sits empty.
I stretch my hand to a door that opens only inward,
whilst another stretches out for me—
and I don't see it.
What riddle is this,
that yearning ever guides elsewhere, never toward?
That the heart is a compass
attracted to whatever it escapes,
blind to that which kneels down?
Perhaps it's the curse:
to love is to desire another man's loaf,
to crave another man's well,
to yearn for another's flame.
And so we wander, unsatisfied,
each carrying fullness
to one who will not eat.
Still, the hunter runs.
Nonetheless, the jar is raised.
But the door is knocked.
Because what else is love,
if not the stubborn madness
that nourishes us even when it hurts us?
Why I Composed This Poem
I wrote it because love is never simple. As I've seen how it rotates— one bosom that opens where another closes, one hand stretching where one is already grasped. It is a familiar enigma everywhere: on the roads, on the tables, on the silences that we keep. We love who does not love us, and they, also, some one else' shadow chasing. I didn't write to solve that riddle, but to describe it in words. To bear the pain without hiding it, to show that regardless of dissatisfaction there is something of an odd truth