Planet Literature

Ilona Lay’s Poem Song of Lovers

lona Lay’s Song of Lovers revolves around the changed perception of the world arising from love. Those who love live in a different world – and thus gain a new perspective on the world of everyday life.

Song of Lovers

You are like an all-pervading song.
Through your mouth
the whole earth speaks to me
in meaningful tunes.
So when in the morning the meadow weeps,
still covered by the shroud of the night,
but already shivering
in the frenzy of awakening,
and when the leaf dances dreamily
to the sound of the wind harp
or the swallows soar up at noon
exultantly to the realm of heaven,
all things flow together in one song.
For everything is tuned to you.

You are like the light.
Through your eyes
all things, bathed in moonlight,
reveal their deepest roots to me.
So when the fire of autumn breaks the fruit
to make it endure as the nurse of the tree,
pearls of blossom shine comfortingly on me from the sparks.
And when the dance of the candles fills my room,
I sense the secret forces
that release the wave of my soul from my body’s house
to heaven, so that it can flow to you.
For everything rhymes with you.

You are like a divine being.
Through your heart
everything is filled with response.
No day ever shatters
to ashes on the scaffold of doubts.
So when the storm of winter
grimly sweeps through the land,
freezing everything in its insatiable fury,
even this gives me a glimpse
of the greatness of God.
And like the dance by which life begets itself
in the playing of a bee, or the life
that a cloud flower fleetingly acquires,
I lay down all the splendour of life
at the feet of the deity who taught me to live.
For everything is rooted in you.

The Magic Wand of Love

Those who love see the world with different eyes. Things open up and turn their deeper, more soulful faces towards them. Little things they previously passed by carelessly are suddenly filled with meaning. Life can be experienced in all its abundance and beauty.

Those who love no longer know loneliness. On the loneliest island and in the most remote mountain hut, the heart of lovers is always filled with the feeling of being at one with another life. Every blossom tells of a butterfly that will drink its nectar and help it branch out with the world. And each fruit tells of the spring, when it will awaken as a tree from its deep sleep in the womb of the earth.

Those who love develop a special sensitivity for the secret hopes and fears of others. Love endows us with the gift of a smile that soothes the suffering of others like an invisible plaster. It gives us the strength to encourage others in what they are longing for in their innermost being and to warn them of what stands in the way of the fulfilment of their desires.

Those who love feel the secret roots that connect everything that exists with every other being. For them, the cosmos is no longer a collection of matter shooting chaotically through space, but a mosaic of ciphers that all at once reveal their meaning. Every cloud formation turns into a picture that tells a story all of its own. And every river tells of the seafarers who will one day, when it has widened into a sea, ride on its back to faraway lands.

Thus, those who love recognise love as the primordial ground of being, as that which holds life together and drives it forward, that which creates and transforms it. The concrete being that has kindled love becomes a bridge to that other being from which everything arises: the world soul, God, Brahman …

Bilder: Valentin Valkov: Schwäne / Swans (Fotolia); Benja Alejo: Amor / The God Amor (Pixabay)