You cannot say anything about love, just this:
she's not there
Who remembers the names I gave you in the hour of the grave
...
I' ve hid you and thus
you've grown unimaginably
like a sea that flows, just
north of love
...
Beloved, I moan still
of the unholy hour in which this dark love for you
this dark love awoke
and devoured the earth.
...
Milla van der Have (1975, The Netherlands) wrote her first poem at 16, during a physics class. She doesn't write with a certain goal or subject in mind. Even so, themes like love, death and the woman disappeared regularly return in her work. However, a rocking horse. Want to read some more? Check my blog (For now, in Dutch) .)
You Cannot Say Anything
You cannot say anything about love, just this:
she's not there
Who remembers the names I gave you in the hour of the grave
all your names written on your body?
How I felt you in a grand gesture
who remembers how I broke my body
every morning on yours. Like bread
to the destination, like ashes on their way to the fire
who knows about your hair, about your hands about
your lips that tangle me like a memory?
There's no way out and everything unravels
in every danger danger lurks, in every charm
alarmbells ring. The calling is too
grand, love's too severe
to resist
And I unspoken fall
from spark to flint to
breathless moment in between the flames
You cannot say anything about love, just
that she brings what lacks: passion
to the death between the beats.