The Quiet Proofs of Love by Samuel Hazo

The Quiet Proofs of Love
by Samuel Hazo

Don’t wait for definitions
I’ve had
my fill of aftertalk
and overtalk, of meanings that don’t
mean, of words not true
enough to be invisible, of all
those Januaries of the mind when
everything that happens happens
from the eyebrows up.

If truth
is in the taste and not
the telling, give me whatever
is and cannot be again —
like sherbet on the tongue, like love…

Paris defined is Paris
lost, but Paris loved
is always Orly in the rain,
broiled pork and chestnuts
near the Rue de Seine,
the motorcade that sped de Gaulle
himself through Montparnasse.

Viva
the fool who said “show me
a man who thinks, I’ll show
you a man who frowns.”
Which
reminds me on Andrew,
learning to count by twos and asking,
“where is the end of the counting?”

Let’s settle for the salt and pepper
of the facts.
Oranges don’t parse,
and no philosopher can translate
shoulders in defeat, or how
it feels when luck’s slim arrow
stops at you, or why lovemaking’s
not itself until it’s made.

Let’s breathe like fishermen who sit
alone together on a dock
and let the wind do all the talking.

That way we’ll see
that who we are is what
we’ll be hereafter.
We’ll learn
the bravery of trees that cannot
know “the dice of God
are always loaded.”
We’ll think of life as one long kiss,
since talk and kisses never mix.
We’ll watch the architecture
of the clouds create themselves
like flames and disappear like laughter.

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This line — “give me whatever is and cannot be again” — is one of my very favorites, and one I choose to live by. It’s a core piece to me of a fully lived life, to stay open to the duality of the gain and the loss in the moment. This whole piece on the emergent experience of love, laughter, kisses, sitting together, listening to the counting. All we have is this moment.