It is. It isn't.

Ekta Kumar
Feb 14
2 min read

Is it love.

How do you truly, really ever know?

Questions like these, have impossible answers. Which is why we turn to poetry.

Because poems are not careful.

I'm not sure what you're feeling today, but perhaps one of these will pull your heart. Like it did mine.

silence

Fukami Jikyu In Moonlight, Tsukioka Yoshitoshi, 1887

'autumn moonlight —

a solitary figure

wandering, searching'

- Matsuo Bashō (Japanese Haiku)

will you find me

Spring in Central Park, William Zorach, 1914

'I seem to have loved you in numberless forms,

numberless times, in life after life, in age after age…'

- Rabindranath Tagore (Bengali)

madness

Composition, Jean Arp, 1912

'if this is madness, let it be,

for love is sweeter than sanity'

- Mirza Ghalib (Urdu, 19th century)

you're looking at me

'and you don’t even see me'

- Sylvia Plath (English)

endless wait

*Seated Dancer in Pink Tights, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, 1890*

'he loved three things in this world:

evening vespers, white peacocks,

and blurred maps of america'

- Anna Akhmatova (Russian)

the falling

French Vintage Cirque d'hiver Poster, Stafford & Co.

'I am still falling deeply in love,

I have not reached the bottom…'

- Sidney Hall (English)

lost words

L'Arlésienne, Vincent van Gogh, 1888–89

'I wrote a letter to my friend,

and on the way I dropped it.

someone came and picked it up

and put it in his pocket'

- 19th Century Nursery Rhyme

swallowing the dark

'I wish I could show you, when you are lonely or in darkness,

the astonishing light of your own being'

- Hafiz (Persian, 14th century)

distance

*Park at Night, Jozsef Rippl-Ronai, 1892 - 1895*

'love knows not its own depth until the hour of separation'

- Kahlil Gibran (Lebanon)

closer

Lucien Guitry and Granne Granier, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, 1895

'I want to do with you

what spring does with the cherry trees'

- Pablo Neruda (Chile)

regret

Portrait of General Ulrich Wille, Ferdinand Hodler, 1915

'and indeed there will be time

to wonder, “do I dare?” and, “do I dare?”

time to turn back and descend the stair,

with a bald spot in the middle of my hair—'

- T.S Eliot (English)

hunger

'your body is the dark earth

my hands dig into it like rain

we grow together

our breath mingling in the quiet night'

- Octavio Paz (Spanish)

blindness

*Communication with the Infinite, Ferdinand Hodler, 1892*

'green, how I want you green.

green wind. green branches.

the ship out on the sea and the horse on the mountain'

- Federico García Lorca (Spanish)

I use Valentine's Day as an excuse to look at poems and paintings and trees. I hope you enjoyed this too. And if you want to read more, click the link below and fill in your email.

yes, maybe I want to see more like this