Poetry Club

Yes, my friends are that cool. After seeing the "Ideal Husband" last week (yes that's a play, no I did not really see my 'ideal husband') my friends and I decided to start a poetry club. So on Saturday we got together and discussed this poem:

If You Forget Me by Pablo Neruda

I want you to know
one thing.

You know how this is:
if I look
at the crystal moon, at the red branch
of the slow autumn at my window,
if I touch
near the fire
the impalpable ash
or the wrinkled body of the log,
everything carries me to you,
as if everything that exists,
aromas, light, metals,
were little boats
that sail
toward those isles of yours that wait for me.

Well, now,
if little by little you stop loving me
I shall stop loving you little by little.

If suddenly
you forget me
do not look for me,
for I shall already have forgotten you.

If you think it long and mad,
the wind of banners
that passes through my life,
and you decide
to leave me at the shore
of the heart where I have roots,
remember
that on that day,
at that hour,
I shall lift my arms
and my roots will set off
to seek another land.

But
if each day,
each hour,
you feel that you are destined for me
with implacable sweetness,
if each day a flower
climbs up to your lips to seek me,
ah my love, ah my own,
in me all that fire is repeated,
in me nothing is extinguished or forgotten,
my love feeds on your love, beloved,
and as long as you live it will be in your arms
without leaving mine

The beautiful thing about poems is they change each time you read them and this one changed meaning for me every day that I read it. Mostly what I got out of it is the desire to protect oneself against the vulnerability that feelings create when in a relationship. For me this poem showed the struggle to assert ones equality in a relationship, the kind of equality I can only dream comes with marriage, until then...