Saved By The Bells of Love

Quote from Gibran Khalil Gibran, artist unknown.

….All that made me think of this poem by the Turkish poet Nazim Hikmet, when he’d just been released from prison and was luxuriating in all the everyday things that seemed new again…

— Rebecca Solnit

Things I Didn’t Know I Loved, fragment
Nâzim Hikmet — 1902–1963

it’s 1962 March 28th
I’m sitting by the window on the Prague-Berlin train
night is falling
I never knew I liked
night descending like a tired bird on a smoky wet plain
I don’t like
comparing nightfall to a tired bird…

….I didn’t know I liked rain
whether it falls like a fine net or splatters against the glass my
heart leaves me tangled up in a net or trapped inside a drop
and takes off for uncharted countries I didn’t know I loved
rain but why did I suddenly discover all these passions sitting
by the window on the Prague-Berlin train…

the train plunges on through the pitch-black night
I never knew I liked the night pitch-black
sparks fly from the engine
I didn’t know I loved sparks
I didn’t know I loved so many things and I had to…