The Power of Love

It only took ten seconds. I was in the University library researching the original jazz songs of Dorothy Fields. I loved to put those great old jazz tunes in my set. Then I found the rarely sung lyric to On The Sunny Side Of The Street and I was thrilled at my find.

Walked with no-one and talked
with no-one, And I had nothing
but shadows.
Then one morning you passed
And I brightened at last.
Now I greet the day, and complete the day,
With the sun in my heart.
All my worry blew away
When you taught me how to say:
Grab your coat and get your hat,
leave your worry at the doorstep
Just direct your feet to the sunny
side of the street
Can’t you hear that pitter pat and
that happy tune is your step
Life can be so sweet
On the sunny side of the street

And then I noticed Emily.
She was wearing a short
sleeved shirt. Her face and her
arms Mediterranean, olive and
tanned. She had big big eyes
and was on the verge of crying.
She looked suspicious of
everyone. I was hypnotised. To
my left people were merrily
chatting. They shouldn’t have been but they were careless
and happy. Suddenly Emily
leant forward and her mouth
breathed fire. There was an
ear- piercing yell as loud as I’ve
ever heard

SCHHH! THIS IS A
LIBRARY!…she screamed
And I was in love. With her
gentleness and her strength and
her tenderness and her passion
and her madness. You could now
hear a pin drop. It had taken ten
seconds to fall utterly in love. I got
up and got her a coffee and
persuaded her to go home. Let
Emily sing you the story of the
next 10 years.
You found me
Half asleep
You heard me
Crying silently In a heap
I wanted him
I ached for him
He’d rushed away
You felt my pain
You felt the same
You crouched by me

Under the sheets
Where we wailed with grief for a
long while
Oh no we wailed, oh no we
wailed
For a good long while woe is me
Woe
Woe is me
After ten hours
Opened our eyes
We caught a smile
Such a tiny smile
Opened our eyes
And so we laughed
Under the sheets
Where we screamed with joy and
laughter for a long while
Oh yes we laughed, oh yes we
smiled
For a good long while Joy is me
Joy
Joy is me
Ten years have passed
I still hide
Under the sheets
Where we laugh and cry
And we feel fine
You found me
Grief then joy

LOVE IN A COLD WORLD
It was Holocaust Memorial Day
last week and it’s Valentine’s Day
this week. The two don’t go
together except that even in hell
on earth love will triumph. It’s
what most sensible peple want
Tadeusz Borowski wrote one of
the greatest love poems of all
time, a song of longing for the
girlfriend that he spent many
hours with, on her bunk in
Birkenau – Auschwitz – after
getting a job as a collector of
infant corpses in the women’s
prison. Love in a cold world.
The Sun of Auschwitz
You remember the sun of
Auschwitz
and the green of the distant
meadows, lightly
lifted to the clouds by birds,
no longer green in the clouds,
but seagreen white.

Together we stood looking into
the distance and felt
the far away green of the
meadows and the clouds’
seagreen white within us,
as if the colour of the distant
meadows
were our blood or the pulse
beating within us, as if the world
existed only through us and
nothing changed
as long as we were there.
I remember
your smile as elusive
as a shade of the colour of the
wind,
a leaf trembling on the edge
of sun and shadow, fleeting
yet always there. So you are
for me today, in the seagreen
sky, the greenery and
the leaf-rustling wind.
I feel you
in every shadow, every
movement,
and you put the world around me
like your arms.
I feel the world
as your body, you look into my eyes
and call me with the whole world.
Tadeusz Borowski
You would never know from
reading this poem that they were
in an extermination camp. You
could read it as escapism, but it’s
not, because the subject of this
poem is true love and nothing
else impinged on that feeling.

TO LOVE
You hear it in the rivers
You see it in the stars
It teaches non-believers
To walk upon its shores
You feel it in the breezes
It reminds you of your youth
You smell it in the bonfires
It touches you as truth
Understand the tyranny
Revel in its dreams
Will weigh you down in misery
And light you in its beams
You sense it slowly moving
Towards you in the crowds
It is captured by the sunlight
When the wind parts the clouds
To love is not illusion
s real as real as real
Invisible as iron
Silent as steel
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Thou shalt believe in love
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