Explore "Love" by Carlos Drummond de Andrade on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
What can one creature among other creatures do but love? love and forget, love and mislove, love, unlove, love? always, and with wide eyes, love? What, I ask, can a loving soul alone in the universal rotation do but spin with everything else, and love? love what the wave brings to shore, what it buries, and what in the ocean breezes salt, or the need for love, or mere longing? Love solemnly the desert palms, the act of surrender, or expectant adoration. And love what's rough or barren, a flowerless vase, an iron land, the unfeeling breast, the street from a dream, a bird of prey.
This is our destiny: to spread unmeasured love among treacherous or worthless things, to give without limits to a total ingratitude, and to search with hopeful patience, in love's empty shell, for still more love.
To love our very lack of love, and to love in our dryness the implicit water, and the tacit kiss, and that infinite thirst.