Sunday Poetry: Sudden Light

Sudden Light

I have been here before,

But when or how I cannot tell:

I know the grass beyond the door,

The sweet keen smell,

The sighing sound, the lights around the shore.

You have been mine before—

How long ago I may not know;

But just when at that swallow's soar

Your neck turn'd so,

Some veil did fall,—I knew it all of yore.

Has this been thus before?

And shall not thus time's eddying flight

Still with our lives our love restore

In death's despite,

And day and night yield one delight once more?

-Dante Gabriel Rossetti 1928-82

Do you believe in soul mates who continue to find each other throughout their many lifetimes?

As romantic as I am, I'm not really sure. 

In a broader, more spiritual sense, Rossetti speaks of that in this poem but I'll scale it down to one lifetime where you may have loved someone before that you've lost or walked away from and found that years later, by some unexpected stroke of destiny, you cross each other's path once again and remember exactly just what you meant to each other before.

I believe that an old love can resonate far into someone's life. It is something you will never completely forget—something that will always own a piece of your heart and soul because you've given that part away a long time ago and never got it back. 

The question is whether that love will have enough power over you to reel you back in when past collides with the present. When the scales of memory fall off your eyes and you see clearly what had been, will you 'delight once more' in it?

I guess in the end it will depend on the circumstances that broke you apart in the first place and whether what brought you together is stronger and fiercer that what drove you away.

As a writer, I enjoy this poem because it makes me think of the possibilities that love doesn't end in the here and now—that sometimes the story continues into the future after a detour. 

This poem actually depicts quite well the struggle of my characters in Love and Vice. Time will tell whether what they once had is worth fighting for in the end and because time is never someone's constant friend or enemy, you can never be certain which side it will be on.