Liebe ist, ein stiller Blick am Morgen

“Tome of Stars” is a 100 sonnet journey, equal parts art, therapy journal, and exorcism, both a celebration and an elegy, a single narrative arc tracing the birth and death of a relationship. All poetry by Stargazer. The verse and accompanying synthetic art and music are public domain, CC0, with no restrictions on use. Nothing is monetized. See below for links on how to access the print, PDF, audio, ePub, video, and music files. 
Website: https://www.tomeofstars.net/

In the classical margam of bharatanatyam, the varnam is the recital’s centerpiece, its longest and most emotionally charged performance. In “Tome of Stars“, the varnam appears as the twenty-nine-poem section “Senescence”. Following the exaltation of Anthesis, the beloved as a celestial goddess, love now descends from the stars into the gravity of human frailty. 

This sonnet revisits the early intimacy of a romantic relationship through the affectionate pet names exchanged by the poet and his beloved. On the surface, it seems a light recollection that is playful, perhaps even whimsical, but beneath lies an undercurrent of profound grief. The act of naming, of playful designation, becomes a stand-in for a much larger yearning: a desperate attempt to recover the sense of meaning and identity that was once shaped in and through the beloved’s presence. The poet lingers in this remembered intimacy only to arrive at a bitter realization: without the beloved, even language, our most human and meaning-giving tool, has collapsed into hollowness. What begins as nostalgia ends in existential mourning.

Note: This opening stanza recalls a moment of early love, when the beloved playfully dubbed the speaker “elephant.” The term is presented with a mixture of fondness and gentle confusion—“bemused”—suggesting the nickname’s idiosyncrasy and emotional specificity. The speaker interprets the name as casting him part clown, imagining an elephant in circus contexts. The poet’s query (why not lion, or eagle, or some other more majestic emblem of strength?) is a cultural misapprehension of an American interacting with an Indian. In Hindu and classical poetic traditions, the elephant is a revered, majestic, and complex symbol, possessing characteristics of strength, sensuality, and divinity (the latter through Ganesha, the elephant-headed god, who is a symbol of wisdom and auspiciousness). While no doubt a playful nickname, the poet at the time could not remotely appreciate the layered associations with an animal his culture typically painted as primarily comic.

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Lyrics

You named me “elephant”; I smiled, bemused,  
Endearment strange that painted me part clown.  
I puzzled why that moniker you’d choose,  
When other beasts wear strength with more renown.

You styled your “puppy” name like fragile lace,  
A cuddled creature craving warmth and care.  
Beloved, you thrived in safety’s soft embrace;  
You dreamed my strength would ever guard you there.

But now I’ll call you “mouse,” my closest heart:  
A clever creature, swift and rarely caught.  
A dextrous, nimble sprite of prancing art,
Wild in the world, whirled dancing ever wrought.

But finding naming’s meanings I can’t do,
For meaning’s lost, I found, since losing you.

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Internet Archive
Book of sonnets:
https://archive.org/details/tome-of-stars/

Music:
Item 1, Anthesis: https://archive.org/details/Anthesis/
Item 2, Senescence: https://archive.org/details/senescence_tomeofstars
Item 3, Sporogenesis: https://archive.org/details/Sporogenesis_TomeOfStars/
Item 4, Anemochory: https://archive.org/details/Anemochory_TomeOfStars
Item 5, Quixotosis: https://archive.org/details/Quixotosis_TomeOfStars
Item 6, Scripture: https://archive.org/details/Scripture_TomeOfStars

Shine

BenjaminFrancisLeftwich