Madeleine L'Engle writes amazing poetry

And I had no idea until my roommate introduced me to it! Such a crying shame, but now I have come into the light and it's all good.

I've added A Walk Through Durham Township, Pennsylvania, a fabulous photoblog I learned of from Heather, to my list of links. I recommend the Best Pictures archive. Also, I finished A Field Guide to High School (click for my GoodReads review) and Quest for a Maid (review coming, hopefully).

"To be loved for what one is, is the greatest exception. The great majority love in others only what they lend him, their own selves, their version of him."
-Goethe

I ran across that quote a few days ago and it reminded me of two beautiful poems of Madeleine L'Engle's. Here is the first, which I was delighted to realize is a sonnet, though not a perfect Shakespearean one. I'll post the second later this week. They really make me think...about how hard it is to love people -- really and well. Just like how they say peace is a hundred times harder than war.

To a Long Loved Love: 6
Neither sadist nor masochist, I still
Must turn to violence: break, be broken.
False image of myself I beg you: kill.
Help me destroy the one of you I've spoken
Within my willful heart. It is no more you
Than I am all that I would wish to be.
I cannot really love you till I hew
All these projections of an unreal me,
An imaged you, to shards. Then death
Will have a chance to free me for creation.
God! All this dying has me out of breath.
How do I understand reincarnation?
But if I burst all bonds of self-protection
Then may I find us both in resurrection.

- Madeleine L'Engle