Theme

Reunion

The risk of seeing, again, the face that memory has been editing.

• London, 1845 to 1846

  Let Me Count the Ways

  Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning court by letter: invalid room, poet's visit, a father who would not bless them. The sonnet that survived is not a greeting card. It is a record of mutual attention.

• Te Arawa oral tradition

  The Swim to Mokoia

  Hinemoa hears Tūtānekai’s flute across Lake Rotorua and swims to Mokoia Island. This is Te Arawa oral narrative, still living with a people, not a fairy tale taken from a New Zealand map.

• Sena-period Bengal

  When He Dances Elsewhere

  Jayadeva sings Rādhā’s waiting while Krishna stays among the gopīs. In this poem the sacred and the erotic refuse to be sorted. Viraha is not a plot delay. It is the devotion.

• Joseon, pansori tradition

  Chunhyang at Namwon

  Mongryong and Chunhyang pledge themselves. A magistrate later treats her body as something office can take. The pansori is a story of fidelity. It is also a story of coercion. Name the coercion.

• Levant, first millennium BCE

  Rise Up, My Love

  Desire entered the sacred canon and never agreed to leave. Jews and Christians have read it as allegory. The Hebrew still smells of myrrh and the bed at night.