The Red Book of Love

Dear Readers,

I share with you some poems of my most recent book, “The Red Book of Love”, to be soon released by BookLeaf, in India, In the U. S. , and in the UK.

With love,

Ana Paula Arendt

Stasis of learning

Ana Paula Arendt

I am still overwhelmed,

quiet as the young child

who needs to listen more

before learning how to speak.

I am still gazing the sea,

looking for the endless line

the gentle horizon opens, celebrating

the happy marriage of heaven and water,

made of the same misty liight blue.

The white human fog over the crowded city,

The white human noise gliding the relays from car to car,

The many faces never repeating,

The intricate venues of a city’s body

conducing a tireless movement…

I am still tasting all the flavors and textures

of the many sprouted regions

in caldrouns, clay pots, copper tureens,

finding the transient glitch of my body before each pepper.

I am still delighted in éxtasis

with the bless of the sugar and cardamom.

I still cannot find any round line

made of an exact thought

telling in few words all things

I am still in awe

with the smell and breath of real people

and the blink in their eyes of starry night

when they stop by for talking.

There is a longstanding sound

between joined hands facing joined hands

and an infinite liquid sparkle on

polki diamonds nestled in kundan necklaces…

I am still trying to find out

the patterns and colours of sarees,

the meeting between orange, gold, green, and pink

and the

groove, the furrow, the rut, the fold, the crease, the gouge, the bands, the notch, the mortise,

the turns, the pin over the shoulder, the service pending over the elbow and the forearm,

the cannelures of frowned ribs in skirts stretching the eyes from the navel to the ankles…

Learning to be a hindi woman, the sacerdotise with paraments of chamfered edges…

I am still looking at the vegetables

I have never seen before,

wondering where they grow and

how they bear their fruit.

I am still trying to find out

how many languages, in a country

that seems a continent.

I am still quiet as the young child

who listens to a fresh and huge world

in order to speak.

(From ARENDT, Ana Paula. "The Red Book of Love"). Mumbai: BookLeaf, 2025).

Measures of magnitude

Ana Paula Arendt

I found the measures of a misty magnitude,

Mumbai,

the flock of black birds before my eyes

made my head dance

following their flight, the black crevices etched in movement.

You made my neck move more than my feet…

The flock of black birds enchanted me

and my eyes also danced,

the birds followed dearly where

my heart wished them to fly.

The sea sudenly became huge,

it embraced me from all sides and

it took my arm as my lover.

The sea made me walk

over its waters until an endless place.

Over the water meadows planted with golden blocks of buildings,

the dark and the enlightened green of trees, morning Sun,

the happy swallows in the wind…

The landscape of Nature

where man is part of Nature.

Here I am finally lost,

Soft place where I find

something more than the landscape.

There is suddenly something else,

your shine over all things.

I stay at the same place

because I have let myself to be lost

Waiting patiently for you to find me

while listening to the sitar, the tabla, the bansuri, the venu, the ransingha…

Here, the relaxing meditation point of seeing so many people

and remaining still the same.

Now you say that nothing remains the same

and that we become also those who we carry,

whether nurtured in our heart, or in our liver.

But I say to you, Mumbai,

that like you, I embraced so many people from so many places

that I became someone else than them…

I brought to my chest their eagerness and quiescence,

ther cravings and disappointments,

the suffering that cannot be told and

the whispers of love in dreams and slumber…

So many things of a magnitude

that could not fit inside me unless

I stood unaware of the blocks

from which all things are built.

To keep the treasure you gave me

I had to find new, open measures.

So I became like the shelled horizon living so far

drawing birds, heaven, sea, light

existing out of people, even when

people do not look at them.

Then I remained a boulder with you:

stolid, unperturbed, unmoved

replenished with your feelings.

(From ARENDT, Ana Paula. "The Red Book of Love"). Mumbai: BookLeaf, 2025).

A wish

Ana Paula Arendt

A wish is

something made of sprinkling stars,

suffering made of too small shoes…

But also something made of bars

that gold melts into common use.

A wish is quickly announced,

a wish comes out of the blue...

To disappear just after spoused,

to rust – next to come true.

So I wish more than a cause,

I wish more than having you…

I wish beyond a wish in a clause,

‘cause I am sure our love shall renew.

Image: NASA.

Love

Ana Paula Arendt

You say you want from me a love poem,

as if a poet should bear the certain formula.

Precisely the opposite:

since to be a poet you need

a love failure certificate.

Henri Joseph Harpignies, Moonlight, 1889

Love continues

Ana Paula Arendt

And now, that in love failure, I am certified

as a true and awesome poetess

having lost everything, everytime, and just sighed,

bearing hope to be possible, happiness…

I can write to you infinite poems of love,

all made of a glimpse you gave in my words.

It was quick, but fatal, your look when you strove

to find a thing pleasant in my feelings about the world.

I could write a whole book in one night,

placing verse by verse as heavy bricks

because of your regard concerning mine…

Your eyes made this love, your touch of relique.

Let me have you as once loved all Saints:

without established formulas, no walls and restraints...

(ARENDT, Ana Paula. "The Red Book of Love". Mumbai, BookLeaf, 2025).

And more love

Ana Paula Arendt

We wish love as a permanent feeling,

although also wishing it to put an end

to the burning, yearning at our chest.

Love as a final victory over this longing…

Love would be then

what is next to infactuation,

what is next to passion,

a bliss after the fall.

Love, the end of whining.

Love: the best business of the soul.

But then, after falling in love,

there is just more of it:

falling, and falling, and falling…

It pauses for the regular maintenance of

our body, our day, our deals.

And then it comes again even stronger…

Like a woman ready to give birth.

Strong and light as

the scent of a damascene rose

hidden in the folds of our body.

Then, the question to nobody:

will there be love?

While we are soaked in it…

And I ask, although to nobody:

let there be love!

Love hurts too much

and still we want more and more of it

so we can be healed.

The more it hurts, the more we need

desperately to love each other.

The nights all fallen and awaken,

during the care and nurture of our love

as if it could fade away…

It’s the poet’s duty, growing love

without any harvest.

It exhausts us in the morning and

the evening stretches until the moon

smiles happily in the dark blue sky over the city.

I have absolutely no certainty

that all this vigil in the mornings while you sleep

and late in the night, until your arrival of tomorrow

will save and make my love reach into you.

Love is but an act of your imagination

that hits too hard in my body.

If it was not love, it would be: madness.

And I pray for my love to be love.

The Sun rises among the skyscrapers,

orange and red, cunning, alarming light

over my eyes in fatigue, just recently sleep.

The Sun comes to tell me every morning

there is no guarantee at all.

The only guarantee is: there will be pain.

There will be effort, and effort, after effort.

But still we love.

I love, and I dream of your smile

while reading and doubting – considering

that you could be so much loved.

(ARENDT, Ana Paula. "The Red Book of Love". Mumbai, BookLeaf, 2025).

Love deserved

Ana Paula Arendt

Let my love be for you like a prize

for a mission you accomplished, a mission I gave you.

Let me wonder what achievement would be wise

to make you also give me your love as due.

To be loved would then be a must,

having both merit, earned all respect.

And then love would rise as a pact

of devotion, and debt, and trust.

But then I feel suddenly humbled

– not having such an outstanding beauty

– nor great acknowledgement, having stumbled

on people who hate, and envy, and pity.

All I can do, then, is praise your good sense

of holding up to me, asking me why

did I pray for you to be greater than I,

– and I would answer – resting my head over your length.

And I would let you make me more of life, hence.

(ARENDT, Ana Paula. "The Red Book of Love". Mumbai, BookLeaf, 2025).

Why love

Ana Paula Arendt

Now that we are quiet

and every door is in silence

between late night and early morning,

now that the thrushes and kiskadees

are trembling eyelids while cuddling, asleep

and children are dreaming on the farthest lands…

Now that the stars and the moon stopped dancing,

and they are searching deeply into each other…

You ask me

if it is really worth loving someone.

If it would not be so much better

forgetting everything about love

and live in a world with less strife.

Why do I think it is worth loving you,

with no retribution possible

to such a huge amount of love,

made of overcoming such an unimaginable

cruelty, such vexed sufferings?

You look at yourself today

after years have passed and

I kept glistening slow tears

with a delicious sting of love in my heart…

And you ask me, why loving at all,

when life could be less painful

denying oneself what hurts so much.

And then I should answer to that

perspective on love as a mistake,

as a charge that must be paid

in order to retain dignity….

I shall bring you perhaps a rational utility:

love is a state of mind that prevent us

from an untethered, drifting existence.

The sleep of reason produces monsters*.

But we seldom choose to put faith in love…

So that reason is always awakened.

Love, a fragrance completing

the room of waters.

I should answer forward this explanation

beyond rationality.

There is also a quite simpler answer to

that question, on why loving.

Because you are beautiful:

and love just makes you even more beautiful.

Because you are the most special person.

You did nothing:

and you do not have to do anything.

Before you could do anything

I loved you.

Since then all that you do became lovely.

Love is worth because

of its inexplicable causes

explaining all the facts until the point we meet.

Love is worth because

it is a fact before we can reason

what is worth or not.

Love happened in a

unfathomable time,

before the universe was created.

Since that time that

cannot be measured by centuries or ages

love made me exist

to love you.

So you ask, really

why love makes us exist

and be what we are,

why

does that long imperishable lineage before time

making my chest live

continues on, and on.

Yes, it is a happy question

how love has made you beautiful

and how you made me worth existing

so that love held all the things we live

before all times.

Why love?

Because I must exist

to see your beauty

and to make you babies,

bloom flowers…

So that your eyes will be then

even more full of beauty.

Power, weapons, vessels, prisons

parade before my eyes

marching the world into conflicts,

into untenable death by dispute.

And still your eyes full of beauty

reading carefully these pages

effortlessly,

your face full of Truth

vanquish all those armies

and triumph in my stinging heart.

Why love you?

Because it makes me live.

Because it makes us live beautifully.

All the reasons converge

to love you,

the most worth thing

I ever did.

(ARENDT, Ana Paula. "The Red Book of Love". Mumbai, BookLeaf, 2025).

Theorem of Einstein and Tagore

Ana Paula Arendt

I studied for days and days long

and nights over nights, over a gentle shimmering light

the sweet paradox of Einstein and Tagore.

Tagore knocked on Einstein’s door

who politely invited him to come in

and they have tucked in at the table.

They found out a problem.

Einstein said to Tagore

as Science tells Poetry

something exists even if we were not there.

A table would be there, even if we were not.

Human knowledge can be objective.

Tagore said to Einstein

as Poetry tells Science

we could never tell something exists if we were not there.

A table would not exist, if we were not there to say it was a table.

Human knowledge can be useless.

Is Poetry above Science?

Does the universe has a meaning

beyond what Science could ever aprehend?

As Science depends on the intellect, on being limited beings.

Is Science above Poetry?

Does the Universe bend to our will

and let itself be what we have meant it to be?

As Poetry cannot retreat, and it makes us unlimited beings.

So I proudly engrave to you the

solution: the “Theorem of Einstein and Tagore”.

When something cannot be objective and cannot be told

something cannot be absolutely useless.

Truth results that

scientifical inquiry

equipped with a glass of wine

and a view to the Arabian Sea

sorts out even the hardest problems.

– may sort out.

(ARENDT, Ana Paula. "The Red Book of Love". Mumbai, BookLeaf, 2025).

Application of the Theorem of Einstein and Tagore

Ana Paula Arendt

Now that you have the theory,

I shall wonder if you would love me

if my love was not there first for you.

Would you be able to

stand for my love

if I failed?

With a love of your own.

Point is made that

I could never be loved

If I didn’t love you first.

But then I remember

your sudden humorous presence

delighted in my being,

being beyond myself

and my reasons.

Was it really me

the one who loved first?

Or was it you,

when you let yourself

abandoned in my delight…

Who conditioned me

to see love,

where before there was not.

Theory might connect facts.

Love’s imprint shall disappear

once its cause ceases,

and that is it not the cause of something

the thing sustaining itself,

but our knowledge of something,

sustaining the causes.

It might happen that

our love will always be there

even If you forget about it,

and I give up to love someone else.

So what makes love remain love,

as an absolute cause of me

searching for you,

a cause of all things?

‘Cause love, yours or mine, ours,

would never have been useless:

once it was there,

it is there as an absolute thing

in our thirsty minds

pouring in our hearts

an infinite measure of it.

(ARENDT, Ana Paula. "The Red Book of Love". Mumbai, BookLeaf, 2025).

The end of all things

Ana Paula Arendt

I never took poetry as

the final end of my life,

nor as my condition,

neither profession.

I never declaimed a poem

as if it held all the purpose of the world in it.

Rather poems made me think

about what they do not contain.

So many things cannot be said…

And there are so many things unsaid

in everything written.

There is a dark night out there

and this short-lived lamp to make me see…

A poem, ‘tis small lamp

helping me reach until day comes,

until day rises,

until day spreads all days…

A lamp, a table, a poem

and a flower vase:

some might be better,

some might be worse,

some might make my eyes see them

coming out of the environment

that has always been there.

Oh, old copper vase, beaten by hammer,

filled up of grains, and vegetables.

Now look at this poem

and tell me:

that you also think

there is much more life out of it.

There is a world

unaware of what we are saying,

people are in the shores of so many seas,

and they are hurrying to eat a baked fish,

eager to see a girl with soft skin

walking over the beach

while they are passing by.

Yes, there are women hidden in their clay kitchens

wondering where are their onions.

So you ask me,

if poetry then

is not the end of all things,

where is the end of the world,

where does the water of the ocean

falls into empty space?

Where does the world end,

where is the final destiny

we are routing into?

Let us never say such word,

while we live,

for we do not know it yet.

Because from life comes more life,

and there was life before our life.

It is absurd that after it

there should not be.

Life:

maybe life is rather

to become the end of all things.

(ARENDT, Ana Paula. "The Red Book of Love". Mumbai, BookLeaf, 2025).

My land

Ana Paula Arendt

You want to know more

about my country,

about the fresh land where

our horses know towards they should run,

the country where you, too,

is an inhabitant.

You want to know more about me,

about the pitch from which

I brought to you this soft morning.

Well.

Indeed, my country is unique

and every country can find the best piece of itself

hidden in its room of many mirrors.

My land has beautiful shores,

white sand in-interrupted beaches, and

melodic singing birds making

the concert of the boskage.

It kept the coconut trees and coconut flavors

mixed in cured African spices,

it kept safely the sugar syrup

draining from the hands of the Queen of the South,

soaking pastries made of egg yolks and cake,

the sticky chocolate covered in chocolate sprinkles.

It kept the smell of the fresh baked bread

and brewed coffee at the end of each afternoon.

My land is made of smoke

out of little houses enclosuring valleys and mountains,

of the tiny and thousands lights

shimmering breeze and bossa nova,

alternation between the flute and the violin.

It is a good country

full of passion,

full of contradictions,

driven by vanity and abhorring it

– when it wrecks happiness.

It’s a land of spontaneous joy

stored during long periods of misfortune

and liberated during carnival confettis…

Full of rivers, full of roads.

Full of pain, full of loads...

Full of something somebody told.

It is a land fighting against violence,

to be once again what it was,

home of red woods, and green parrots,

home of the rich navigators sleeping in hammocks

talking with the chief of the tribe about the day.

It is called Brazil,

a land of no distance

between people.

(ARENDT, Ana Paula. "The Red Book of Love". Mumbai, BookLeaf, 2025).