Wedding reading that compares love to travel/foreign countries
January 4, 2016 5:43 PM Subscribe
A very close friend (American) is marrying someone from another culture (Iranian), and they currently both live and work in another country (Singapore). They love to travel and neither of them are religious (in fact, both are atheists.) I'm helping them design a wedding ceremony and am looking for a non-religious poem or reading that compares love to the experience of travel and/or encountering new cultures. I've searching online fruitlessly. The couple seems not to like Rumi-style romantic poems, so something more wry/modern would be great. Thank you MeFi!
Welp, there's always my tried-and-true favorite: Ithaka, by Cavafy.
As you set out for Ithaka
hope the voyage is a long one,
full of adventure, full of discovery...
[and so on]
posted by mylittlepoppet at 6:13 PM on January 4, 2016 [3 favorites]
As you set out for Ithaka
hope the voyage is a long one,
full of adventure, full of discovery...
[and so on]
posted by mylittlepoppet at 6:13 PM on January 4, 2016 [3 favorites]
From Wild Awake by Hilary T. Smith
"People are like cities: We all have alleys and gardens and secret rooftops and places where daisies sprout between the sidewalk cracks, but most of the time all we let each other see is is a postcard glimpse of a skyline or a polished square. Love lets you find those hidden places in another person, even the ones they didn’t know were there, even the ones they wouldn’t have thought to call beautiful themselves."
From Dr. Zhivago, by Boris Pasternak
"Oh, what a love it was, utterly free, unique, like nothing else on earth! Their thoughts were like other people’s songs.
They loved each other, not driven by necessity, by the ‘blaze of passion’ often falsely ascribed to love. They loved each other because everything around them willed it, the trees and the clouds and the sky over their heads and the earth under their feet. Perhaps their surrounding world, the strangers they met in the street, the wide expanses they saw on their walks, the rooms in which they lived or met, took more delight in their love than they themselves did."
(lyrics) From The Mariner's Song, by the Cowboy Junkies
In the storm you are my destination
In the port you are my storm
In the storm you are my destination
In the port you are storm
But I would weather you my love
If you would be my guide
If you would be my stars in the skies above
posted by janey47 at 6:20 PM on January 4, 2016 [5 favorites]
"People are like cities: We all have alleys and gardens and secret rooftops and places where daisies sprout between the sidewalk cracks, but most of the time all we let each other see is is a postcard glimpse of a skyline or a polished square. Love lets you find those hidden places in another person, even the ones they didn’t know were there, even the ones they wouldn’t have thought to call beautiful themselves."
From Dr. Zhivago, by Boris Pasternak
"Oh, what a love it was, utterly free, unique, like nothing else on earth! Their thoughts were like other people’s songs.
They loved each other, not driven by necessity, by the ‘blaze of passion’ often falsely ascribed to love. They loved each other because everything around them willed it, the trees and the clouds and the sky over their heads and the earth under their feet. Perhaps their surrounding world, the strangers they met in the street, the wide expanses they saw on their walks, the rooms in which they lived or met, took more delight in their love than they themselves did."
(lyrics) From The Mariner's Song, by the Cowboy Junkies
In the storm you are my destination
In the port you are my storm
In the storm you are my destination
In the port you are storm
But I would weather you my love
If you would be my guide
If you would be my stars in the skies above
posted by janey47 at 6:20 PM on January 4, 2016 [5 favorites]
Song of the Open Road, Walt Whitman.
Section 15:
Allons! the road is before us!
It is safe—I have tried it—my own feet have tried it well—be not detain’d!
Let the paper remain on the desk unwritten, and the book on the shelf unopen’d!
Let the tools remain in the workshop! let the money remain unearn’d!
Let the school stand! mind not the cry of the teacher!
Let the preacher preach in his pulpit! let the lawyer plead in the court, and the judge expound the law.
Camerado, I give you my hand!
I give you my love more precious than money,
I give you myself before preaching or law;
Will you give me yourself? will you come travel with me?
Shall we stick by each other as long as we live?
posted by frumiousb at 7:02 PM on January 4, 2016 [8 favorites]
Section 15:
Allons! the road is before us!
It is safe—I have tried it—my own feet have tried it well—be not detain’d!
Let the paper remain on the desk unwritten, and the book on the shelf unopen’d!
Let the tools remain in the workshop! let the money remain unearn’d!
Let the school stand! mind not the cry of the teacher!
Let the preacher preach in his pulpit! let the lawyer plead in the court, and the judge expound the law.
Camerado, I give you my hand!
I give you my love more precious than money,
I give you myself before preaching or law;
Will you give me yourself? will you come travel with me?
Shall we stick by each other as long as we live?
posted by frumiousb at 7:02 PM on January 4, 2016 [8 favorites]
The country of marriage by Wendell Berry.
posted by ocherdraco at 8:34 PM on January 4, 2016 [4 favorites]
posted by ocherdraco at 8:34 PM on January 4, 2016 [4 favorites]
Wild nights - wild nights, Emily Dickenson
Wild nights - Wild nights!
Were I with thee
Wild nights should be
Our luxury!
Futile - the winds -
To a Heart in port -
Done with the Compass -
Done with the Chart!
Rowing in Eden -
Ah - the Sea!
Might I but moor - tonight -
In thee!
posted by eglenner at 10:07 PM on January 4, 2016
Wild nights - Wild nights!
Were I with thee
Wild nights should be
Our luxury!
Futile - the winds -
To a Heart in port -
Done with the Compass -
Done with the Chart!
Rowing in Eden -
Ah - the Sea!
Might I but moor - tonight -
In thee!
posted by eglenner at 10:07 PM on January 4, 2016
Wry, you say?
posted by Joseph Gurl at 1:18 AM on January 5, 2016 [2 favorites]
LOVE POEMOn edit: I'm an idiot. This isn't about travel.
My clumsiest dear, whose hands shipwreck vases,
At whose quick touch all glasses chip and ring,
Whose palms are bulls in china, burs in linen,
And have no cunning with any soft thing
Except all ill-at-ease fidgeting people:
The refugee uncertain at the door
You make at home; deftly you steady
The drunk clambering on his undulant floor.
Unpredictable dear, the taxi drivers' terror,
Shrinking from far headlights pale as a dime
Yet leaping before apopleptic streetcars—
Misfit in any space. And never on time.
A wrench in clocks and the solar system. Only
With words and people and love you move at ease;
In traffic of wit expertly maneuver
And keep us, all devotion, at your knees.
Forgetting your coffee spreading on our flannel,
Your lipstick grinning on our coat,
So gaily in love's unbreakable heaven
Our souls on glory of spilt bourbon float.
Be with me, darling, early and late. Smash glasses—
I will study wry music for your sake.
For should your hands drop white and empty
All the toys of the world would break.
- John Frederick Nims
posted by Joseph Gurl at 1:18 AM on January 5, 2016 [2 favorites]
Any chance they're Tolkien fans? It's not really about love, but I think a case could be made for one of the versions of The Road Goes Ever On - the version in The Hobbit in particular has a certain romance, imo.
Roads go ever ever on,
Over rock and under tree,
By caves where never sun has shone,
By streams that never find the sea;
Over snow by winter sown,
And through the merry flowers of June,
Over grass and over stone,
And under mountains in the moon.
Roads go ever ever on
Under cloud and under star,
Yet feet that wandering have gone
Turn at last to home afar.
Eyes that fire and sword have seen
And horror in the halls of stone
Look at last on meadows green
And trees and hills they long have known.
posted by DingoMutt at 5:39 AM on January 5, 2016
Roads go ever ever on,
Over rock and under tree,
By caves where never sun has shone,
By streams that never find the sea;
Over snow by winter sown,
And through the merry flowers of June,
Over grass and over stone,
And under mountains in the moon.
Roads go ever ever on
Under cloud and under star,
Yet feet that wandering have gone
Turn at last to home afar.
Eyes that fire and sword have seen
And horror in the halls of stone
Look at last on meadows green
And trees and hills they long have known.
posted by DingoMutt at 5:39 AM on January 5, 2016
Habitation
Margaret Atwood
Marriage is not
a house or even a tent
it is before that, and colder:
the edge of the forest, the edge
of the desert
the unpainted stairs
at the back where we squat
outside, eating popcorn
the edge of the receding glacier
where painfully and with wonder
at having survived even
this far
we are learning to make fire
posted by wym at 6:02 AM on January 5, 2016 [3 favorites]
Margaret Atwood
Marriage is not
a house or even a tent
it is before that, and colder:
the edge of the forest, the edge
of the desert
the unpainted stairs
at the back where we squat
outside, eating popcorn
the edge of the receding glacier
where painfully and with wonder
at having survived even
this far
we are learning to make fire
posted by wym at 6:02 AM on January 5, 2016 [3 favorites]
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LOVE IS A PLACE
E. E. Cummings
love is a place
& through this place of
love move
(with brightness of peace)
all places
yes is a world
& in this world of
yes live
(skilfully curled)
all worlds
posted by wintersweet at 6:04 PM on January 4, 2016 [6 favorites]