This Love - An Egyptian poem from circa 1200 BC

This Love — Ancient Egypt, circa 1200 BCThree thousand years before anyone wrote a sonnet, an anonymous Egyptian poet picked up a reed pen and tried to say what love feels like from the inside. And he started with our most basic human needs - food, and then goes on to better things of life.The result is one of the oldest love poems in existence, and one of the most quietly beautiful. It doesn't reach for the heavens or the eternal. It reaches for oil and honey, for linen and bread, for the small seal-ring on a finger. It says: this love is woven through everything sustaining and ordinary and good. And then, in its final lines, it makes a promise so simple it stops you cold — that all the days ahead will be food set before us. Dates and honey, bread and wine.In this episode we read and explore this remarkable poem — a voice from 1200 BC that sounds, in the best possible way, like someone you know.This LoveThis love is as goodas oil and honey to the throat,as linen to the body,as fine garments to the gods,as incense to the worshipperswhen they enter in,as the little seal-ringto my finger.It is like a ripe pearin a man's hand,it is like the dateswe mix with wine,it is like the seedsthe baker adds to bread.We will be togethereven when old age comes.And all the days in betweenwill be food set before us,dates and honey, bread and wine.Translated by Michael V. Fox, adapted by Robert Hass. Narration by Florentino Ariza