MANILA, Philippines -

All-consuming

My favorites are from the Song of Songs of the Old Testament:
?Like a lily among thorns is my darling among the maidens.? (Songs 2:2)
?How beautiful you are, my darling! Oh, how beautiful!? (4:1)

I love these verses because they show how love can be consuming but with so much respect and compassion.
Piolo Pascual, matinee idol and star of the TV series, ?Lobo,? which runs daily on ABS-CBN.

Persistent, patient

I choose Sonnet XLIII by Elizabeth Barret Browning:
?I love thee with a passion put to use/in my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith.?
The reason I like it is because I think to be in love again, after getting hurt or disappointed many times, with as much passion as you used to have and with the pure faith that a child has, is how love should be. Love persists and is patient.
Ina Feleo, 2007 Cinemalaya best actress for the film ?Endo,? which opens this week in Metro Manila theaters

A la Wes Craven

I like Cirilo Bautista's ?Patalim,? from the collection ?Sugat ng Salita.? It's about a husband and wife who express their love by literally and figuratively stabbing each other. Hilariously hallucinatory but tender in a Wes Craven kind of way:
?Kaya't/Sa katapusan ng araw magbibilang kami ng/sugat//at tila mga gulanit na kaluluwa/ay magtatawanan magsusuntukan pa//Ganito kaming lagi sapagkat/labis ang pag-ibig namin sa isa't isa.?
Lourd de Veyra, poet, essayist and singer-leader of the Radioactive Sago Project

Passion's work

I love Ophelia A. Dimalanta's ?Time Factor?:
?Two age-wrenched passions meet, miss
Time's cues, mistake time's script,
And if time were but today who cares?
Never mind the lapse in history
And place.?
This poem hits me with the sheer power of its message: Love can grow in the strangest of places, and in the most improbable of ways. Who can explain the chemistry between disparate characters, unencumbered by time and place? The cartography of love, at once familiar and strange, can only be drawn up by one who is in the Here and Now, for it is the Present, melding with the past and the future, that lovers should inhabit, at least in this poem, never mind if reality intrudes. The juxtaposition of a seemingly quiet garden in the heart of Seoul and the bacchanalia that transpired within its walls, Wu Ti dancing with Silla's maiden, at first glance seemed to jar, but slowly they fuse into cohesive images: passion's work. Interminable time, indeed, is never a hindrance, lovers will always transcend it, as they cry: ?I want you in any where or/Way or how, now or in another time.?
Alice M. Sun-Cua, physician, poet and Tai Chi practitioner

Hatred's offspring?

I love that line from Shakespeare's ?Romeo and Juliet?:
'My only love sprung from my only hate.'

It's spoken by Romeo who's a Montague when he finds out that Juliet is from the enemy Capulet clan. I like it because I am able to relate to it based on my experience.
Diether Ocampo, actor, model, matinee idol

Getting it real

I like ?If You Forget Me? by Pablo Neruda:
?But if each day, each hour, you feel that you are destined for me with implacable sweetness, if each day a flower climbs up to your lips to seek me, my love, my own, in me nothing is extinguished or forgotten. My love feeds on your love, beloved, and as long as you live it will be in your arms without leaving mine . . . ?
I love those lines because they show that love is as real as it gets.
Christian Bautista, recording star

Burn, baby, burn

I choose Ophelia A. Dimalanta' s ?A Kind of Burning,? especially the lines:
?We have been all the hapless lovers
in this wayward world
in almost all kinds of ways
except we never really meet
but for this kind of burning.?

I love the poem because it shows how love is the greatest leveller. It is the common thread that binds and connects us to one another no matter how seemingly disparate or distant we are. We may see how unfortunate or tragic our lives have been because of the problems that constantly beset and plague us, but love offers a way to redeem us from our miseries, whether imagined or real. It is all because when we yearn for love, we burn for it.
John Jack G. Wigley, assistant to the director, UST
Publishing House

Unconditional

I like that simple line from the ?Kite Runner,? the novel by Khaleid Hosseini:
?. . . for you a thousand times over.?
I just finished the book and just watched the movie over the Chinese New Year long weekend. It's a phrase that says a lot about loyalty and love, romantic or otherwise. I'd marry the person who can say the line to me. Imagine having someone loving you unconditionally a thousand times, that's what we all really need. Someone who can love you like that will really just make you a better person, or, at least, would make you want to be a better person. If all of us are in love every day, imagine just how much better this world would be.
Timothy W. Go, presenter and series producer for ?News, Business? and ?That's IT!,? Channel News Asia, MediaCorp News, Singapore