Alexander Shaumyan -- multilingual poet, master of mathematical theorem, scholar, artist -- is in love. He's still the universal soul searching for truth and justice, but everything has slightly dimmed and softened this time in comparison to love.

He lays love's groundwork beautifully, progressing from a broken heart to hopeful lover. "On a Poet's Tombstone" is his quiet introduction:
He left the solace of a womb --
A healer with a gentle verse --
His dreams have led him to his tomb,
A broken heart, an empty purse.

In this excerpt from "Tears" the poet finds a shred of hope:
Carry me off to a place
Where hunger and passion
Can never be satisfied.

And then he explains his hopes, his needs in this excerpt from "I Need a Friend":
I need a friend with faith in love and dreams,
Who does not look for momentary wins,
Who looks beyond the losses and the gains,
Who sees me through my setbacks to the end.
Whether I win or lose, I need a friend
With faith in me.

In "A Disclosure", he dreams of chivalry and grace, and prays the days of romance are not dead:
Oh how I desire
To be completely free
And find that something higher
When you're close to me.

In English, French, Scandinavian, German, and Russian -- with translations -- Shaumyan declares his love for Teresa. But sprinkled throughout his declarations of love are gems of political cynicism. In "The World's Asleep. There is a War That's Raging", I found this small, amazing excerpt:
The hate you sow today's the hate you reap
From someone's bullet or a bomb tomorrow.

"She Drifts in a Vacuum" is a scathing revelation of America's politics today, a world view of chilling proportions. Due to space limitations, I quote only an excerpt:
....an ancient country,
once seen as the cradle
of civilization, now
reduced to rubble and
ashes to be reconstructed
into a makeshift mockery
of a democracy
with a puppet regime,
that allows full access
and control of its resources,
revised and edited as
the liberation of the people.