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If You Forget Me {Poetry}

Tuesday, April 4, 2017 Poetry, Poetry Tuesday Permalink

I want you to know
one thing.

You know how this is:
if I look
at the crystal moon, at the red branch
of the slow autumn at my window,
if I touch
near the fire
the impalpable ash
or the wrinkled body of the log,
everything carries me to you,
as if everything that exists,
aromas, light, metals,
were little boats
that sail
toward those isles of yours that wait for me.

Well, now,
if little by little you stop loving me
I shall stop loving you little by little.

If suddenly
you forget me
do not look for me,
for I shall already have forgotten you.

If you think it long and mad,
the wind of banners
that passes through my life,
and you decide
to leave me at the shore
of the heart where I have roots,
remember
that on that day,
at that hour,
I shall lift my arms
and my roots will set off
to seek another land.

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,
ah my love, ah my own,
in me all that fire is repeated,
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.

 

Amor {Poetry}

Tuesday, February 21, 2017 Poetry Tuesday Permalink

So many days, oh so many days
seeing you so tangible and so close,
how do I pay, with what do I pay?

The bloodthirsty spring
has awakened in the woods.
The foxes start from their earths,
the serpents drink the dew,
and I go with you in the leaves
between the pines and the silence,
asking myself how and when
I will have to pay for my luck.

Of everything I have seen,
it’s you I want to go on seeing:
of everything I’ve touched,
it’s your flesh I want to go on touching.
I love your orange laughter.
I am moved by the sight of you sleeping.

What am I to do, love, loved one?
I don’t know how others love
or how people loved in the past.
I live, watching you, loving you.
Being in love is my nature.

You please me more each afternoon.

Where is she? I keep on asking
if your eyes disappear.
How long she’s taking! I think, and I’m hurt.
I feel poor, foolish and sad,
and you arrive and you are lightning
glancing off the peach trees.

That’s why I love you and yet not why.
There are so many reasons, and yet so few,
for love has to be so,
involving and general,
particular and terrifying,
joyful and grieving,
flowering like the stars,
and measureless as a kiss.

That’s why I love you and yet not why.
There are so many reasons, and yet so few,
for love has to be so,
involving and general,
particular and terrifying,
joyful and grieving,
flowering like the stars,
and measureless as a kiss.
— Pablo Neruda

Dazzle of the Day { Poetry}

Tuesday, March 15, 2016 Photography, Poetry, Poetry Tuesday Permalink

image

Enough now of the wet eyes of winter.
Not one single tear.
Hour by hour, green is beginning,
the essential season, leaf by leaf,
until, by spring’s name, we are summoned
to take part in its joy.

How wonderful, its eternal openness,
clean air, the promise of flower,
the full moon leaving
its calling card in the foliage,
men and women trailing from the beach
with a wet basket of shifting silver.

Like love, like a medal,
I welcome it,
I take it all in,
from south, from north, from violins,
from dogs,
lemons, clay,
from newly liberated air,
machines smelling of mystery,
storm-colored shopping,
everything I need:
orange blossoms, string,
grapes like topazes,
the whiff of waves.
I gather it up
endlessly,
effortlessly,
I breathe.

I dry my shirt in the wind,
and my opened heart.
The sky falls
and falls.
From my glass,
I drink
pure joy.

~ Pablo Neruda

Leave it to Neruda to describe exactly how I feel when spring arrives!  Pure joy.  Yes.  When I was young I had a teacher who said that our blood thinned out in the spring.  That was her way of explaining spring fever.  I do know that I feel different in the spring, and I want to take it all in.

I took the photo above one spring several years ago.  I love to go exploring and see what gifts are awaiting me.

Sonnet XI {Poetry}

Tuesday, May 12, 2015 Poetry, Poetry Tuesday , Permalink

Here’s a spicy one! Neruda is relentless with his sensual metaphors. Relentless in a good way. 😉

I crave your mouth, your voice, your hairI crave your mouth, your voice, your hair.
Silent and starving, I prowl through the streets.
Bread does not nourish me, dawn disrupts me, all day
I hunt for the liquid measure of your steps.

I hunger for your sleek laugh,
your hands the color of a savage harvest,
hunger for the pale stones of your fingernails,
I want to eat your skin like a whole almond.

I want to eat the sunbeam flaring in your lovely body,
the sovereign nose of your arrogant face,
I want to eat the fleeting shade of your lashes,

and I pace around hungry, sniffing the twilight,
hunting for you, for your hot heart,
like a puma in the barrens of Quitratue.

 

Continue Reading…

Every Day You Play {Poetry}

Tuesday, February 17, 2015 Good Things, Photography, Poetry, Poetry Tuesday, Uncategorized , , Permalink

cerezos

Every Day You Play

Every day you play with the light of the universe.
Subtle visitor, you arrive in the flower and the water.
You are more than this white head that I hold tightly
as a cluster of fruit, every day, between my hands.

You are like nobody since I love you.
Let me spread you out among yellow garlands.
Who writes your name in letters of smoke among the stars of the south?
Oh let me remember you as you were before you existed.

Suddenly the wind howls and bangs at my shut window.
The sky is a net crammed with shadowy fish.
Here all the winds let go sooner or later, all of them.
The rain takes off her clothes.

The birds go by, fleeing.
The wind. The wind.
I can contend only against the power of men.
The storm whirls dark leaves
and turns loose all the boats that were moored last night to the sky.

You are here. Oh, you do not run away.
You will answer me to the last cry.
Cling to me as though you were frightened.
Even so, at one time a strange shadow ran through your eyes.

Now, now too, little one, you bring me honeysuckle,
and even your breasts smell of it.
While the sad wind goes slaughtering butterflies
I love you, and my happiness bites the plum of your mouth.

How you must have suffered getting accustomed to me,
my savage, solitary soul, my name that sends them all running.
So many times we have seen the morning star burn, kissing our eyes,
and over our heads the gray light unwind in turning fans.

My words rained over you, stroking you.
A long time I have loved the sunned mother-of-pearl of your body.
I go so far as to think that you own the universe.
I will bring you happy flowers from the mountains, bluebells,
dark hazels, and rustic baskets of kisses.
I want to do with you what spring does with the cherry trees.

Pablo Neruda

1

It’s no secret that I love Pablo Neruda’s poetry. The official start of spring is still over a month away and it certainly doesn’t feel very spring-like around here. However, my mind has been on spring.  I’m trying to think warm.  So far, it hasn’t worked, but I’ll keep trying.  🙂

That last line of the poem gets me every time.  I want to do with you what spring does with the cherry trees. I have always read that line as the most extraordinary metaphor for sensuality, awakening, and the magic of transformation. It is always very dark and gray outside in the months preceding the cherry blossoms. When they finally arrive — as they do, unfailingly each year — I feel reborn, fresh, invigorated. The world is once again full of hope, magic, and promise again after a long, cold, damp, dark season.

Take It All Back {Poetry}

Tuesday, January 6, 2015 Poetry, Poetry Tuesday , Permalink

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Take it all back.
Life is boring, except for flowers, sunshine, your perfect legs.
A glass of cold water when you are really thirsty.
The way bodies fit together.
Fresh and young and sweet.
Coffee in the morning.
These are just moments.
I struggle with the in-betweens.
I just want to never stop loving like there is nothing else to do,
because what else is there to do?

-Pablo Neruda

The Infinite One {Poetry}

Tuesday, September 16, 2014 Poetry Tuesday , Permalink

Do you see these hands?
They have measured
the earth, they have separated
minerals and cereals,
they have made peace and war,
they have demolished the distances
of all the seas and rivers,
and yet,
when they move over you,
little one,
grain of wheat, swallow,
they can not encompass you,
they are weary seeking
the twin doves
that rest or fly in your breast,
they travel the distances of your legs,
they coil in the light of your waist.
For me you are a treasure more laden
with immensity than the sea and its branches
and you are white and blue and spacious like
the earth at vintage time.
In that territory,
from your feet to your brow,
walking, walking, walking,
I shall spend my life.

feet

Bella {Poetry}

Tuesday, September 9, 2014 Poetry Tuesday , Permalink

still-afternoon

Lovely one,
just as on the cool stone
of the spring, the water
opens a wide flash of foam,
so is the smile of your face,
lovely one.

Lovely one,
with delicate hands and slender feet
like a silver pony,
walking, flower of the world,
thus I see you,
lovely one.

Lovely one,
with a nest of copper entangled
on your head, a nest
the color of dark honey
where my heart burns and rests,
lovely one.

Lovely one,
your eyes are too big for your face,
your eyes are too big for the earth.

There are countries, there are rivers,
in your eyes,
my country is your eyes,
I walk through them,
they light the world
through which I walk,
lovely one.

Lovely one,
your breasts are like two loaves made
of grainy earth and golden moon,
lovely one.

Lovely one,
your waist,
my arm shaped it like a river when
it flowed a thousand years through your sweet body,
lovely one.

Lovely one,
there is nothing like your hips,
perhaps earth has
in some hidden place
the curve and the fragrance of your body,
perhaps in some place,
lovely one.

Lovely one, my lovely one,
your voice, your skin, your nails,
lovely one, my lovely one,
your being, your light, your shadow,
lovely one,
all that is mine, lovely one,
all that is mine, my dear,
when you walk or rest,
when you sing or sleep,
when you suffer or dream,
always,
when you are near or far,
always,
you are mine, my lovely one,
always.
-Neruda

Language is such a fascinating thing. Even in the same language, there can be such great variations in the meaning of a word. I watch quite a few BBC programs, because most American TV is mindless drivel. My latest find is Last Tango in Halifax. Whenever I watch a show from the UK I have to turn on the closed captioning so I can understand what is bring said. The English have an accent that I just can’t understand. Ironic, isn’t it? I’m frequently pausing the program so I can look up the British meaning of an English word. For example, pissed in Britain means drunk, not mad. And I hope that no one ever calls me a slapper, because it means something totally different there.

“Translating poetry is like making jewelry. Every word counts, and each sparkles with so many facets. Translating prose is like sculpting: get the shape and the lines right, then polish the seams later.” – James Nolan

Ode to a Naked Beauty {Poetry}

Tuesday, September 2, 2014 Poetry Tuesday, Uncategorized , , Permalink

Ode to a Naked Beauty

With chaste heart, and pure
eyes
I celebrate you, my beauty,
restraining my blood
so that the line
surges and follows
your contour,
and you bed yourself in my verse,
as in woodland, or wave-spume:
earth’s perfume,
sea’s music.

Nakedly beautiful,
whether it is your feet, arching
at a primal touch
of sound or breeze,
or your ears,
tiny spiral shells
from the splendour of America’s oceans.
Your breasts also,
of equal fullness, overflowing
with the living light
and, yes,
winged
your eyelids of silken corn
that disclose
or enclose
the deep twin landscapes of your eyes.

The line of your back
separating you
falls away into paler regions
then surges
to the smooth hemispheres
of an apple,
and goes splitting
your loveliness
into two pillars
of burnt gold, pure alabaster,
to be lost in the twin clusters of your feet,
from which, once more, lifts and takes fire
the double tree of your symmetry:
flower of fire, open circle of candles,
swollen fruit raised
over the meeting of earth and ocean.

Your body – from what substances
agate, quartz, ears of wheat,
did it flow, was it gathered,
rising like bread
in the warmth,
and signalling hills
silvered,
valleys of a single petal, sweetnesses
of velvet depth,
until the pure, fine, form of woman
thickened
and rested there?

It is not so much light that falls
over the world
extended by your body
its suffocating snow,
as brightness, pouring itself out of you,
as if you were
burning inside.

Under your skin the moon is alive.

-Pablo Neruda

This is a lesser known poem of Neruda’s, but I absolutely love it.  I don’t think that it’s commonly translated into English and I don’t think that it’s  always a very accurate translation.   For example, in the original version the line that reads “your eyelids of silken corn” actually says ” tus párpados de trigo”. Trigo is wheat, not corn. Nonetheless, it moves me.  My brain is filled with such glorious visual imagery when I read these words. It’s sexy, yet subtly so. Sometimes that is the best way.

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