Tuesday, July 13, 2010

Vagrant Waters

It takes a special kind of mood to read Neruda. The kind that comes upon you at midnight when your sins and past loves flame into being. The time for stories thickened with passion and history, when night enfolds you with her wings.

Then it is time for Neruda. For the salt rose and topaz and the blossoms of longing and passion.

Oh if I could only write that way, feel that way. This is a strange affair - this crazy impassioned dance with words. Sometimes I fight them and they stand up to me, unyielding and obstinate. Most times, they taunt me from a grave distance, cool and unfriendly. But I live for the moments when they come near and we dance.

*

Here I Love You


Here I love you.
In the dark pines the wind disentangles itself.
The moon glows like phosphorous on the vagrant waters.
Days, all one kind, go chasing each other.

The snow unfurls in dancing figures.
A silver gull slips down from the west.
Sometimes a sail. High, high stars.
Oh the black cross of a ship.
Alone.


Sometimes I get up early and even my soul is wet.
Far away the sea sounds and resounds.
This is a port.

Here I love you.
Here I love you and the horizon hides you in vain.
I love you still among these cold things.
Sometimes my kisses go on those heavy vessels
that cross the sea towards no arrival.
I see myself forgotten like those old anchors.

The piers sadden when the afternoon moors there.
My life grows tired, hungry to no purpose.
I love what I do not have. You are so far.
My loathing wrestles with the slow twilights.
But night comes and starts to sing to me.

The moon turns its clockwork dream.
The biggest stars look at me with your eyes.
And as I love you, the pines in the wind
want to sing your name with their leaves of wire.

Pablo Neruda

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