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Ode to Happiness
I used to believe
that only
when my heart burned
in the storm's thorns,
only when the rain drenched
my suit
in the livid land of mourning,
only if I closed my eyes
to the rose
and touched the wound,
only if I shared all the pain,
was I helping humanity.
I was wrong.
I walked into the mistake,
And today I call out to you, happiness."
(Pablo Neruda)
Leaning into the
Afternoons
Leaning into the afternoons I cast my sad nets
towards your oceanic eyes.
There in the highest
blaze my solitude lengthens and flames,
its arms turning like a drowning man's.
I send out red
signals across your absent eyes
that wave like the sea or the beach by a lighthouse.
You keep only
darkness, my distant female,
from your regard sometimes the coast of dread emerges.
Leaning into the
afternoons I fling my sad nets
to the sea that is thrashed by your oceanic eyes.
The birds of night
peck at the first stars
that flash like my soul when I love you.
The night gallops on
its shadowy mare
shedding blue tassles over the land.
(Pablo Neruda)
Tonight I can Write
Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
Write, for example,
`The night is starry and the stars are blue and shiver in the
distance.'
The night wind revolves in the sky and sings.
Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.
Through nights like this one I held her in my arms.
I kissed her again and again under the endless sky.
She loved me, sometimes I loved her too.
How could one not have loved her great still eyes.
Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
To think that I do not have her.
To feel that I have lost her.
To hear the immense night,
still more immense without her.
And the verse falls to the soul like dew to the pasture.
What does it matter that my love could not keep her.
The night is starry and she is not with me. This is all.
In the distance someone is singing. In the distance.
My soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.
My sight tries to find her as though to bring her closer.
My heart looks for her, and she is not with me.
The same night, whitening the same trees.
We, of that time, are no longer the same.
I no longer love her, that's certain, but how I loved her.
My voice tried to find the wind to touch her hearing.
Another's. She will be another's. As she was before my kisses.
Her voice, her bright body. Her infinite eyes.
I no longer love her, that's certain, but maybe I love her.
Love is so short, forgetting is so long.
Because through nights like this one I held her in my arms
my soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.
Though this be the last pain she makes me suffer and
these the last verses that I write for her.
(Pablo
Neruda)
Disclaimer
© Dr. Martin Hoppe 2002
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