The minute I heard my first love story,
I started looking for you, not knowing
how blind that was.
Lovers don’t finally meet somewhere,
they’re in each other all along.
– Rumi (tr.Coleman Barks)
Category: Poetry
Words are all we have
Beclouded
I resent you for bringing out these feelings:
I was better off without them.
You have evicted me from myself;
banished me to a semi-autonomous region;
to a statelessness beclouded
by fear of regret.
Quiet
the way to end a poem
like this
is to become suddenly
quiet.
– Charles Bukowski
The Gravest Moment
a man said:
–the gravest moment in my life took place in the battle of the Marne, when they wounded me in the chest.
another man said:
–the gravest moment in my life, occurred during a Yokohama seaquake, from which I was miraculously saved, sheltered under the eaves of a lacquer shop.
and another man said:
–the gravest moment in my life happens when I sleep during the day.
and another said:
–the gravest moment of my life has taken place in my greatest loneliness.
and another said:
–the gravest moment in my life was my imprisonment in a Peruvian jail.
and another said:
–the gravest moment in my life is having surprised my father in profile.
and the last man said:
–the gravest moment in my life is yet to come.
Cesar Vallejo
XI
Tengo hambre de tu boca, de tu voz, de tu pelo
y por las calles voy sin nutrirme, callado,
no me sostiene el pan, el alba me desquicia,
busco el sonido líquido de tus pies en el día.
Estoy hambriento de tu risa resbalada,
de tus manos color de furioso granero,
tengo hambre de la pálida piedra de tus uñas,
quiero comer tu piel como una intacta almendra.
Quiero comer el rayo quemado en tu hermosura,
la nariz soberana del arrogante rostro,
quiero comer la sombra fugaz de tus pestañas
y hambriento vengo y voy olfateando el crepúsculo
buscándote, buscando tu corazón caliente
como un puma en la soledad de Quitatrúe.
–
I 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 colour 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 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 Quitatrúe.
– Pablo Neruda
There You Are…
In The Summer
In the summer
I stretch out on the shore
And think of you
Had I told the sea
What I felt for you,
It would have left its shores,
Its shells,
Its fish,
And followed me.
– Nizar Qabbani (trans. B. Frangieh & C. Brown)
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