Tonight I can write
the saddest lines.
I loved her, and
sometimes she loved me too.
...
What does it matter
that my love could not keep her.
...
I no longer love her,
that's certain, but how I loved her.
Pablo Neruda – Tonight
I Can Write the Saddest Lines
I understand, Pablo. And it is no depression, no sadness
that summons these lyrics, the metric of melancholy or the glossary of gloom,
but the rhythm of the rain dancing against the window pane and the emptiness of
the night. The day was bright and sunny, but the night – oh, what is the night?
– is full of the null of time, and now is when I write.
I’ve made many mistakes I think, Olwen, and I only hope my
triumphs define me and not they. Earlier today, I had in mind to write on
topics of weddings, of joyful unions and communions of friends, old and new, of
misty-morning drives and the celebration of fathers, but I feel like a child in
the Cat in the Hat, uncertain of the joy that’s arrived, and whether, indeed,
the fish is right.
a long ways away, the river speaks like voices,
echoing high and light over the morning, it reigns
from the clouds formed from droplets falling into the
waiting
open arms beneath, where spray lifts as water drops
and dashes against the rocks, and opal lights briefly
find being, and lose it in a breath, one they’ve stolen from
me
and in these virginal waters I see the still naked eve and a’dam
so absorbed in the moment, they notice not me
nor the snaking, twisting branches of water falling –
before and after, such feeling,
though for a moment there was peace
Before pain, before the fall, would oysters still have
formed their pearls, without the itch?
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