Gentle Summer Love

http://benjaminwblog.com/2014/06/gentle-summer-love/

I do not love you as if you were salt-rose, or topaz, or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off. I love you as certain dark things are to be loved, in secret, between the shadow and the soul.

I love you as the plant that never blooms but carries in itself the light of hidden flowers; thanks to your love a certain solid fragrance, risen from the earth, lives darkly in my body.

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where. I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride; so I love you because I know no other way

than this: where I does not exist, nor you, so close that your hand on my chest is my hand, so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep.

Pablo Neruda

Out of the night that covers me,

      Black as the pit from pole to pole,

I thank whatever gods may be

      For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance

      I have not winced nor cried aloud.

Under the bludgeonings of chance

      My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears

      Looms but the Horror of the shade,

And yet the menace of the years

      Finds and shall find me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,

      How charged with punishments the scroll,

I am the master of my fate,

      I am the captain of my soul.

William Ernest Henley

Sunny days pierce me as surely as biting winds, colliding with my soul and warming me. It’s as though I’m sitting beside a fire with my friends, the cool wind nipping at my neck but my eyes are mesmerized by the embers bright, and the sparks like shooting stars fired back at the heavens – I’m warmed and unafraid, the master of my destiny. And love surrounds me in just such a way, the intense fragility (nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals / the power of your intense fragility - cummings) of our spirits strengthened like a three-cord rope (And if one can overpower him who is alone, two can resist him. A cord of three strands is not quickly torn apart – Ecclesiastes), until we are more than the things we bring.

There is peace in this world, and anger. As the sun rides high over the sky, and sets in pumpkin and cranberry sauce like a thanksgiving spill, the storms of night linger over distant Europe, tearing snow up from the mountains and dashing it violently against the rocks. The herbivore quietly nibbles at flower stalks while the predator stalks the prey, and what shall we say, when the beast survives? That the world is not beautiful? But see the petals, the roses, the sky, the mountains striking even in the night where only their shadowy silhouettes frame the horizon.

Tonight, I’m enveloped in loving-kindness, and shipped into sleep, praying the waves are gentle, else I might wrestle with the good night.

Tonight I can write the saddest lines - Neruda

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? 

Inklings of Surrealism

On ponderous nights, the clock never dies.
it ticks, it tocks, in silent watch of twilight -
if you tell me your dreams, I'll tell you mine,
when I find them - I fear I've lost
the road between the folds of the skies,
the clouds, and starlight.
Flee the path... come, dear,
until you dance in the trees, you'll never feel
the
  brush
    of
      falling
leaves, imbibe the scents of pine and be
one with the wolves and the wind, again,
drink in the freedom of the springs,
leaping, running, flying -
if even the woods understand,
can love really be so hard?



I've started drawing. If you know the first thing about me, it's that I'm the worst artist in the history of everything. My stick figures look like they were hit by a stick-truck, and then were stick-mauled, and stick-mugged. But I purchased a book from Powells on drawing for idiots, and I'm sketching a couple of hours every day (during lunch hour and breaks).
Yes. After two days, I am still at least as lousy as before.
I'm finishing up the Prophet (Kahlil Gibran) tonight - it's a thirty minute read - and reading some more Neruda. The translations of Pablo Neruda were written and edited by James Wright and Robert Bly, both famous modern poets in their own right (wright, aha!), and at least one other poet whose name I do not recognize.
Discovery of the night: Neruda is a fascinating surrealist writer. (though I already knew this)

March days return with their covert light,
and huge fish swim through the sky,
vague earthly vapours progress in secret,
things slip to silence one by one.
Through fortuity, at this crisis of errant skies,
you reunite the lives of the sea to that of fire,
grey lurchings of the ship of winter
to the form that love carved in the guitar.
O love, O rose soaked by mermaids and spume,
dancing flame that climbs the invisible stairway,
to waken the blood in insomnia’s labyrinth,
so that the waves can complete themselves in the sky,
the sea forget its cargoes and rages,
and the world fall into darkness’s nets.
- Pablo Neruda


He translates so seamlessly the intangible into the picturesque, so we see, clearly, a galvanic image of reality through the lens of poetry. It's a beautiful writing that I can only imagine being all the more exquisite in its native tongue. One of the great parts about this Bly-edited book of poems is that it leaves the spanish translation on the left side, and shows the translation on the right. Unfortunately, I cannot speak spanish well (or at all), and even reading it, I know I skewer the pronunciation. Still, I feel so close to the original beauty, how can I not try reaching out with shaky, greedy hands?

You're lost in the cities of anthill life
searching the clouds, you eagerly sought to fly
and found no one in the skies -
is it lonely, seeing the world as the stars?
is their vision blurry with tears, or just mine?
come home
i'll love you ever, still