Wednesday, June 29, 2011

Countless the nights

Gustav’s Dream, by Sol Halabi
Countless the nights I lean against your memory
and slowly i let my body plunge into your sea
I long for you 
and sleep with your shadow on my pillow
so painful is my longing
that my lips dry whispering your name
and my eyes learned to embrace the darkness
My skin echoes the softness of your touch
but no hand of yours travels across my flesh...
My love, 
this world is full of you
as my heart is full of you
and my life without your smile
becomes a cacophonus melody
of broken dreams... 




Friday, June 24, 2011

It is at nights that i miss you the most...

Beautiful Sadness, by Michael Parkes (detail) (c)
It is at nights that i miss you the most
when my loneliness sings me a lullaby
my fingers run along the waves of sweaty sheets 
trying to find the way to the land of dreams that is you


It is at nights that i miss you the most
when my spirit is weak
and my body lingers
between the truth and the lie 
you, with your hands of cotton
and your lips of honey
you, who comes softly into the darkness 
and nests in my heart with wings of feathered memories


It is at nights that i miss you the most
and the moon
is dancing over my despair in a golden frenzy
because it knows 
that my longing is bitter
and my yearning is sweet
like your taste as if you have kissed me
for the first time... 





Summer

Summer Solstice, by Daniel Merriam (c)

Wednesday, June 22, 2011

If You Forget Me, by Pablo Neruda



Lovers "Summer", by Simone Lipschitz


I want you to know
one thing.

You know how this is:
if I look
at the crystal moon, at the red branch
of the slow autumn at my window,
if I touch
near the fire
the impalpable ash
or the wrinkled body of the log,
everything carries me to you,
as if everything that exists,
aromas, light, metals,
were little boats
that sail
toward those isles of yours that wait for me.

Well, now,
if little by little you stop loving me
I shall stop loving you little by little.

If suddenly
you forget me
do not look for me,
for I shall already have forgotten you.

If you think it long and mad,
the wind of banners
that passes through my life,
and you decide
to leave me at the shore
of the heart where I have roots,
remember
that on that day,
at that hour,
I shall lift my arms
and my roots will set off
to seek another land.

But
if each day,
each hour,
you feel that you are destined for me
with implacable sweetness,
if each day a flower
climbs up to your lips to seek me,
ah my love, ah my own,
in me all that fire is repeated,
in me nothing is extinguished or forgotten,
my love feeds on your love, beloved,
and as long as you live it will be in your arms
without leaving mine.

Sunday, June 19, 2011

Lovers' Infiniteness, by John Donne


Fair is my love, by Edwin Austin Abbey

If yet I have not all the love,
Dear, I shall never have it all,
I cannot breathe one other sigh, to move,
Nor can entreat one other tear to fall.
All my treasure, which should purchase thee,
Sighs, tears, and oaths, and letters I have spent,
Yet no more can be due to me,
Than at the bargain made was meant.
If then thy gift of love were partial,
That some to me, some should to others fall,
     Dear, I shall never have thee all.

Or if then thou gavest me all,
All was but all, which thou hadst then;
But if in thy heart, since, there be or shall
New love created be, by other men,
Which have their stocks entire, and can in tears,
In sighs, in oaths, and letters outbid me,
This new love may beget new fears,
For, this love was not vowed by thee.
And yet it was, thy gift being general,
The ground, thy heart is mine; whatever shall
     Grow there, dear, I should have it all.

Yet I would not have all yet,
He that hath all can have no more,
And since my love doth every day admit
New growth, thou shouldst have new rewards in store;
Thou canst not every day give me thy heart,
If thou canst give it, then thou never gav'st it;
Love's riddles are, that though thy heart depart,
It stays at home, and thou with losing sav'st it:
But we will have a way more liberal,
Than changing hearts, to join them, so we shall
     Be one, and another's all.

Friday, June 17, 2011

What is happiness...


Embrace of a couple in love.
October 1958, Nina Leen.




" I had to grow old, my boy, to learn what is happiness.


In the end, happiness is a pair of hands, two hands...


Those hands that are going to hug you, to hold you, to put you to sleep, to take care of you, to cook for you, to caress you and at the end they are going to close your eyes.


Too many hands mess you up.... It's a waste of time. You will see that, you too, while you will be growing up..."




                                                                                                               Th. V. 

Tuesday, June 14, 2011

Fragile




fragile
butterfly wings so soft
like dreams
caught between your fingertips
leaving back their satin trace.... 

Sunday, June 12, 2011

In The Summer by Nizar Qabbani


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.


Summer night by Kobayashi Issa







Summer night--
even the stars
are whispering to each other.

Between the Dusk of a Summer Night by William Ernest Henley


Between the dusk of a summer night
And the dawn of a summer day,
We caught at a mood as it passed in flight,
And we bade it stoop and stay.
And what with the dawn of night began
With the dusk of day was done;
For that is the way of woman and man,
When a hazard has made them one.
Arc upon arc, from shade to shine,
The World went thundering free;
And what was his errand but hers and mine --
The lords of him, I and she?
O, it's die we must, but it's live we can,
And the marvel of earth and sun
Is all for the joy of woman and man
And the longing that makes them one.



A something in a summer's Day - Emily Dickinson

A something in a summer's Day
As slow her flambeaux burn away 
Which solemnizes me. 

 A something in a summer's noon A depth  an Azure  a perfume Transcending ecstasy. 

 





And still within a summer's night 
A something so transporting bright 
I clap my hands to see 
 
 Then veil my too inspecting face
 Lets such a subtle  shimmering grace 
Flutter too far for me 

 The wizard fingers never rest  
The purple brook within the breast 
Still chafes it narrow bed 
 
 Still rears the East her amber Flag  
Guides still the sun along the Crag
 His Caravan of Red 
 
 So looking on  the night  the morn 
Conclude the wonder gay  
And I meet, coming thro' the dews 
Another summer's Day!



Monday, June 6, 2011

Helen, by George Seferis.



Teucer: . . . in sea-girt Cyprus, where it was decreed 

by Apollow that I should live, giving the city 
the name of Salamis in memory of my island home. 

. . . . . . . . . . 

Helen: I never went to Troy; it was a phantom. 

. . . . . . . . . . 

Servant: What? You mean it was only for a cloud 
that we struggled so much? 




— Euripides, Helen 





‘The nightingales won’t let you sleep in Platres.’


Shy nightingale, in the breathing of the leaves,
you who bestow the forest’s musical coolness
on the sundered bodies, on the souls
of those who know they will not return.
Blind voice, you who grope in the darkness of memory
for footsteps and gestures — I wouldn’t dare say kisses —
and the bitter raving of the frenzied slave-woman.


‘The nightingales won’t let you sleep in Platres.’


Platres: where is Platres? And this island: who knows it?
I’ve lived my life hearing names I’ve never heard before:
new countries, new idiocies of men
or of the gods;
                      my fate, which wavers
between the last sword of some Ajax
and another Salamis,
brought me here, to this shore.
                                              The moon
rose from the sea like Aphrodite,
covered the Archer’s stars, now moves to find
the heart of Scorpio, and alters everything.
Truth, where’s the truth?
I too was an archer in the war;
my fate: that of a man who missed his target.


Lyric nightingale,
on a night like this, by the shore of Proteus,
the Spartan slave-girls heard you and began their lament,
and among them — who would have believed it? — Helen!
She whom we hunted so many years by the banks of the Scamander.
She was there, at the desert’s lip; I touched her; she spoke to me:
‘It isn’t true, it isn’t true,’ she cried.
‘I didn’t board the blue bowed ship.
I never went to valiant Troy.’


Breasts girded high, the sun in her hair, and that stature
shadows and smiles everywhere,
on shoulders, thighs and knees;
the skin alive, and her eyes
with the large eyelids,
she was there, on the banks of a Delta.
                                                         And at Troy?
At Troy, nothing: just a phantom image.
That’s how the gods wanted it.
And Paris, Paris lay with a shadow as though it were a solid being;
and for ten whole years we slaughtered ourselves for Helen.


Great suffering had desolated Greece.
So many bodies thrown
into the jaws of the sea, the jaws of the earth
so many souls
fed to the millstones like grain.
And the rivers swelling, blood in their silt,
all for a linen undulation, a filmy cloud,
a butterfly’s flicker, a wisp of swan’s down,
an empty tunic — all for a Helen.
And my brother?
                         Nightingale nightingale nightingale,
what is a god? What is not a god? And what is there in between them?


‘The nightingales won’t let you sleep in Platres.’


Tearful bird,
                  on sea-kissed Cyprus
consecrated to remind me of my country,
I moored alone with this fable,
if it’s true that it is a fable,
if it’s true that mortals will not again take up
the old deceit of the gods;
                                       if it’s true
that in future years some other Teucer,
or some Ajax or Priam or Hecuba,
or someone unknown and nameless who nevertheless saw
a Scamander overflow with corpses,
isn’t fated to hear
messengers coming to tell him
that so much suffering, so much life,
went into the abyss
all for an empty tunic, all for a Helen.


Rose tree...

Roses and rain, © Finca Patches, Argentina

hidden under
the shiny dripping rose tree
lawrels are bending
as my thoughts of you are hanging
from every single leaf... 

To Margaret.

Moving away, by Miriam Schapiro (1923), private collection, New York. 

all her memories
locked carefully away
as she is leaving
i wave goodbye, my eyes a blur
the end of our season... 

Friday, June 3, 2011

Going away

Claire leaving home, by Catherine Nolin (c)



after 40 years
she is leaving her childhood place
going away now
soon our past will be enclosed
in an empty wooden box... 

An endless fair...

Giant Wheel in a village fair in Moonlight, by E. Ramki
when i die 
i want you to celebrate my life
put all your sunday clothes and come
in the cool smiling evening, 


Let there be lights and people dancing,
let there be clowns and bands playing


stars and fireworks, laughter and music
as if my years were all an endless fair...


Let softly upon the waters of a quiet lake
a lantern, make me a memory, make me a song
watch my dreams fly away tied up like kites
with a violin string...


Let a boy and a girl fall in love that night
so i will live in their love forever


Make me a memory.
Make me a song.


when i die, 
i want you to celebrate my smile...