You can go back and “add stuff to other posts” of yours. Just have to click the edit button and be sure on the bottom to note that you edited it on such and such a date.
I think there’s a time limit for being able to do that which makes sense with some threads but, when I go to replace deleted youtube music links, the edit button is’nt available.
Never mind. There are probably more important things to be upset about in the world today (not that any come to mind atm) so I’ll just have to wear it. We all have our crosses to bear.
It’s a powerful realization. Then we go back to sleep again. 
“The Dry Salvages”
by TS Eliot.
I
I do not know much about gods; but I think that the river
Is a strong brown god - sullen, untamed and intractable,
Patient to some degree, at first recognised as a frontier;
Useful, untrustworthy, as a conveyer of commerce;
Then only a problem confronting the builder of bridges.
The problem once solved, the brown god is almost forgotten
By the dwellers in cities - ever, however, implacable,
Keeping his seasons and rages, destroyer, reminder
Of what men choose to forget. Unhonoured, unpropitiated
By worshippers of the machine, but waiting, watching and waiting.
His rhythm was present in the nursery bedroom,
In the rank ailanthus of the April dooryard,
In the smell of grapes on the autumn table,
And the evening circle in the winter gaslight.
The river is within us, the sea is all about us;
The sea is the land’s edge also, the granite
Into which it reaches, the beaches where it tosses
Its hints of earlier and other creation:
The starfish, the horseshoe crab, the whale’s backbone;
The pools where it offers to our curiosity
The more delicate algae and the sea anemone.
It tosses up our losses, the torn seine,
The shattered lobsterpot, the broken oar
And the gear of foreign dead men. The sea has many voices,
Many gods and many voices.
The salt is on the briar rose,
The fog is in the fir trees.
The sea howl
And the sea yelp, are different voices
Often together heard: the whine in the rigging,
The menace and caress of wave that breaks on water,
The distant rote in the granite teeth,
And the wailing warning from the approaching headland
Are all sea voices, and the heaving groaner
Rounded homewards, and the seagull:
And under the oppression of the silent fog
The tolling bell
Measures time not our time, rung by the unhurried
Ground swell, a time
Older than the time of chronometers, older
Than time counted by anxious worried women
Lying awake, calculating the future,
Trying to unweave, unwind, unravel
And piece together the past and the future,
Between midnight and dawn, when the past is all deception,
The future futureless, before the morning watch
When time stops and time is never ending;
And the ground swell, that is and was from the beginning,
Clangs
The bell.
II
Where is there an end to it, the soundless wailing,
The silent withering of autumn flowers
Dropping their petals and remaining motionless;
Where is there an end to the drifting wreckage,
The prayer of the bone on the beach, the unprayable
Prayer at the calamitous annunciation?
There is no end, but addition: the trailing
Consequence of further days and hours,
While emotion takes to itself the emotionless
Years of living among the breakage
Of what was believed in as the most reliable -
And therefore the fittest for renunciation.
There is the final addition, the failing
Pride or resentment at failing powers,
The unattached devotion which might pass for devotionless,
In a drifting boat with a slow leakage,
The silent listening to the undeniable
Clamour of the bell of the last annunciation.
Where is the end of them, the fishermen sailing
Into the wind’s tail, where the fog cowers?
We cannot think of a time that is oceanless
Or of an ocean not littered with wastage
Or of a future that is not liable
Like the past, to have no destination.
We have to think of them as forever bailing,
Setting and hauling, while the North East lowers
Over shallow banks unchanging and erosionless
Or drawing their money, drying sails at dockage;
Not as making a trip that will be unpayable
For a haul that will not bear examination.
There is no end of it, the voiceless wailing,
No end to the withering of withered flowers,
To the movement of pain that is painless and motionless,
To the drift of the sea and the drifting wreckage,
The bone’s prayer to Death its God. Only the hardly, barely prayable
Prayer of the one Annunciation.
It seems, as one becomes older,
That the past has another pattern, and ceases to be a mere sequence -
Or even development: the latter a partial fallacy
Encouraged by superficial notions of evolution,
Which becomes, in the popular mind, a means of disowning the past.
The moments of happiness - not the sense of well-being,
Fruition, fulfilment, security or affection,
Or even a very good dinner, but the sudden illumination -
We had the experience but missed the meaning,
And approach to the meaning restores the experience
In a different form, beyond any meaning
We can assign to happiness. I have said before
That the past experience revived in the meaning
Is not the experience of one life only
But of many generations - not forgetting
Something that is probably quite ineffable:
The backward look behind the assurance
Of recorded history, the backward half-look
Over the shoulder, towards the primitive terror.
Now, we come to discover that the moments of agony
(Whether, or not, due to misunderstanding,
Having hopes for the wrong things or dreaded the wrong things,
Is not the question) are likewise permanent
With such permanence as time has. We appreciate this better
In the agony of others, nearly experienced,
Involving ourselves, than in our own.
For our own past is covered by the currents of action,
But the torment of others remains an experience
Unqualified, unworn by subsequent attrition.
People change, and smile: but the agony abides.
Time the destroyer is time the preserver,
Like the river with its cargo of dead negroes, cows and chicken coops,
The bitter apple and the bite in the apple.
And the ragged rock in the restless waters,
Waves wash over it, fogs conceal it;
On a halcyon day it is merely a monument,
In navigable weather it is always a seamark
To lay a course by: but in the sombre season
Or the sudden fury; is what it always was.
III
I sometimes wonder if that is what Krishna meant -
Among other things - or one way of putting the same thing:
That the future is a faded song, a Royal Rose or a lavender spray
Of wistful regret for those who are not yet here to regret,
Pressed between yellow leaves of a book that has never been opened.
And the way up is the way down, the way forward is the way back.
You cannot face it steadily, but this thing is sure,
That time is no healer: the patient is no longer here.
When the train starts, and the passengers are settled
To fruit, periodicals and business letters
(And those who saw them off have left the platform)
Their faces relax from grief into relief,
To the sleepy rhythm of a hundred hours.
Fare forward, travellers! not escaping from the past
Into different lives, or into any future;
You are not the same people who left the station
Or who will arrive at any terminus,
While the narrowing rails slide together behind you;
And on the deck of the drumming liner
Watching the furrow that widens behind you,
You shall not think ‘the past is finished’
Or ‘the future is before us’.
At nightfall, in the rigging and the aerial
Is a voice descanting (though not to the ear,
The murmuring shell of time, and not in any language)
‘Fare forward, you who think that you are voyaging;
You are not those who saw the harbour
Receding, or those who will disembark,
Here between the hither and the farther shore
While time is withdrawn, consider the future
And the past with an equal mind.
At the moment which is not of action or inaction
You can receive this: “on whatever sphere of being
The mind of man may be intent
At the time of death” - that is the one action
(And the time of death is every moment)
Which shall fructify in the lives of others:
And do not think of the fruit of action.
Fare forward.
O voyagers, O seamen,
You who come to port, and you whose bodies
Will suffer the trial and judgement of the sea,
Or whatever event, this is your real destination.’
So Krishna, as when he admonished Arjuna
On the field of battle.
Not fare well,
But fare forward, voyagers.
IV
Lady, whose shrine stands on the promontory,
Pray for all those who are in ships, those
Whose business has to do with fish, and
Those concerned with every lawful traffic
And those who conduct them.
Repeat a prayer also on behalf of
Women who have seen their sons or husbands
Setting forth, and not returning:
Figlia del tuo figlio,
Queen of Heaven.
Also pray for those who were in ships, and
Ended their voyage on the sand, in the sea’s lips
Or in the dath throat which will not reject them
Or wherever cannot reach them the sound of the sea bell’s
Perpetual angelus.
V
To communicate with Mars, converse with spirits,
To report the behaviour of the sea monster,
Describe the horoscope, haruspicate or scry,
Observe disease in signatures, evoke
Biography from the wrinkles of the palm
And tragedy from fingers; release omens
By sortilege, or tea leaves, riddle the inevitable
With playing cards, fiddle with pentagrams
Or barbituric acids, or dissect
The recurrent image into pre-conscious terrors -
To explore the womb, or tomb, or dreams; all these are usual
Pastimes and drugs, and features of the press:
And always will be, some of them especially
When there is distress of nations and perplexity
Whether on the shores of Asia, or in the Edgware Road.
Men’s curiosity searches past and future
And clings to that dimension. But to apprehend
The point of intersection of the timeless
With time, is an occupation for the saint -
No occupation either, but something given
And taken, in a lifetime’s death in love,
Ardour and selflessness and self-surrender.
For most of us, there is only the unattended
Moment, the moment in and out of time,
The distraction fit, lost in a shaft of sunlight,
The wild thyme unseen, or the winter lightning
Or the waterfall, or music heard so deeply
That it is not heard at all, but you are the music
While the music lasts. These are only hints and guesses,
Hints followed by guesses; and the rest
Is prayer, observance, discipline, thought and action.
The hint half guessed, the gift half understood, is Incarnation.
Here the impossible union
Of spheres of existence is actual,
Here the past and future
Are conquered, and reconciled,
Where action were otherwise movement
Of that which is only moved
And has in it no source of movement -
Driven by daemonic, chthonic
Powers. And right action is freedom
From past and future also.
For most of us, this is the aim
Never here to be realised;
Who are only undefeated
Because we have gone on trying;
We, content at the last
If our temporal reversion nourish
(Not too far from the yew-tree)
The life of significant soil.
Elegy in April and December
~~ Wilfred Owen
Hush, thrush! Hush, missen-thrush, I listen…
I heard the flush of footsteps through the loose leaves,
And a low whistle by the water’s brim.
Still! Daffodil! Nay, hail me not so gaily,-
Your gay gold lily daunts me and deceives,
Who follow gleams more golden and more slim.
Look, brook! O run and look, O run!
The vain reeds shook? - Yet search till gray sea heaves,
And I will stray among these fields for him.
Gaze, daisy! Stare through haze and glare,
And mark the hazardous stars all dawns and eves,
For my eye withers, and his star wanes dim.
2
Close, rose, and droop, heliotrope,
And shudder, hope! The shattering winter blows.
Drop, heliotrope, and close, rose…
Mourn, corn, and sigh, rye.
Men garner you, but youth’s head lies forlorn.
Sigh, rye, and mourn, corn…
Brood, wood, and muse, yews,
The ways gods use we have not understood.
Muse, yews, and brood, wood…
The Soldier’s Christmas Poem
~~ Grant Hays
T’was the night before christmas.
He lived all alone,
In a one bedroom house.
Made of plaster and stone.
I had come down the chimney
With presents to give
And to see just who
In this home did live
I looked all about
A strange sight I did see
No tinsel no presents
Not even a tree
No stocking by mantle
Just boots filled with sand
On the wall hung pictures
Of far distant lands
With medals and badges
Awards of all kinds
A sober thought
Came through my mind
For this house was different
It was dark and dreary
I found the home of a soldier
Once I could see clearly
The soldier lay sleeping
Silent alone
Curled up on the floor
In this one bedroom home
The face was so gentle
The room in such disorder
Not how i pictured
A new zealand soldier
Was this the hero
Of whom I’d just read?
Curled up on a poncho
The floor for a bed?
I realized the families
That I saw this night
Owed their lives to these soldiers
Who were willing to fight
Soon round the world
The children would play
And grownups would celebrate
A bright christmas day
They all enjoyed freedom
Each month of the year
Because of the soldiers
Like the one lying here
I couldn’t help wonder
How many lay alone
On a cold christmas eve
In a land far from home
The very thought brought
A tear to my eye
I dropped to my knees
And started to cry
The soldier awakened
And I heard a rough voice
"Santa don’t cry,
This life is my choice;
I fight for freedom
I don’t ask for more
My life is my god
My country, my corps
The soldier rolled over
And drifted to sleep
I coundn’t control it
I continued to weep
I kept watch for hours
So silent and still
And we both shivered
From the cold night’s chill
I didn’t want to leave
On that cold dark night
This guardian of honor
So willing to fight
Then the soldier rolled over
With a voice soft and pure
Whispered “carry on santa
It’s christmas day all is secure.”
One look at my watch
And I knew he was right
“Merry Christmas my friend
And to all a good night.”
Strange Meeting
~~ Wilfred Owen
It seemed that out of the battle I escaped
Down some profound dull tunnel, long since scooped
Through granites which Titanic wars had groined.
Yet also there encumbered sleepers groaned,
Too fast in thought or death to be bestirred.
Then, as I probed them, one sprang up, and stared
With piteous recognition in fixed eyes,
Lifting distressful hands as if to bless.
And by his smile, I knew that sullen hall;
By his dead smile, I knew we stood in Hell.
With a thousand fears that vision's face was grained;
Yet no blood reached there from the upper ground,
And no guns thumped, or down the flues made moan.
"Strange, friend," I said, "Here is no cause to mourn."
"None," said the other, "Save the undone years,
The hopelessness. Whatever hope is yours,
Was my life also; I went hunting wild
After the wildest beauty in the world,
Which lies not calm in eyes, or braided hair,
But mocks the steady running of the hour,
And if it grieves, grieves richlier than here.
For by my glee might many men have laughed,
And of my weeping something has been left,
Which must die now. I mean the truth untold,
The pity of war, the pity war distilled.
Now men will go content with what we spoiled.
Or, discontent, boil bloody, and be spilled.
They will be swift with swiftness of the tigress,
None will break ranks, though nations trek from progress.
Courage was mine, and I had mystery;
Wisdom was mine, and I had mastery;
To miss the march of this retreating world
Into vain citadels that are not walled.
Then, when much blood had clogged their chariot-wheels
I would go up and wash them from sweet wells,
Even with truths that lie too deep for taint.
I would have poured my spirit without stint
But not through wounds; not on the cess of war.
Foreheads of men have bled where no wounds were.
I am the enemy you killed, my friend.
I knew you in this dark; for so you frowned
Yesterday through me as you jabbed and killed.
I parried; but my hands were loath and cold.
Let us sleep now . . ."
[size=130]To a Mouse[/size]
on Turning Her Up in Her Nest with the Plough
~ ~ Robert Burns
Wee, sleekit, cow’rin, tim’rous beastie,
O, what a panic’s in thy breastie!
Thou need na start awa sae hasty
Wi bickering brattle!
I wad be laith to rin an’ chase thee,
Wi’ murdering pattle.
I’m truly sorry man’s dominion
Has broken Nature’s social union,
An’ justifies that ill opinion
Which makes thee startle
At me, thy poor, earth born companion
An’ fellow mortal!
I doubt na, whyles, but thou may thieve;
What then? poor beastie, thou maun live!
A daimen icker in a thrave
‘S a sma’ request;
I’ll get a blessin wi’ the lave,
An’ never miss’t.
Thy wee-bit housie, too, in ruin!
It’s silly wa’s the win’s are strewin!
An’ naething, now, to big a new ane,
O’ foggage green!
An’ bleak December’s win’s ensuin,
Baith snell an’ keen!
Thou saw the fields laid bare an’ waste,
An’ weary winter comin fast,
An’ cozie here, beneath the blast,
Thou thought to dwell,
Till crash! the cruel coulter past
Out thro’ thy cell.
That wee bit heap o’ leaves an’ stibble,
Has cost thee monie a weary nibble!
Now thou’s turned out, for a’ thy trouble,
But house or hald,
To thole the winter’s sleety dribble,
An’ cranreuch cauld.
But Mousie, thou art no thy lane,
In proving foresight may be vain:
The best-laid schemes o’ mice an’ men
Gang aft agley,
An’ lea’e us nought but grief an’ pain,
For promis’d joy!
Still thou are blest, compared wi’ me!
The present only toucheth thee:
But och! I backward cast my e’e,
On prospects drear!
An’ forward, tho’ I canna see,
I guess an’ fear!
The Fountain mingle with the river
And the river with the ocean,
The winds of heaven mix forever
With a sweet emotion;
Nothing in the world is single;
All things by a law divine
In one spirit meet and mingle.
Why not I with thine?-
love’s Philosophy
Percy Bysshe Shelley
TRANSFORMATIONS -
by Thomas Hardy
Portion of this yew
Is a man my grandsire knew,
Bosomed here at its foot:
This branch may be his wife,
A ruddy human life
Now turned to a green shoot.
These grasses must be made
Of her who often prayed,
Last century, for repose;
And the fair girl long ago
Whom I often tried to know
May be entering this rose.
So, they are not underground,
But as nerves and veins abound
In the growths of upper air,
And they feel the sun and rain,
And the energy again
That made them what they were!
The Serenity in Stones
I am holding this turquoise
in my hands.
My hands hold the sky
wrought in this little stone.
There is a cloud
at the furthest boundary.
The world is somewhere underneath.
I turn the stone, and there is more sky.
This is the serenity possible in stones,
the place of a feeling to which one belongs.
I am happy as I hold this sky
in my hands, in my eyes, and in myself.
—Simon J. Ortiz, 1975
~~ Beautiful…
My poem
Had a bad day
Lemon taco farts
Your best friend is gay
You smell like roses
Life is hell like overdoses
Will you save the world like moses
Does this sound like rap
But rap is crap
No more about money and ho’ses
This is the life that chose us
But noone to hold us
We’re stiff like rock
Suck my cock
Tick tock there goes the clock
Youre slow like gold
You live to break the mold
But you fill the mold
Ice like cold
We see the clock
We fill the sock
Because its fun to mock
These events are timeless
We dont even know what time is
Do you see these onesies
And now their none, see?
You’re like a flat pancake
You don’t know what’s up, mate
You’re off the ground
About to pound
But you think you’re safe and sound
You think im lying
Well see who’s crying
It’ll come for you
Gods master plan
Will you be sighing?
Or be smiling?
See, Im not like anyone around me
I see things others don’t and can’t see
Help me help me
Help me get to the top of the stairs?
Wont you help me get to the top of the stairs?
For a larger, more comfortable, narrower,…waterfall…
I liked your rap, Trixie. I don’t normally like rap to music unless it’s intelligent and makes sense. Much of the rap out there to me is garbage - too violent, graphically sexual and derogatory/racist - but that’s just me. I enjoyed reading your poem. It made sense too as did the rhyming. Wonderer opened a thread called A Thread for Rap. You might consider copying and pasting this over there though of course you don’t have to. This thread is basically for poems by known poets, published ones.
But it doesn’t really matter. But still, you might consider ALSO putting your rap poem over there. It was good. Maybe some others in here will follow suit and that thread could be resurrected.
Sing we for love and idleness
Naught else is worth the having
Though I have been in many a land,
There is naught else in living,
And I would rather have my sweet,
Though rose-leaves die of grieving.
There do high deeds in Hungary
To pass all men’s believing.
Ezra Pound
That was 2008-2009. Yeah, it’s 2021. I’ve experience love directly in this time, (that is, fucking). In the end, it sucks.
The Journey
by Mary Oliver
One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice –
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
“Mend my life!”
each voice cried.
But you didn’t stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voice behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do –
determined to save
the only life that you could save.
There is just something about this poem which grabbed onto me in the moments which I read it.
It didn’t speak to me - it shouted to me. So beautiful.
Really beautiful, Arcturus.
And, so this is:
“You know that it would be untrue
You know that I would be a liar
If I was to say to you
Girl, we couldn’t get much higher
Come on, baby, light my fire
Come on, baby, light my fire
Try to set the night on fire
The time to hesitate is through
No time to wallow in the mire
Try now we can only lose
And our love become a funeral pyre
Come on, baby, light my fire
Come on, baby, light my fire
Try to set the night on fire, yeah
The time to hesitate is through
No time to wallow in the mire
Try now we can only lose
And our love become a funeral pyre
Come on, baby, light my fire
Come on, baby, light my fire
Try to set the night on fire, yeah
You know that it would be untrue
You know that I would be a liar
If I was to say to you
Girl, we couldn’t get much higher
Come on, baby, light my fire
Come on, baby, light my fire
Try to set the night on fire
Try to set the night on fire
Try to set the night on fire
Try to set the night on fire”
Songwriters: Jim Morrison / John Densmore
Now Arc, the beauty consist within the highest , but literal metaphore, that is aligned to a progressive alignment to the idea that releases from the darkness . ( of the Platonic cave)
That this ancient idea, and because of it, Prometheus suffered the effects of the slicing of the metaphor by a double edged sword, … Is an ancient cause celebre. For which and through which Your quoted and my quoted one, appears on dissolute pages of recognition.
Especially this:
“But little by little,
as you left their voice behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,”
<
<<
<<<>
<<<<<<
<<<<<<<<<<
The upward movement, and the feeling that the upward movement is indiginous toward a light of stars, with stars’ burning , causing the primordial light, that we realize to be the same , that we lack, through an internal void, that we need to reclaim, by leaving the darkness behind.
Meno,
God, that is still just as beautiful and continues to give me the shivers as I read it. I wonder why that is.
Praying
by Mary Oliver
It doesn’t have to be
the blue iris, it could be
weeds in a vacant lot, or a few
small stones; just
pay attention, then patch
a few words together and don’t try
to make them elaborate, this isn’t
a contest but the doorway
into thanks, and a silence in which
another voice may speak.
From: Thirst: Poems
I came across this poem and I thought it was beautiful. It could be the most simple and unobtrusive thing we see which suddenly strikes us and turns us on to gratitude and opens that portal to a communion with Something. I suppose it also depends on “where” we are in the moment and “who” we are in the moments.
edit; turns out love doesn’t suck so much, Sarah.
[i]Le viril jus est séparé de mon sang,
Mais je t’ai tout amours préservé du feu du ciel.
Comme si l’on ne risquait plus de se brûler;
Car le feu ne s’éteint pas, qu’en mourant naisse
Et s’échappe en passeant par ton fontaine enflammée,
Ton arcane érotique; tu en s’allumant,
Rentrés par la chute des anges dans les terre.
Je t’ai déjà promis, tandis que je nourris mon coeur a lui-meme,
O résidu de la vie, tu seras le vieux tableau d’or et de perles.
Et cet amour tombe comme l’ombre,
Dans la loi fatale de notre vieux rêve,
Borne comme l’hiver, comme un soleil lointain
Et encore plus lointain l’été.
Le viril jus est séparé de mon sang,
Mais tu es l’aurore de ma vie récapitulée.
Traîne le reste inferne, ô la chaste et légère enfant:
Le remords, la crainte, les regrets mêlés au plaisir.
Laisse-moi sur ces entassements inégaux:
Toute la vie humaine, les douleurs, la gloire,
L’innocence et la méchanceté, les plaisirs, la force;
Pour mon coeur-fardeau, poids se détacher de toutes ces
Misères qui sont plus qu mort.
Moi, qui suis enfin heureux, je veux être fidèle
Aux souffrances et le jour du premier aveu;
Je vais à ton autel, mon âme est fière
De me dépouiller ainsi dans ta solennelle:
Je me suis jeté dans les bras d’une femme,
Et je ne pouvais que rester et mourir en silence,
L’effusion de mon amour ne fut sans doute
Une pâle allégorie de ma joie;
Joie que je ne comprenais pas.
Ces questions n’y recevaient pas leur dernière réponse.
Ce jour, tu m’as reçu sans me demander qui j’étais;
Car tu savais. Ce jour, tu m’as pris en travers de ton fier cœur,
Et à la fin tes lèvres ont daigné m’ouvrir, bien que,
Dans ton sein, mes souffrances y fussent enchâssées.
Nous avons, l’une et l’autre, conçu une infidélité
Qui nous séparait, mais qui n’avait pas empêché
Nos amours de se renouveler.
Ici, je te montre ce qu’il était possible que tu devinsses.
Parce que je garde encore les seules questions
Auxquelles vous n’avez pas trouvé de réponses.
Parce que j’ai encore les seules questions
Que vous n’avez pas posées.
J’ai toujours la question que vous craignez.
L’âme est l’ennemie de la chair;
Quand la nature de notre pouls a changé,
Et l’esprit avec ses lumière a détruit les apparences,
La moindre de nos sensations nous donne le bonheur,
Et des évanouissements qui sont l’cendre des extases.
Une pâle allégorie de ma joie; les anges-mères
Qui me conduisaient à travers ton jardin, me connaissaient d’avance;
Et mon coeur s’évapora vers leur sein sacré.
Même dans ces écrits d’amour,
Que rien ne pouvait faire comprendre, même à soi-même;
Un poète vivra, par le soin de son rêve:
L’image du coeur se dessinera d’elle-même
Dans sa réflexion; le plaisir qu’il y aura pris
Sera comme une eau qui coulerait et qui va loin,
Que tombe aussi dans les limbes de ta mémoire.
Parce que je garde encore les seules questions
Auxquelles vous n’avez pas trouvé de réponses.
Parce que j’ai encore les seules questions
Que vous n’avez pas posées.
J’ai toujours la question que vous craignez: qui est Sarah?
Vous m’avez dit que cette femme ne vous ressemble plus,
Que la jeunesse était une illusion:
La jeunesse n’est pas illusion, mais seulement indéfinie;
Chatoyant, instable, difficile à garder immobile, comme l’eau;
Comme le feu, car les deux éléments ont cette similitude.
Nous nous sommes vus de loin, tout à la fois;
Ainsi nous partageaient. A ce prix-là, tout est permis.
Tu dois savoir, qu’un désir, tout aussi puissant que mort,
M’a séparé d’beaute:
Mais j’ai toujours cherché à voir derrière ma douleur
L’amour que ta tendresse a pu me donner.
Toute amour se joue entre le monde et la mort;
Il faut aimer les deux.
Je ne peux que t’aimer de ce côté du tombeau,
Tandis que de l’autre côté du tombeau,
L’amour du monde commence, un amour silencieux:
Un jour, le silence se dira ces vérités éternelles;
Ce silence prononcera nos noms;
Sarah, Tyler…[/i]
[b]ENGLISH[/b]:
[i]The virile juice is separated from my blood,
But I have preserved you from the fire of heaven.
As if there was no risk of further burning myself:
For the fire is not extinguished, but when it dies,
It is born, and when it passes through you, erotic arcanum,
It escapes; when you burn, you are returned to the earth by the fall of angels.
I have already promised you, as I feed my heart back to itself,
Remnant of life, you will rest for me upon the old table of gold and pearls.
And that love falls like a shadow,
In the fatal law of our old dream,
Borne like winter, like a distant sun
And still more distant summer.
The virile juice is separated from my blood,
But you are the dawn of my life recapitulated.
Draw away the rest of hell, drag the infernal train,
O chaste and light child:
The remorse, the fear, the regrets mixed with pleasure.
Leave me on these uncertain heaps: all human life,
Pain, glory, innocence and wickedness, pleasures, strength;
My heart’s whole burden, a weight to separate
From all these miseries that are more than dead.
I, who am finally happy, I will be faithful to the sufferings
And to the day of the first confession;
I go to your altar, and my soul is proud to deprive me so in your solemnity.
I threw myself into the arms of a woman,
And I could only stay and die in silence,
The outpouring of my love was a pale allegory
Of my joy; joy that I did not understand.
Our questions did not receive their final answer there.
That day, you received me without asking me who I was;
For you already knew. That day, you took me across your proud heart,
And in the end your lips deigned to open me,
Though, in your womb, my sufferings were gathered up:
We both conceived an infidelity that separated us,
But which did not prevent our love from renewing itself.
Here, I show you what you could become.
For I still keep the only questions
For which you have not found answers.
For I still have the only questions
That you didn’t ask.
I still have the question you dread:
Who is Sarah?
The soul is the enemy of the flesh;
When the heart has learned to measure its song by some new rhythm,
And the spirit with its light has burnt away all mere appearances,
The least of our sensations gives us happiness,
And fainting spells that leave us smoldering in our ecstasies.
A pale allegory of my joy; ere the mother-angels
Who led me through your garden, even knew me before you;
And my heart evaporated towards their sacred bosom.
Even in these writings of love,
That nothing could explain, even to oneself;
A poet will live, by the care of his dream:
The picture of the heart will draw itself
In his reflection; the pleasure he obtained
Will be like flowing water that goes far,
Far enough to find a kind of Wisdom, if not Truth,
That also falls into the limbo of your memory.
For I still keep the only questions
To which you have not found answers.
For I still have the only questions
That you didn’t ask.
I still have the question that you dread: who is Sarah?
You told me that woman no longer resembles you,
That youth was an illusion:
Youth is not illusion, but only indefinite;
Shimmering, unstable, difficult to keep still, like water;
Like fire, because both elements have this similarity.
We saw each other from afar, all at once;
So we shared each other. At that price, anything goes.
You must know, that a desire, just as powerful as death,
Separated me from Beauty:
But I always tried to look beyond my pain,
Into the love that your tenderness was able to give me.
All love is played out between the world and death;
One must love the one they love, and love the world too.
But I can only love you on this side of the grave,
While on the other side of the tomb,
The love of the world begins, a silent love:
One day, Silence will tell itself these eternal truths;
This silence will pronounce our names;
Sarah, Tyler…[/i]