Night and Day: These perfect songs
 
For R.Â
I want to do with you what spring does with the cherry trees.”
Pablo Neruda
1) I love the way your colours run through me
I love the way your colours run through me;
the way your dreams like landscapes grow
(like road maps, towers, rivers, trees
mushrooming like crazy)
inside me,
till I lie - so full,
so blissfully aware that I might burst
if I would take one sip,
yes, one more taste of you -
my head in your lap,
my eyes and ears and nose,
my skin and hair
so full of you
(and still my hands,
my lips,
my heart reach out for more.)
I love the way you weave
through worlds and words,
to come and lie with me:
to talk to me of love
and lust and duty:
of the smells and sounds of children
and the weight of poems
on your naked skin.
The way you love,
and make love to the earth,
the sky,
to everything that’s named by you,
everything you touched
and everything you taught
to be and breathe with love.
I love the way I lie in bed
and think and dream of you:
my body and my soul,
now named,
my dreams possessed:
my life, again, draped in blossom,
and renewed;
all of me now born to you,
and wanting to be worn by you.
My Lady,
like an unknown season,
full of scented storms
and soft fire rains,
held like breathing fur
through silk dark night,
you’ve come to me.
And I am touched,
awake - and dreaming,
filled by you and full of you
and wanting more
of all the gifts and blessings
you might care to give.
2) I have to speak to you in fiery tongues
I have to speak to you
in many different, fiery tongues -
the tongue of Pablo,
old Neruda, yes:
that most natural of poets,
talking to his lady:
Me falta tiempo para celebrar tus cabellos.
Uno por uno debo contarlos y alabarlos:
otros amantes quieren vivir con ciertos ojos,
yo sólo quiero ser tu peluquero.
He’s singing about your hair, you know -
and he’s foreshadowing me:
as patient and as desperate as he,
loving the woman, loving her hair,
En Italia te bautizaron Medusa
por la encrespada y alta luz de tu cabellera.
Yo te llamo chascona mÃa y enmarañada:
mi corazón conoce las puertas de tu pelo.
jealous of the simple comb
that moves through you,
like stars
move through the night.
Cuando tú te extravÃes en tus propios cabellos,
no me olvides, acuérdate que te amo,
no me dejes perdido ir sin tu cabellera
To be the scarf,
to be the fingers of your lover,
whispering through these flames,
half-covering your thoughts,
your dreams.
por el mundo sombrÃo de todos los caminos
que sólo tiene sombra, transitorios dolores,
hasta que el sol sube a la torre de tu pelo.
I’d like to be some woodland creature
hidden in the branches
of your sleeping, dark-clad hair,
touched by you and fed by you,
soothed by the movements
of your lips and trembling nostrils,
your breath and breasts now rising
to the rhythm of night’s dreaming.
Each particle of me now wants
to be remade and be like all
your hair: grown close to you,
make love to you
with every whispered word,
the lightest touch of breath and wind,
caressing you and holding you
with all the softest bonds of
simple lust and longing.
3) Good morning, Lady Fire
Good morning, my sweet Fire.
Now, what towers shall we raise today?
What ships, what oceans will be
at our beck and call?
I can see you move (still slowly)
through your house,
a cup of morning coffee in your hand,
perhaps the morning paper
(in former times there would have been
a sleek and sexy cigarette,
something dark and almost quite forbidden,
a Gitane, or a Gauloise,
held loosely between thumb and middle finger;
slow smoke now curling up,
like a lover’s prayer rising slowly from the lips,
half-opened in surrender -
an offering, a smoky dart or tendril,
rising to the Heavens)
and you count the rooms you pass,
on the way to the verandah
and the morning chair,
creaky, loving, waiting to
embrace you,
to be filled
and then to welcome all your thoughts
and murmured lists:
which mountains to grow,
which rivers to feed,
which roads to bless,
which dreams to wear…
while your thoughts have touched each door
you passed and greeted:
to guard the dreams and sleeping forms
of all the ones you love -
all of your children
and your lover,
(who, yet still asleep
must turn to where your body was
these Godlike hours of the night;
his nose and skin still full of you:
your body and
your skin and hair and eyes -
your touch,
your opening up to all your senses,
and all the sounds you make:
your sighs and growls and laughter,
rising like the sweetest offerings,
like ghostly, silver tendrils
to the waiting, greedy Gods,
that need to know and watch and taste
all of your golden, moving, lovely, love-soaked skin)
and then you open up
to yet another perfect day.
You murmur a soft prayer -
or some lines of a now half-remembered poem
and you turn your head
to the softest breeze
that came so far to be with you,
sailing oceans, passing ships
and dolphins, whales and sharks,
to be with you
(a ghostlike sigh)
to be with you
(like autumn light)
to be with you
(like silver rain)
to be with you,
(like lace on skin)
to be with you,
to be with you,
to be with you, for now.
PS: Here’s is the translation of Neruda’s sonnet XlV, that I used in the second part of my poem:
I don’t have time enough to celebrate your hair.
One by one I should detail your hairs and praise them.
Other lovers want to live with particular eyes;
I only want to be your stylist.
In Italy they called you Medusa,
because of the high bristling light of your hair.
I call you curly, my tangler;
my heart knows the doorways of your hair.
When you lose your way through your own hair,
do not forget me, remember that I love you.
Don’t let me wander lost — without your hair –
through the dark world, webbed by empty
roads with their shadows, their roving sorrows,
till the sun rises, lighting the high tower of your hair.)