Tuesday, September 29, 2015

For Alvaro...Feliz Cumpleaños!

Soneto IX

Al golpe de la ola contra la piedra indócil 
la claridad estalla y establece su rosa 
y el círculo del mar se reduce a un racimo, 
a una sola gota de sal azul que cae. 

Oh radiante magnolia desatada en la espuma, 
magnética viajera cuya muerte florece 
y eternamente vuelve a ser y a no ser nada: 
sal rota, deslumbrante movimiento marino. 

Juntos tú y yo, amor mío, sellamos el silencio, 
mientras destruye el mar sus constantes estatuas 
y derrumba sus torres de arrebato y blancura, 

porque en la trama de estos tejidos invisibles 
del agua desbocada, de la incesante arena, 
sostenemos la única y acosada ternura.





In the wave-strike over unquiet stones
the brightness bursts and bears the rose
and the ring of water contracts to a cluster
to one drop of azure brine that falls.

O magnolia radiance breaking in spume,
magnetic voyager whose death flowers
and returns, eternal, to being and nothingness:
shattered brine, dazzling leap of the ocean.

Merged, you and I, my love, seal the silence
while the sea destroys its continual forms,
collapses its turrets of wildness and whiteness,

because in the weft of those unseen garments
of headlong water, and perpetual sand,

we bear the sole, relentless tenderness.


Pablo Neruda
Translation by A.S. Kline

Monday, September 21, 2015

Happy Fall Equinox!



The Beautiful Changes

One wading a Fall meadow finds on all sides   
The Queen Anne’s Lace lying like lilies
On water; it glides
So from the walker, it turns
Dry grass to a lake, as the slightest shade of you   
Valleys my mind in fabulous blue Lucernes.

The beautiful changes as a forest is changed   
By a chameleon’s tuning his skin to it;   
As a mantis, arranged
On a green leaf, grows
Into it, makes the leaf leafier, and proves   
Any greenness is deeper than anyone knows.

Your hands hold roses always in a way that says   
They are not only yours; the beautiful changes   
In such kind ways,   
Wishing ever to sunder
Things and things’ selves for a second finding, to lose   
For a moment all that it touches back to wonder.

Friday, September 18, 2015

Here's to September, wind-shifts, and my Mom's 82nd trip around the sun!


Ps(alm) for Departure

I take comfort in more than one
traveling alphabet
The text will (go with you) come with me
Come go anywhere
Take these words (which are emblems)
Place them everywhere
You who are beyond words
Contained in every ambling scrawl

From LOST PARKOUR PS(ALMS)