Tuesday, January 31st, 2006

I can write the saddest lines tonight

Write for example: ‘The night is starry
and they shiver, blue, those stars, in the distance’

The night wind turns in the sky and sings

I can write the saddest lines tonight
I loved him, sometimes he loved me too

On nights like these he held me in his arms
He kissed me greatly under the infinite sky

He loved me, sometimes I loved him too
How could I not have loved his huge, still eyes

I can write the saddest lines tonight
To think I don’t have him, to feel I have lost him

Hear the vast night, vaster without him
Lines fall on the soul like dew on the grass

What does it matter that I couldn’t keep him
The night is starry and he is not with me

That is all. Someone sings far off. Far off,
my soul is not content to have lost him

As though to reach him, my sight looks for him
My heart looks for him: he is not with me

The same night whitens, in the same branches
We, from that time, we are not the same

I don’t love him, that’s certain, but how I loved him
My voice searched for the breeze to reach his ear

Another’s kisses on him, like of mine he used to be
His voice, his bright body, his infinite eyes

I don’t love him, that’s certain, but perhaps I love him
Love is so brief and forgetting lasts so long

Since, on these nights, he held me in his arms,
my soul is not content to have lost him

Though this is the last pain he will make me suffer,
and these are the last lines I will write for him.