A poem sent to me by a friend... definately worthy of note, might even make it up there to new favourite poem...
Nicolas Guillen -
a bilingual anthology
translated by Keith Ellis
published 2003
from Love Poems (1933-1971)
a love poem
I don't know. I'm really not aware of it.
I have no idea how long I went
without finding her again.
Perhaps a century? Maybe.
Maybe a little less: ninety-nine years.
Or one month? Could be. In any case
an enormous, enormous, enormous length of time.
Finally, like a rose in sudden full bloom,
like an unexpected trembling bell flower,
came the news.
Knowing in a flash
that I would see her again, that I would have her
near, tangible, real, as in my dreams:
What a suppressed explosion!
What noiseless thunder
circulating in my veins,
bursting up there
under my blood, in a
nocturnal storm!
And finding her, right away? And our way
of greeting each other so that nobody
would understand
that that was our own way?
A slight rubbing, an electric contact,
a conspiratorial squeeze, a certain look,
a throbbing of the heart
shouting, howling with silent voice.
Afterwards
(it's something you've known since you were fifteen)
that fluttering of pent-up words,
words spoken with lowered eyes,
penitential words,
spoken among enemy witnesses.
It is still
a love of "I love you,"
of "you"--spoken with formal distance--,
of "I would really like to
but it's impossible..." of "we can't,
no, think again about this..."
It is that sort of love,
it is a love of springtime abyss,
courteous, cordial, happy, fatal.
Then, the good-bye,
of the generic kind,
among the swarm of friends.
Watching her leave and loving her like never before,
following her with my eyes,
and then, without my eyes continue seeing her far away,
way in the distance, and still following her
even further, seeing her,
made of the night,
of bites, kisses, insomnia,
poison, ecstasy, convulsions,
sighs, blood, death...
Made
of that well-known substance
with which we compose a star.
1953
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