Monday, March 01, 2010

a poem by Rafael Alberti, said Princess Haiku


HOMECOMING OF LOVE ON THE SANDS

photo

This morning, my love, we are twenty years old.
Let us go, very slowly, braiding together
Our barefoot shadows, on paths through orchards
That face the blue of the sea with all their greenness.
You ar almost an apparition,
The same one which came once in the lightless evening
Between two lights,
When the young citizen, pensive and idle,
Loitered along his homeward road.
You are still the one seeking, beside me,
The steep secret of the dunes,
The hidden slope of sand, the occult
Reeds which hold
Their curtains before the sea eyes of the wind.
You are there. I am there beside you. I control
The vast temperature of the happy waves,
The heart of the sea, blindly rising,
And dying in tatters of foam and sweet salt.
The collapsing castles rear their battelments,
The seaweeds offer us their crowns, the sails
Tense in flight, sing over the towers.

This morning, my love, we are twenty years old.
Rafael Alberti

I found this pocket book with Spanish poems in it that took my breath away. I cannot imagine a world without love poetry or poets.

From "Thirty Spanish Poems of Love and Exile, edited by Kenneth Rexroth

4 comments:

goatman said...

Oh to be seeking at twenty with the knowledge of the years after.
Maybe it will happen!

Pix E. said...

Hello ~

Pls send me a note with your new address (do you still have my address?) I don't do facebook/twitter but am getting back into old fashioned letter writing. MISS YOU. I don't blog as much-- or get around to blogs, except to catch up once in a while.

Pix E. said...

PS legally haunted in this case means The widow Ackley sold her haunted house without disclosing the fact that it was haunted. The new owners demanded a refund and had to take her to court--they won, and now NY State has a real estate law about "haunted transactions" the prospective buyers must be told about ghosts. Full disclosure-- roof needs repair, erosion in the backyard, oh, and a couple of noisy ghosts who open kitchen drawers and throw flatware around at midnight.

Diane Dehler said...

That is hilarious. Although, I guess it wouldn't be so funny if the widow's ghost started floating around at night.