Voices Carry

I have been reading much Neruda lately because I find comfort in his words. He manages to put into words what I cannot.

x x x x x

So That You Will Hear Me
~Pablo Neruda~


So that you will hear me
my words
sometimes grow thin
as the tracks of the gulls on the beaches.



Necklace, drunken bell
for your hands smooth as grapes.

And I watch my words from a long way off.
They are more yours than mine.
They climb on my old suffering like ivy.

It climbs the same way on damp walls.
You are to blame for this cruel sport.
They are fleeing from my dark lair.
You fill everything, you fill everything.

Before you they peopled the solitude that you occupy,
and they are more used to my sadness than you are.

Now I want them to say what I want to say to you
to make you hear as I want you to hear me.

The wind of anguish still hauls on them as usual.
Sometimes hurricanes of dreams still knock them over.
You listen to other voices in my painful voice.

Lament of old mouths, blood of old supplications.
Love me, companion. Don't forsake me. Follow me.
Follow me, companion, on this wave of anguish.

But my words become stained with your love.
You occupy everything, you occupy everything.

I am making them into an endless necklace
for your white hands, smooth as grapes.

x x x x x

And I wonder today as I wondered yesterday as I will wonder tomorrow .... across whatever distance there is between where I stand and where he lays, can he hear me? Hear the words every teardrop speaks in it's soft liquid voice; Hear the loud cries the silent broken heart screeches. I wonder.

My friend Dicay tells me that it is the world that is melancholic, not me. Yet somehow I feel it isn't the world that is melancholic. I am. I wish the yearning for Clancy would diminish as the days go by but I find that I just grow more hungry. He has taken everything, everything with him.

Of Love and Neruda

Love
~Pablo Neruda~

Because of you, in gardens of blossoming flowers I ache from the
perfumes of spring.

I have forgotten your face, I no longer remember your hands;
how did your lips feel on mine?

Because of you, I love the white statues drowsing in the parks,
the white statues that have neither voice nor sight.


I have forgotten your voice, your happy voice; I have forgotten
your eyes.

Like a flower to its perfume, I am bound to my vague memory of you. I live with pain that is like a wound; if you touch me, you will do me irreparable harm.



Your caresses enfold me, like climbing vines on melancholy walls.

I have forgotten your love, yet I seem to glimpse you in every
window.

Because of you, the heady perfumes of summer pain me; because
of you, I again seek out the signs that precipitate desires: shooting
stars, falling objects.

x x x x x

*sigh* I am like that word ... melancholy.

Last Sunday morning I awoke thinking how I was beginning to forget, forget about him; how handsome he looked, his nose and lips which I so loved; his big hands that used to cup me; the smell of his skin. I couldn't remember the little details anymore, it's as if I had succeeded in erasing him from my mind. I wanted this because his memory brings so much pain. And yet I discovered that whilst I was forgetting, the depth nor vastness of the pain did not diminish.

Then I decided to open my lappie, read some Neruda online and I bump into this one. Uncanny isn't it? I found myself in a river of tears.