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.