Confessions
I
The breeze tonight is full of warm confessions,
The flowers give a friendlier scent
And the clouds’ rumble too I take for
The ruth of some primeval father,
But then the drizzle wrings my soul.
Indeed it is a pain to know, dearest,
That my passion found no repose in your heart.
(Why should it? I sometimes manage to wonder.)
However I prolong this fond discourse,
I know your answer, alas, only too well.
There must be reasons, and assuming all in glimpses
Might not seem reason enough. There must be other things
Unaccountably concealed behind the veil.
What can I say! Who knows how you take my words,
You, who are symbolic of youth, of good cheer,
Profoundly naïve and a life-giver –
One may call it an illusion all the same –
That little nodding ponytail of yours says all:
It is a very straightforward affair.
Forgive my tactlessness and let me tell you
What I mused and dreamed the night before we met:
II
I saw Love, the enchantress, holding the childlike in us under her spell –
The vulnerable, impertinent child, so shy of broad daylight,
Who even in its most violent ravings restores our innocence.
She shone a pale benevolent light upon my past;
I saw my spirit swoop and soar
With all the senseless pangs of youth that verge on life.
I visited the graves under mulberry trees,
Their broken sarcophagi and underneath, the bones…
I told her I had seen it all and knew each time
“That life would never be the same again?”
She stole my words and made me glad;
She took my arm, I knew not where we went;
Along the way, I joked and laughed, pledged and sighed;
She only shook her head and smiled.
Soon the world around us grew golden and strange,
The sun’s eye gentle and forbearing.
“At each parting mellow necessity descends upon us,”
She said, and raised a snow white finger to my lips,
“Lest you demand the impossible and spoil the moment!”
I suddenly ceased to trifle with explanation,
Fell to my knees, clasped her hands
And felt her shrink and shrivel in my arms –
Wrinkled skin and sunken cheeks, large hollow sockets that gazed
Out into the infinite and brought no image back.
III
I saw myself as a boy and you the little neighborhood girl,
Both visiting the neighborhood again,
Where tall autumnal trees froze in tortuous tangles
With daisies glowing at their feet.
We found our bicycles half-buried under earth,
We knew they’d lain there for years and our old houses brought down.
There was a somber silence while we retrieved the relics
With our small hands and carried them off to nothingness.
You reappeared in the old backyard playing with yellow ladybirds –
I took a few, hurled them up toward the sky,
And they all turned into strangely beautiful flowers –
Flowers that could levitate, almost like lotuses.
Overfull with joy, first we laughed and jubilated,
Then I broke into sudden bitter tears. Why?
Because I knew I’d wake up from this dream a man?
Was it a reproach of Time, or rather
A vague intuition that such transcendent beauty
Would rarefy life into ethereal vapors,
Giving me a foretaste of transformation, even madness,
A second travail from which, I like to believe,
Rebirth is possible? All of this, the breeze, the dream, the flowers,
The whole silent remembrance, and you?
