DULCE MARIA LOYNAZ ~

XXVI

   You know a man by his love. Love is his natural fruit, the one most

his, the one most free from his surroundings. 

   Love is the only thing that buds, grows and ripens with all the

simplicity, purity and grace of an orange on an orange tree or a rose

on a rosebush.

   There are men who do not love, but nobody knows anything about

them. They have nothing to say to the anguish of the world.

   Love is man's reward. It is his birthmark. Like a red-hot iron,

it brands him. It makes it possible to pick him out of a crowd, to

recognize him, to know him.

   You cannot know a man by the pirouetting words he puts on like

so many colored sequins. You cannot know him by the work of his

hands or the work of his mind because it's life that bestows such

work or rejects it. Be it chance or be it destiny, life giveth and life

taketh away.

    There are many who pass straight through life because they

never turn to face the winds, and there are others who bend like a

bow to find their balance tin the storm, and there are still others who

project themselves beyond, through the wind, shot forth on the sharp,

quivering arrow within.

   The noble word is certainly prophetic. And a useful work gives

us hope. But only love reveals, in a rapid flash of light, the beauty of

a soul.

——————

Dulce Maria Loynaz

ABSOLUTE SOLITUDE

selected poems

translated from the Spanish by James O' Connor

Archipelago books, 2016

NICOLAS GUILLEN ~

Nicolas Guillén, Cuban Poet

 (1902-1989)

R E A D !

SOLO EL CAMINO (ONLY THE ROAD) ~

O N L Y     T H E     R O A D

S O L O     E L      C A M I N O

edited and translated by Margaret Randall

Duke University 2016

DULCE MARIA LOYNAZ ~

Poems Without Names


XIII


   You have wings and I don't. You flit through the air like a butterfly,
while I go off to learn, from every last road on earth, what it means to be sad.




XVII


   Something subtle and profound happens when you turn and look
back at the road you have traveled.
   The road where you left no footprints, where all of life was left behind.




XXVII


   I always watch the sun go down because it takes something, I don't
know what, away from me.




XLVII


   There is still one difference left between us. You have a tenderness
grown weary and I have a weariness grown tender.




LX


   Of the twenty-four hours in a day, I will always leave you one to
abandon me, if that's what you should want.
   If you give me twenty-three hours each day, you can keep one
hour to think about leaving me, if you use the other twenty-three
hours wisely.
   This hour is yours. I respect all sixty minutes of it. I stop breathing
so that nothing, not even the air filling my lungs, disturbs or distracts
you.
   This is the hour of my self-annihilation, the hour in which I bind
myself to my heart, in which I turn my back on time, face the wall of
my angst, and tremble as a century passes through an hourglass.
   But when the hour ends and I open my eyes and see that you have
not left me, I greet you without making a single gesture, without
saying a single word, as if you yourself were a new miracle flowering
for me alone.
   It is the daily miracle that never ceases to be miraculous, the daily
agony that never ceases to be an agony, and the daily joy that never
ceases to be this marvelous, pure, unprecedented joy.



LXVIII



   Every day at nightfall she goes out with her lantern to light a road
in the middle of nowhere.
   It is a road nobody ever crosses, lost in the darkness of night, and
lost too, in the light of day. It is a road that comes from nowhere and
goes nowhere.
   The neighboring forest gnaws at the margins of the road, the trees
grip it from below with their roots, and weeds grow in between the
cracks in the rock.
   But every night she comes out with the first star and hands a
lantern above this solitary road.
   Nobody will ever come this way. It is a difficult journey and there
is no reason to come. Some roads have shade and other roads cover
longer distances in half the time. And there are still other roads that
make a straight line through an endless maze of streets. There are
many other roads in this world and people will travel them all. But
there is not one person who will set foot on hers.
   Why then does she light the road for a wayfarer who doesn't exist?
And why this constant show of obstinacy every single night?
   And why on earth does she smile when she lights the lantern?


LXXI


   Even in your way of forgetting there is something beautiful.
   I thought all forgetting was darkness, but your forgetting is luminous,
like a great radiance.
   Like the dawn wiping out the stars!




Autumn Melancholy


XL


   Your hands have a strange clarity. Have you been walking among
the stars? Or did you raise them toward the dawn through a blue,
translucent fog?
   Aren't you afraid of having luminous hands?




XLIII


   In the end the only thing that might excuse me for the failure that
is my life is the vague, absentminded way in which I go walking down
every road on earth.




XLVI


   I will caress the wind and smile at the darkness just in case you're
looking at me in the darkness or kissing me in the wind.




CI


   Your dark velvet eyes are going to close. One fine day, your dark
velvet eyes are going to close like two wild blackberries. They are
going to close. Your eyes beveled in onyx, encased in chests of gold,
and adorned with blue lashes will close one day for all time, for all
days and all nights, and they will never look again upon the infinite
green of trees or the eternal blue of the sea.
   Your eyes, like two wild blackberries, will close one day, and my
hands will be far, far away.




CIX


   I'm happy because it just rained and the wet earth smells just for me.



_______________________________

D U L C E     M A R I A     L O Y N A Z
translated from the Spanish by James O'Connor
ABSOLUTE SOLITUDE
(selected poems)
Archipelago Books, 2016