3.26.2009

A Song of Despair

For an amazing, inspirational woman. A loving, beautiful wife. A kind, adoring mother. A woman I never met face to face, yet grew to know as we supported one another in our trudge through life struggles. Her struggle has ended, and thus begins those who knew and love her. My heart reaches out to her family.

Rest peacefully.

Amanda "AlabamaPink" Amos
1975 - 2009


A Song of Despair


The memory of you emerges from the night around me.
The river mingles its stubborn lament with the sea.

Deserted like the dwarves at dawn.
It is the hour of departure, oh deserted one!

Cold flower heads are raining over my heart.
Oh pit of debris, fierce cave of the shipwrecked.

In you the wars and the flights accumulated.
From you the wings of the song birds rose.

You swallowed everything, like distance.
Like the sea, like time. In you everything sank!

It was the happy hour of assault and the kiss.
The hour of the spell that blazed like a lighthouse.

Pilot's dread, fury of blind driver,
turbulent drunkenness of love, in you everything sank!

In the childhood of mist my soul, winged and wounded.
Lost discoverer, in you everything sank!

You girdled sorrow, you clung to desire,
sadness stunned you, in you everything sank!

I made the wall of shadow draw back,
beyond desire and act, I walked on.

Oh flesh, my own flesh, woman whom I loved and lost,
I summon you in the moist hour, I raise my song to you.

Like a jar you housed infinite tenderness.
and the infinite oblivion shattered you like a jar.

There was the black solitude of the islands,
and there, woman of love, your arms took me in.

There was thirst and hunger, and you were the fruit.
There were grief and ruins, and you were the miracle.

Ah woman, I do not know how you could contain me
in the earth of your soul, in the cross of your arms!

How terrible and brief my desire was to you!
How difficult and drunken, how tensed and avid.

Cemetery of kisses, there is still fire in your tombs,
still the fruited boughs burn, pecked at by birds.

Oh the bitten mouth, oh the kissed limbs,
oh the hungering teeth, oh the entwined bodies.

Oh the mad coupling of hope and force
in which we merged and despaired.

And the tenderness, light as water and as flour.
And the word scarcely begun on the lips.

This was my destiny and in it was my voyage of my longing,
and in it my longing fell, in you everything sank!

Oh pit of debris, everything fell into you,
what sorrow did you not express, in what sorrow are you not drowned!

From billow to billow you still called and sang.
Standing like a sailor in the prow of a vessel.

You still flowered in songs, you still brike the currents.
Oh pit of debris, open and bitter well.

Pale blind diver, luckless slinger,
lost discoverer, in you everything sank!

It is the hour of departure, the hard cold hour
which the night fastens to all the timetables.

The rustling belt of the sea girdles the shore.
Cold stars heave up, black birds migrate.

Deserted like the wharves at dawn.
Only tremulous shadow twists in my hands.

Oh farther than everything. Oh farther than everything.

It is the hour of departure. Oh abandoned one!



-Pablo Neruda

5 comments:

  1. Boo, that's gorgeous. I love you. I feel like I need to tell all of my friends how much I love them.

    ReplyDelete
  2. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WzERqlvJHds

    ReplyDelete
  3. Automne malade

    Automne malade et adoré
    Tu mourras quand l'ouragan soufflera dans les roseraies
    Quand il aura neigé
    Dans les vergers

    Pauvre automne
    Meurs en blancheur et en richesse
    De neige et de fruits mûrs
    Au fond du ciel
    Des éperviers planent
    Sur les nixes nicettes aux cheveux verts et naines
    Qui n'ont jamais aimé

    Aux lisières lointaines
    Les cerfs ont bramé

    Et que j'aime ô saison que j'aime tes rumeurs
    Les fruits tombant sans qu'on les cueille
    Le vent et la forêt qui pleurent
    Toutes leurs larmes en automne feuille à feuille
    Les feuilles
    Qu'on foule
    Un train
    Qui roule
    La vie
    S'écoule

    ReplyDelete
  4. translation

    Autumn ill and adored

    You die when the hurricane blows in the roseries

    When it has snowed

    In the orchard trees



    Poor autumn

    Dead in whiteness and riches

    Of snow and ripe fruits

    Deep in the sky

    The sparrow hawks cry

    Over the sprites with green hair the dwarfs

    Who’ve never been loved



    In the far tree-lines

    the stags are groaning



    And how I love O season how I love your rumbling

    The falling fruits that no one gathers

    The wind the forest that are tumbling

    All their tears in autumn leaf by leaf

    The leaves

    You press

    A crowd

    That flows

    The life

    That goes

    ReplyDelete

Spit it, betch!