I do not love you as if you were salt-rose, or topaz,
or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off.
I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,
in secret, between the shadow and the soul.

I love you as the plant that never blooms
but carries in itself the light of hidden flowers;
thanks to your love a certain solid fragrance,
risen from the earth, lives darkly in my body.

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where.
I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride;
so I love you because I know no other way

than this: where I does not exist, nor you,
so close that your hand on my chest is my hand,
so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep.

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.

Write, for example, 'The night is starry
and the stars are blue and shiver in the distance.'

The night wind revolves in the sky and sings.

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.

Through nights like this one I held her in my arms.
I kissed her again and again under the endless sky.

She loved me, sometimes I loved her too.
How could one not have loved her great still eyes.

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
To think that I do not have her. To feel that I have lost her.

To hear the immense night, still more immense without her.
And the verse falls to the soul like dew to the pasture.

What does it matter that my love could not keep her.
The night is starry and she is not with me.

This is all. In the distance someone is singing. In the distance.
My soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.

My sight tries to find her as though to bring her closer.
My heart looks for her, and she is not with me.

The same night whitening the same trees.
We, of that time, are no longer the same.

I no longer love her, that's certain, but how I loved her.
My voice tried to find the wind to touch her hearing.

Another's. She will be another's. As she was before my kisses.
Her voice, her bright body. Her infinite eyes.

I no longer love her, that's certain, but maybe I love her.
Love is so short, forgetting is so long.

Because through nights like this one I held her in my arms
my soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.

Though this be the last pain that she makes me suffer
and these the last verses that I write for her.


translated by W.S. Merwin

If you do not love me

Then lie to me, baby

If you do not need me

Then lie to me, lady



To be without your touch

When I need you so much

Not to feel your kiss on my lips

Or the sensation of your finger tips



What would I ever do

If I was then without you

If you were ever to go away

Do not tell me that day



So if you did not want me

Then lie to me, baby

If you did not desire me

Then lie to me, lady

DEAR (__),

sorry's a good place to start
i guess?
the lies stacked up like
***** dishes &
i had no intent to rinse them.
the sink was on the brink of breaking
with the weight of pretend plates---
**** im on a tangent...got distracted...
lets bring it back to the beginning
& strip it bare of poetic dribblings
because theres only one way to break this:

i never, ever, ever loved you
i just......
didn't...want anyone else...to *******.

but i suppose i can't stop everything
err--i know i can't stop anything
i was young, yearning & naive
& still believed in love's disease--
i was so desperate for its infection,
i injected it in every VEIN attempt
at getting you to love me back.
& i know too well that it was selfish
but whats the harm
if neither of us ever felt it?

never yours,
j

I met a genius on the train
today
about 6 years old,
he sat beside me
and as the train
ran down along the coast
we came to the ocean
and then he looked at me
and said,
it's not pretty.

it was the first time I'd
realized
that.

You don’t want to hear how beautiful you are, or how your kiss takes my breath away.

You don’t want to hear how you make me feel, or that I could get lost in your eyes for days.

You don’t want to hear how bad I want you, or how perfect you are.

You don’t want to hear that I could never stop thinking about you, or how I missed your touch.

I know you don’t want to hear these things but I don’t care, you need to know.

Drunk as drunk on turpentine
From your open kisses,
Your wet body wedged
Between my wet body and the strake
Of our boat that is made of flowers,
Feasted, we guide it - our fingers
Like tallows adorned with yellow metal -
Over the sky's hot rim,
The day's last breath in our sails.

Pinned by the sun between solstice
And equinox, drowsy and tangled together
We drifted for months and woke
With the bitter taste of land on our lips,
Eyelids all sticky, and we longed for lime
And the sound of a rope
Lowering a bucket down its well. Then,
We came by night to the Fortunate Isles,
And lay like fish
Under the net of our kisses.

What new friends does the day bring?
One for one thousand acquainted.
Still, how true does friendship ring?
False as rusted steel is tainted.

Peer past the pretense of pleasantry.
Pursue the pith of their personality.
Perchance, you'll perceive the palsied glee
Pervading the pact you protect so passionately.

Friendship, true and bright,
I am afraid doesn't exist.
Not tonight, nor in any light.
It's era, we've missed.

Do we then despair?
Simply lay down and cry?
Nay, from life we won't shy,
This world's ours to bear.

Yet a burden more wondrous, a task more joyous
I dare you to find. Duty that eases the mind.
If for an age you discuss, it can't be done, thus
Rejoice ye mankind, your fate is far from maligned.