So I post here two love-poems--one by Faiz Ahmed Faiz, one by Pablo Neruda (and, admittedly, my comparatist zeal prompts me to see certain significant connections between Faiz and Neruda, the two beautiful and powerful poets I characteristically keep returning to): : By Faiz: Before you came things were just what they were: the road precisely a road, the horizon fixed, the limit of what could be seen, a glass of wine was no more than a glass of wine. With you the world took on the spectrum radiating from my heart: your eyes gold as they open to me, slate the color that falls each time I lost all hope. With your advent roses burst into flame: you were the artist of dried-up leaves, sorceress who flicked her wrist to change dust into soot. You lacquered the night black. As for the sky, the road, the cup of wine: one was my tear-drenched shirt, the other an aching nerve, the third a mirror that never reflected the same thing. Now you are here again—stay with me. This time things will fall into place; the road can be the road, the sky nothing but sky; the glass of wine, as it should be, the glass of wine. [Tr. Naomi Lizard] By Neruda: Sonnet XXV Before I loved you, love, nothing was my own: I wavered through the streets, among Objects: Nothing mattered or had a name: The world was made of air, which waited. I knew rooms full of ashes, Tunnels where the moon lived, Rough warehouses that growled get lost, Questions that insisted in the sand. Everything was empty, dead, mute, Fallen abandoned, and decayed: Inconceivably alien, it all Belonged to someone else - to no one: Till your beauty and your poverty Filled the autumn plentiful with gifts. [Tr. Ben Belitt]
Posted on: Thu, 12 Jun 2014 00:53:27 +0000
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