Love Song of Pedro Salinas (3)

(image credit)

Sonnet 1

I do not want you to go, yet
     I want you to go now.
The waning form of love is pain –
     It never wonders how.

I live when I do not hurt you –
     But neither here nor there
Shall matter much, because I have –
     I die, no matter where.

The earth was far, from where you came –
     Oh, I remember well
The tresses in the air, the silk
     Of willow where I fell.

How cradles fell in love with you –
How dusk arrived before I knew.

Sonnet 2

Denial is peculiar for
     Denying what it is –
It flirts at edges of collapse
     But still it manages

To stand, insist, and walk as if
     Pretext were the real thing.
For you, incontrovertible
     As scent and mud, as weep and sing –

I stayed, but wanted just the same
     To go, and in that staying
You knew reality like rocks
     With edges meant for fraying.

You loved me still, no matter wrong –
I kept you taut, but not for long.

Sonnet 3

The steeples angle us where light
     Is blindingly as harsh
As winter heralding itself
     From garden, to wood and marsh.

The leaves of fallen oak and maple
     Shall lift in careless flight

To destinations far as south
     As you can wing at night.

If this is our goodbye, then I
     Am confident of this –
That love was simply how it was,
     And now whatever is.

Pain on my cheek, watery sky –
We knew that nothing was a lie.

`Love Song of Pedro Salinas © Ron Villejo

rf. My previous posts `Love Song of Pedro Salinas (1) and `Love Song of Pedro Salinas (2).