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).

Love Song of Pedro Salinas (2)

I don't want you to go, pain, last form of love. I live when I do not hurt you, nor here, further: in the Earth, in the year where you come from you, in love with her and everything was. In this reality collapsed, which denies itself and insists that never existed, that it was only a pretext for a living. If I don't I stayed, pain, incontrovertible, I believe; but I keep you. Whether you're really gives me confidence that nothing was a lie. And until I hear, thou shalt be for me, pain, evidence of another life, in which I affliggevi. The great test, at a distance, that existed, which exists, which I loved, Yes, I still love her.

Facebook offered this Bing translation of the poem by Pedro Salinas, which I posted in `Love Song of Pedro Salinas (1), and I was curious about it...

I don't want you to go –
pain, last form of love.

I live when I do not hurt you,
nor here,
further: in the Earth,

in the year where you come from you,
in love with her
and everything was.

In this reality collapsed,
which denies itself
– and insists –
that never existed,
that it was only a pretext for a living.

If I don't I stayed –
pain, incontrovertible, I believe;
but I keep you.

Whether you're really
gives me confidence that nothing was a lie.
And until I hear,
thou shalt be for me, pain, evidence of another life,
in which I affliggevi.

The great test, at a distance
– that existed, which exists, which I loved –
Yes, I still love her.

So I reformatted the translation thus.

Love Song of Pedro Salinas (1)

Portrait, by Alexander Shubin

Non voglio che tu te ne vada,
dolore, ultima forma di amare.
Mi sento vivere quando mi fai del male
non in te, né qui, più lontano:
nella terra, nell’anno da dove vieni tu,
nell’amore con lei e tutto ciò che fu.
In questa realtà
sprofondata,
che si nega a se stessa e si ostina
che mai è esistita,
che fu solo un mio pretesto per vivere.
Se non mi rimanessi tu,
dolore, incontrastabile, io lo crederei;
però mi rimani tu.
Che tu sia realtà mi da la sicurezza
che niente fu menzogna.
E fin quando io ti sento,
tu sarai per me, dolore,
la prova di un’altra vita,
in cui non mi affliggevi.
La grande prova, a distanza,
che esistette, che esiste,
che mi amò, sì,
che ancora la amo.

By Pedro Salinas

Iaia Bianco posted this painting and this poem in her Art aNd PoETrY album on Facebook, and I was struck...

Juliet in Love (3)

... is in a great mood but I won't explain ...

`Reading Shakespeare in Bernadeth's status update (part 3)

Juliet 

Wilt thou be gone? It is not yet near day.
It was the nightingale, and not the lark,
That pierced the fearful hollow of thine ear.
Nightly she sings on yond pomegranate tree.
Believe me, love, it was the nightingale.

Romeo 

It was the lark, the herald of the morn;
No nightingale. Look, love, what envious streaks
Do lace the severing clouds in yonder East.
Night's candles are burnt out, and jocund day
Stands tiptoe on the misty mountaintops.
I must be gone and live, or stay and die.

from Act III (scene v)

The dawn approaches, Love, and we argue
Back-and-forth, which becomes our first aubade –
I say it is the nightingale that few
Lovers will see, but trust the night's façade;
While you believe the lark rises apace
With song that heralds now the break of day.
Oh, Love, let seconds stay upon my face –
You see what mood I'm in. The sheets we stay
In twists and pulls during the night are warm,
You know, and dawn approaches cool. You know
The reasons why there is an air of charm
From all I am – without explaining so.
This momentary love I want so much
That words slip from your disappearing touch.

Juliet in Love (Part 3) © Ron Villejo

Juliet in Love (2)

… happy but I won’t say what I’m thinking …

`Reading Shakespeare in Bernadeth's status update (part 2)

Oh, Father, dear protector of our home –
Your temper flares at moments that I wish
Were quick to pass like the flit of a gnome.
Our servants scurry with dish after dish
Of delicacies, far and near, and still
There is dissatisfaction on your brow.
Oh, Father, know that your will is my will –
Your shoulders, arms and hands, my childhood bough.
You see how happiness accompanies
My movements now, and you are happy for
The daughter whose indebtedness will please
Your kindler heart, like hardly once before –
For you will hear the things you want to hear
And not the things I think are also dear. 

Juliet in Love (Part 2) © Ron Villejo
 

Juliet in Love (1)

... is smiling but I won't say why ...

`Reading Shakespeare in Bernadeth's status update (part 1)

Go on, dear Nurse, you won’t know why such smile
Is echoing across the whole of me –
Why daylight stays with me a further mile
Into the night, that only I can see.
Go on, your naughty stories do not make
Me feel amused – instead, I’m just amused
At others’ wondering what things now break
The dour upon my face, which I long used
To hide a longing for the night to end.
Go on, deliver (with a speed no one
Can match) this envelope, and do not bend
To catch your breath or seek shade from the sun –
For what is sealed inside are answers to
His questions of a resonating blue.

Juliet in Love (Part 1) © Ron Villejo

The Poetry of Dreams (3) The Coda

The Portal of Thought - Doors, by Sylvia Pekarek

The angel soft
And holy light
Are side by side
The sinister
Of shadow and
Its flaming doors.
There is no step
To take outside,
No saving grace
That we may turn
For miracles.
The miracles
Shall come as they
Are wont to do,
Without our wish
Or prayer or hope.
For this is of
Another realm –
The pivotal
And fierce face-off
Which we have seen
Only in art
Is going on
This moment now.
The threshold of
The open door
Is where they stand
Like sentinels
Alert and poised
To shut the door.
This painting of
It all and more
Illuminates –
So we at least
May understand
The mysteries
And guarded stance
Of good and bad,
So we at least
May know they’re there
And who is whom,
When rooms are dark
And daylight blinds.

The Poetry of Dreams (Part 3) - The Coda © Ron Villejo

After spending a few days figuring out how to write this poem, then a few hours writing the first two parts of it – and struggling a bit – The Coda came pouring out of me, as if from nowhere that I can imagine. I honestly don’t know where this came from, except from some divine intervention that tapped its hand on my forehead. There is no classic poetic structure I draw from, except that it’s in iambic di-meter. It falls under the umbrella of ‘blank verse’ – non-rhyming metered verse.

The Coda is, of course, about good and evil. We don’t really see these, except through our choices and actions and those of others. It is art, I believe, that helps us best to understand these – that illuminates the ‘fierce face-off’ between the two. If you, my dear friends, can subscribe to the idea that I’ve just written a musical score here – hence, the terms ‘prelude,’ ‘symphony’ and ‘coda’ – then another musical process comes to mind, i.e., ‘crescendo.’ Everything builds up to this last part – The Coda!

The Poetry of Dreams (2) The Sestina Symphony

The Portal of Thought - Doors, by Sylvia Pekarek

The genesis of dream is in the day
Before, the stuff we know as residue.
For Freud was never inattentive to
The casual phrase, the gems of the mundane
(Such as receipts I turned to poetry)
Where life is mostly lived and dream is found.

The doors as ‘invites’ to what may be found –
These stretch into infinities of day.
The dream has opened them like poetry
Which says so much more than its residue
Of words – the ghostly, timid and mundane
Have wondered long when we were coming to.

The irony – the ghost itself seeks to
Escape the room, inside of which it’s found
Itself becoming pale, as if mundane
Were its eternal, unforgiving day.
It is personifying residue.
It is the life that gives us poetry.

It is another brand of poetry –
The sex and the aggression leaning to
The secret wind inside the residue.
Oh, how we know they will in time be found.
They have a way of making night of day.
Their consummation is in the mundane.

The dream is quite a genius with mundane –
The Freudian trio can be poetry
Of battle worn and sadly, tattered day.
The unacceptable is walking to
The door and banking on the symbols found
Acceptable as common residue.

But victory of dream in residue
Is never fully won, despite mundane
And ingenuity and goodness found.
Sometimes we dream of florid poetry –
There is no metaphor for dropping to
And burning from the torrid red of day.

Still, residue emerges from mundane.
The dream is found and known in poetry.
There is a turning to – and from – the day.

The Poetry of Dreams (Part 2) - The Sestina Symphony © Ron Villejo

The Sestina Symphony is my poetic treatise on dreams. I draw on Freudian theory, because the insights that came out of his seminal study “The Interpretation of Dreams” is nothing short of tectonic. But besides this, it is Sylvia’s painting that holds compelling meaning. I use my psychological insight and poetic license to draw it all out as best as I can.

A sestina is a wonderfully complex structure. It was invented by Arnaut Daniel, a French troubadour, in the late 12th century. There is no rhyming here, but, as you see, the same six words that end each line are repeated from stanza to stanza. They are repeated in a very specific order, which is what’s challenging – but, you know, I love a challenge! As I began to write this part, I knew fairly quickly that it had to be written in a sestina to mirror the complexity of this subject.

The Poetry of Dreams (1) The Prelude

The Portal of Thought - Doors, by Sylvia Pekarek

I live inside this painting of a dream.
I live its metaphors for vibrancy,
As far away from quite the usual stream
Of all that is the left-brain tyranny.
For much of life I live is in this red –
The raw of breath and pulse, of move and still,
Of try to look away, because the dread
Is never so removed from where I will
Come face-to-face with it for sure in time.
For Hamlet came to life, like night to dawn,
When providence exposed the uncle’s crime
And then the act to which it spurred him on.
There is a prompting for the dream I’m in.
There is a readiness now to begin.

The Poetry of Dreams (Part 1) - The Prelude © Ron Villejo

The Prelude captures my first reactions on seeing Sylvia’s painting. It took a little longer than usual for me to get started with this poem, as I was sorting out what it meant for me to ‘live in the red’ – one metaphor I use to represent non-rational thinking (i.e., right-brain thinking). This is where, I believe, life can be lived vibrantly. This is where I live.

The form is a classic Shakespearean sonnet – its rhyme scheme, iambic pentameter, and progression. The first line is a ‘take off’ from the first line of the Michael Franks’ song A Walk in the Rain – “I lived in a painting by Renoir.”