somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond

somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond

any experience,your eyes have their silence:

in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,

or which i cannot touch because they are too near

your slightest look easily will unclose me

though i have closed myself as fingers,

you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens

(touching skilfully,mysteriously)her first rose

or if your wish be to close me, i and

my life will shut very beautifully ,suddenly,

as when the heart of this flower imagines

the snow carefully everywhere descending;

nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals

the power of your intense fragility:whose texture

compels me with the color of its countries,

rendering death and forever with each breathing

(i do not know what it is about you that closes

and opens;only something in me understands

the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)

nobody,not even the rain,has such small hands

E. E. Cummings

Sonnet of the Sweet Complaint

Never let me lose the marvel

of your statue-like eyes, or the accent

the solitary rose of your breath

places on my cheek at night.

I am afraid of being, on this shore,

a branchless trunk, and what I most regret

is having no flower, pulp, or clay

for the worm of my despair.

If you are my hidden treasure,

if you are my cross, my dampened pain,

if I am a dog, and you alone my master,

never let me lose what I have gained,

and adorn the branches of your river

with leaves of my estranged Autumn.

Federico García Lorca

Second Poem, Absence of Love 
 

I

Beloved

in whose body I rest,

What will your dream be like

when I have sought you without finding you?

Oh,

my love, most sweet

as the allusion of a spikenard

between distant brown scents,

What will become of your heart when I love you?

What will it be like to find you when your body is love

and your voice

a bouquet of light?

Beloved,

Today I have sought you

throughout my city

and your strange city,

where the buildings

do not rejoice to the sun,

like shells of fruit

and celestial dwellings.

And I walked

with twilight tangled around my tongue,

With a lagoon-like air

and a cloak of danger.

An aura of jasper

saw me from its tower,

As I walked searching for you

among the green smell of the city’s horses,

Among matrons

with diapers and birds;

Thinking about your mouth

my eyes rested

like diurnal doves

on bitter grasses.

And I searched for you then

through the immediacy of my body.

You could come to me then

from the fervid event

II

Beloved

Today I have sought you without finding you

throughout my city

and your strange city,

Close to wandering farmhouses

—guarded by fields—

surrounded and defeated by rustling pastures.

Suddenly you arrived,

host of my happiness,

and your brilliant offerings

filled me with islands.

From the cool breeze you arrived

like a boy with a white handkerchief

And night ascended dreaming among branches,

alongside the water’s joy and the bee’s trace.

Beloved,

in whose body I repose

and into whose arms my soul empties,

What will it be like to not find you in the distance,

to arrive at your body like food

reunited with the warmth of a necessary

and lost grace?

To exist where I am no more than transient

to not exist where your breath holds me

and shatters my soul

like a stone.

What will it be like

to have my body divided

and my heart in my hands

held together, yet alone?

Beloved

Today I have sought you without finding you

throughout my city and your strange city

and I have not found you.

What will it be like to seek you in the distance?

Eunice Odio

Friday

My silent Friday,
My deserted Friday,
My Friday: sad, like old abandoned lanes.

My Friday:
The cold day of ailing, idle thoughts,
Moist day of long, evil bore,
loaded with grief
grief for my faith, for my hope,
Oh, my Friday, this renouncing day…

Oh, this empty room,
Oh, this gloomy house…

These isolating walls from attacks of youth,
These collapsing roofs on my slight daydream of light,
In this place of lone, reflection and doubt,
In this space of shade, text, image and sign.

My life, like a mysterious river,
streamed into those silent, deserted days,
so calmly with a lot of pride.

My life, like a mysterious river,
Streamed into those empty, gloomy rooms,
so calmly with a lot of pride

Forough Farokhzad

Your laughter

Take breath away from me, if you wish,

take air away, but

do not take from me your laughter.

Do not take away the rose,

the lanceflower that you pluck,

the water that suddenly

bursts forth in your joy,

the sudden wave

of silver born in you.

My struggle is harsh and I come back

with eyes tired

at times from having seen

the unchanging earth,

but when your laughter enters

it rises to the sky seeking me

and it opens for me all

the doors of life.

My love, in the darkest

hour your laughter

opens, and if suddenly

you see my blood staining

the stones of the street,

laugh, because your laughter

will be for my hands

like a fresh sword.

Next to the sea in the autumn,

your laughter must raise

its foamy cascade,

and in the spring, love,

I want your laughter like

the flower I was waiting for,

the blue flower, the rose

of my echoing country.

Laugh at the night,

at the day, at the moon,

laugh at the twisted

streets of the island,

laugh at this clumsy

boy who loves you,

but when I open

my eyes and close them,

when my steps go,

when my steps return,

deny me bread, air,

light, spring,

but never your laughter

for I would die.

Pablo Neruda

Ode to a Beautiful Nude

With a chaste heart

With pure eyes I celebrate your beauty

Holding the leash of blood

So that it might leap out and trace your outline

Where you lie down in my Ode

As in a land of forests or in surf

In aromatic loam, or in sea music

Beautiful nude

Equally beautiful your feet

Arched by primeval tap of wind or sound

Your ears, small shells

Of the splendid American sea

Your breasts of level plenitude

Fulfilled by living light

Your flying eyelids of wheat

Revealing or enclosing

The two deep countries of your eyes

The line your shoulders have divided into pale regions

Loses itself and blends into the compact halves of an apple

Continues separating your beauty down into two columns of

Burnished gold

Fine alabaster

To sink into the two grapes of your feet

Where your twin symmetrical tree burns again and rises

Flowering fire

Open chandelier

A swelling fruit

Over the pact of sea and earth

From what materials

Agate?

Quartz?

Wheat?

Did your body come together?

Swelling like baking bread to signal silvered hills

The cleavage of one petal

Sweet fruits of a deep velvet

Until alone remained

Astonished

The fine and firm feminine form

It is not only light that falls over the world spreading inside your body

Yet suffocate itself

So much is clarity

Taking its leave of you

As if you were on fire within

The moon lives in the lining of your skin

Pablo Neruda

Leaning Into The Afternoons

Leaning into the afternoons I cast my sad nets
towards your oceanic eyes.

There in the highest blaze my solitude lengthens and flames,
its arms turning like a drowning man's.

I send out red signals across your absent eyes
that smell like the sea or the beach by a lighthouse.

You keep only darkness, my distant female,
from your regard sometimes the coast of dread emerges.

Leaning into the afternoons I fling my sad nets
to that sea that is thrashed by your oceanic eyes.

The birds of night peck at the first stars
that flash like my soul when I love you.

The night gallops on its shadowy mare
shedding blue tassels over the land. 

Pablo Neruda