Lorca - Sonnet about the Letter

My innermost of loves, my waking death,

in vain I still await your written word,

watching this flower wilt. I swear,

I'd give you up before I lose my sense.

It's air that is immortal; stone is dumb,

incapable of knowing shadow or

avoiding it. My deeply buried

heart rejects the frozen honey shed by the moon.

And yet I suffered over you. I gashed

my veins, at once a tiger and a bird,

white lilies dueling jaws about your waist.

So saturate my lunacy with words

or leave me finally to live in peace,

my soul's long night eternally devoid of stars.


Of all the poems I have set to memory, this one has stuck with me with a fervor. I think I understand Lorca's absolute crazy passion and even though I have someone in my life who is my "Hyacinthus, whom Apollo loved so madly", it doesn't ease the dread of rehearsals starting up again that will keep him from me from 7:30 Am to 11:30 pm. Until March.

So I have that for which Lorca longs, in a sense, but in another, I know in two weeks I will duly wish for my love to saturate my lunacy with time.


Pasted from http://webdelsol.com/Marlboro_Review/lorca.html

Summer

The cold of your toes
Upon my pale skin
Is still better than
The sticky plastic phone
With unfeeling buttons