Modesty
If a word of mine
pleases you
and you tell me
even just with your eyes
I open wide
in a joyful smile –
but I tremble
like a young mother
who even blushes when
a passerby tells her
her little boy is handsome.
___
1 February 1933
Reflections
Words – glass
that unfaithfully
reflects my sky –
I thought of you
after sunset
in a darkened street
when a pane fell to the stones
and its fragments at length
spread shattered light –
___
26 September 1933
The Flowers
Is there no one,
no one selling
flowers
along this unlucky street?
And this dark sea,
this gloomy sky,
this hostile wind –
oh, yesterday’s camellias,
camellias white and red, smiling
in the golden cloister –
a spring mirage!
Who’ll sell me a flower today?
I have so many in my heart:
but all clasped
in heavy bunches –
trampled –
done in.
I have so many that my soul
suffocates and nearly dies
under their vast unshared
mass.
But at the bottom of the dark sea
is the heart’s key –
at the bottom of the dark heart
until evening
my useless harvest
will lie
imprisoned –
O who will sell me
a flower – a different flower,
born outside of me,
in a true garden,
that I might offer the one who awaits?
Is there no one,
no one who will sell me
flowers
along this unhappy path?
___
14 February 1933
A Longing for Light Things
Frail blonde reeds
like a field of wheat
beside the sky-blue lake
the houses of a distant island
the color of sails
ready to set off –
A longing for light things
in the heart as heavy
as a stone
inside a boat –
Yet one evening it will reach
these shores,
the unfettered soul:
without folding down the reeds
without stirring up water or air
it will set sail – with the houses
of the distant island,
for a high reef
of stars –
___
1 February 1934
Thought
To have two long wings
of shadow
and fold them up against your pain;
to be shadow, the peace
of evening
around your faded
smile.
___
May 1934
Scent of Green
Scent of green –
my lost childhood –
when I felt so proud
of my scuffed knees –
idly I pulled up
flowers, the grass alongside trails,
and threw it all aside –
it took up my hands –
scent of woods in August – at noon –
when, faces burning, we tore
through cobwebs –
fording streams, the stone skips
the foot plunges in
ice penetrates straight to the pulse –
the sun, the sun
on my bare neck –
light that bleaches your hair blonde –
scent of earth,
my lost childhood.
___
Pasturo, August 1934