Heart Furies
Heart’s plantations we traverse
We meet in the shadows
in a rain of kisses
So much sleep broken
Dissipated chimes like explosions
of black ivy perfume
fall in fireworks of flowers, keys and coins
Charred rose-bushes
in some location of summer
We are together possessed by thirst
Eyes of fireflies behind sky
holding back the dawn
Divine the bodies
that pierce through silk
and staccato air
Hands touch hands
that point toward untouchable complexion,
light and air
in which an open river drowns,
like rebellious waters
A saturation of celestial river,
breathing lapsed as far as death
Truly, truly exiled,
a river burning in the shadows
Your statue devours the clover in my heart
Shadowy owls and necklaces
made of tears drop by drop
in the violent light of wheat,
running along night’s shores
You don’t see the moon nor the jasmine
nor the sapphire of lunar roses
from your lovely navel
tremble
I persist as if in a ruined tunnel,
flesh and kisses I must unjustly forget
Mirrors harrow the sordid clocks
of suburban hotels
The painted flower falls
and everything tells me a day has died
Building a house that neither stands nor dies
You and I, a single river
A man put there by chance
by some vague arrangement
which, who knows, was never destined for me
As if to die or swim or grow old
The sound that wounded me,
a bell set on its own vibration
Has love fallen to dust,
and will nothing do
save flesh furiously adored
I want for myself lightenings,
the heart of the cherry tree in June.
That’s life.
There is one hour alone,
within the patience of crumpled time
we voyage through,
parting the syllables of fear and tenderness
done to death.
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Poetic Abstraction from the original Furies and Sufferings, by Pablo Neruda.
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Editor: go to art Vlog>Duality to discover the inspiration behind this poetry blog. If you’re an art purist and abhor messing with an original, then avert your eyes! This poem has been constructed as a collage, a play on form from those words, phrases and sentences that leave lasting personal impressions from Neruda’s original.
