The Art Of Mismatched Love
1.
Was it or was it not dawn
that showed me where and how to find you,
the world revealing itself in the tiny creep of light?
I followed the glittering river of tears without seeing,
only hearing the thinnest song beside my feet, having come to you
from a faraway place,
a kingdom further off with each step.
You had seen what you took for a shadow.
A spectral body of the one you know too well: hoarfrost for muscles, mist for skin.
And with that unwelcome, unforeseen ghost, you felt Death
gliding like a dancer.
Tell me the truth,
Love,
and tell me the truth I know already:
when you had gazed upon the beating transparency of my heart, did you not fill your mind with those thoughts you must not let breathe?
For did I not tell you
I would be with you and joined with you and in you?
But here was something, my Love, where there had been nothing,
not so much as a breeze sleepwalking the lonely night.
I will be with you
and joined to you
and in you,
though no one else can see me.
Untrouble your eyes,
undo your bright braids.
Your eyes search for mine
and the gathering light is no friend.
I am rich with bitterness
but I will not share,
for I am a jealous guardian of my pain.
Nor would I wish my sins
to haunt your footsteps
when you turn away from me.
I fear that your belief has been tested, and that in the silence of those testing hours your love has chosen,
sore-pressed but of its own accord,
to die.
But for some witchcraft
I would have forded the Mondego beside you,
one arm around your waist
as the envious waters
tugged at your skirt.
By sorcery I was blinded as I descended the forest path towards the river,
and blind I remain.
Love me, if you wish,
in this sorrowful state.
I am, you see,
afraid to believe you cannot.
It must remain a matter
of wish and not wish.
My Love,
wish me away
and I will stay thus blinded,
delaying the moment when I see again,
and find the very worst for feast.
Were you to release me then no God could help me.
Could any man you scorched cease burning?
You stare into the light, set trembling by your tears.
Do not speak the hour, do not speak the lateness of the day.
2.
How pleased you are, body of gold; and how pleasing to my rival that I should die.
Your memory has shriveled what you once desired, has made small the pains caused
by what you did.
If Spain
were substituted for Portugal,
and you were to rob me again of my soul, my sorrow
would be no less there than it is here.
Speak to me
in Spanish, tell me
my black and unlucky fate.
Weave me
a thousand delusions
to hasten my death.
But for you, beloved Violante,
death is forbidden, death is not yet allowed.
My own sinister fortune still lies a long way off. While you might yet live
a blissful century beyond my thirty years of tears.
And if one day you summon me in memory, then say: alas, what happiness might have been ours.
When the day of my funeral
has come and gone,
do not let your mind run
to thoughts of my suffering;
and when that filthy Spaniard
reminds you of your faults,
swallow your pride and be
dutiful and chastised.
How often will you have wished,
again and again,
that you could stand where you stand
at this moment,
chemised with caprice,
victorious in your willful cruelty,
wanting only this dark moment which will not come again.
Your speech, Violante,
so refined, so meek,
hiding how little you possess,
how little you have suffered.
I am a skeleton,
all bones and no flesh,
filled with more sorrow
than you could ever know,
and hollowness for a heart.
But it is not your fate to feel or to fall.
Not today, Violante.
3.
Now the sun daubs flowers of the most delicate shape, and I also, daubing little songs on the heart of the one I love.
Give me a drop or two of water to moisten my throat, that I might be like the nightingale, which sings, and drinks, and sings some more.
I have nothing, if it is without you, for without you, my love, there is no me.
Come here, my pale rose, come here into my garden.
The rose has twenty petals, the carnation has twenty-one.
Go to the rose and ask why the carnation has one more than you.
My tears have been so many that they have washed out a shallow grave; your own tears have been fewer, and have made nothing.
A bit of straw, carried by the wind, and falling who knows where; thus does a young maid set fire to her benefactor’s house.
On a Sunday in church – that was the place where I first saw you, my eyes drawn to you in competition with the holy service.
If you should go by the churchyard the day of my funeral, please beg the earth not to cover each and every hair on my head.
When my eyes saw you, my heart adored you, your arms like fine chains to catch my soul.
Climbing up a peach-tree as though into a cloud of flowers; young girl so very small,
hunted by so many lovers.
What would I not give to be your breastplate, warding off the least assault, forever embracing the bosom of my love.
O my love has a scarf which pleases me, purple along the borders and blood-red in the center.
The pain of writing to you, unlike that of the show-off peacock, is like tearing open my chest and wrenching my heart out by its roots.
Your eyes resemble a pair of torches; your mouth a carnation; your cheeks a small pale bouquet.
Your eyes are like two thieves, highwaymen who rob us of our good sweet hearts.
Now, petition Saint John, ask him of whom you should accept love, even as the wheat grows, putting forth flowers in May.
I would go straight to the stars, higher than the moon, higher on this gamble which God has given me!
I would be like the linen shift you left in a small clearing, so as to cover you with kisses, as many and more as any linen shift.
Oh! high Mount of Snow, where the loom spins forever white!
Where all is pure and never soiled, for as long as earth remains.
Oh! my white dove, where do you want me to carry you?
Take me to the Mount of the Star, bury me in a blanket of snow.