BUTTERFLY BLUE

 Dos Poemas de Amor

I

White Bee

White bee, you buzz in my soul, drunk with honey,

and your flight winds in slow spirals of smoke.

I am the one without hope, the word without echoes,

he who lost everything and he who had everything.

Last hawser, in you creaks my last longing.  

In my barren land you are the final rose.

Ah you who are silent!

Let your deep eyes close. There the night flutters.

Ah your body, a frightened statue, naked.

You have deep eyes in which the night flails. 

Cool arms of flowers and a lap of rose.

Your breasts seem like white snails.

A butterfly of shadow has come to sleep on your belly.

Ah you who are silent!

Here is the solitude from which you are absent.

It is raining. The sea wind is hunting stray gulls.

The water walks barefoot in the wet streets. 

From that tree the leaves complain as though they were sick. 

White bee, even when you are gone you buzz in my soul.

You live again in time, slender and silent.

Ah you who are silent!

I Like For You To Be Still

I like for you to be still: it is as though you were absent,

and you hear me from far away and my voice does not touch you.

It seems that your eyes had flown away

and it seems that a kiss had sealed your mouth. 

As all things are filled with my soul

you emerge from all things, filled with my soul.

You are like my soul, a butterfly of dream,

and you are like the word Melancholy. 

I like for you to be still, and you seem far away. 

It sounds as though you were lamenting, a butterfly cooing like a 

dove. 

And you hear me from far away, and my voice does not reach you:

Let me come to be still in your silence.

And let me talk to you with your silence

that is bright as a lamp, simple as a ring.

You are like the night, with its stillness and constellations. 

Your silence is that of a star, as remote and candid.

I like for you to be still: it is as though you were absent,

distant and full of sorrow as though you had died. 

One word then, one smile, is enough. 

And I am happy, happy that it’s not true. 

Poems: Pablo Neruda from “twenty love poems and a song of despair”