The grief

Clown in the Moon

My tears are like the quiet drift
Of petals from some magic rose;
And all my grief flows from the rift
Of unremembered skies and snows.

I think, that if I touched the earth,
It would crumble;
It is so sad and beautiful,
So tremulously like a dream.

Dylan Thomas

Walking Around

It so happens I am sick of being a man.
And it happens that I walk into tailorshops and moviehouses
dried up, waterproof, like a swan made of felt
steering my way in a water of wombs and ashes.

The smell of barbershops makes me break into hoarsesobs.
The only thing I want is to lie still like stones or wool.
The only thing I want is to see no more stores, no gardens,
no more goods, no spectacles, no elevators.

It so happens that I am sick of my feet and my nails
and my hair and my shadow.
It so happens I am sick of being a man.

Still it would be marvelous
to terrify a law clerk with a cut lily,
or kill a nun with a blow on the ear.
It would be great
to go through the streets with a green knife
letting out yells until I died of the cold.

I don't want to go on being a root in the dark,
insecure, stretched out, shivering with sleep,
going on down, into the moist guts of the earth,
taking in and thinking, eating every day.

I don't want so much misery.
I don't want to go on as a root and a tomb,
alone under the ground, a warehouse with corpses,
half frozen, dying of grief.

That's why Monday, when it sees me coming
with my convict face, blazes up like gasoline,
and it howls on its way like a wounded wheel,
and leaves tracks full of warm blood leading toward the night.

And it pushes me into certain corners, into some moist houses,
into hospitals where the bones fly out the window,
into shoeshops that smell like vinegar,
and certain streets hideous as cracks in the skin.

There are sulphur-colored birds, and hideous intestines
hanging over the doors of houses that I hate,
and there are false teeth forgotten in a coffeepot,
there are mirrors
that ought to have wept from shame and terror,
there are umbrellas everywhere, and venoms, and umbilicalcords.

I stroll along serenely, with my eyes, my shoes,
my rage, forgetting everything,
I walk by, going through office buildings and orthopedic shops,
and courtyards with washing hanging from the line:
underwear, towels and shirts from which slow
dirty tears are falling.

Translated by Robert Bly

Pablo Neruda

If I weep

If I weep, if I come with excuses, my beloved puts cotton wool in his ears.
Every cruelty which he commits becomes him, every cruelty which he commits I endure.
If he accounts me nonexistent, I account his tyranny generosity.

The cure of the ache of my heart is the ache for him; how shall I not surrender my heart to his ache?Only then are glory and respect mine, when his glorious love renders me contemptible.
Only then does the vine of my body become wine, when the wine-presser stamps on me and
spurns me underfoot.

I yield my soul like grapes under the trampling, that my secret heart may make merry,
Though the grapes weep only blood, for I am vexed with this cruelty and tyranny.
He who pounds upon me puts cotton wool in his ears saying, “I do not press unwittingly.
If you disbelieve, you are excusable, but I am the Abu’l Hikam [the expert] in this affair.
When you burst under the labor of my feet, then you will render much thanks to me.”

Jalaluddin Rumi