Bees of Paradise

william files

"-- And Bees of Paradise"
by Hart Crane


I had come all the way here from the sea,
Yet met the wave again between your arms
Where cliff and citadel--all verily
Dissolved within a sky of beacon forms--

Sea gardens lifted rainbow-wise through eyes
I found.

Yes, tall, inseparably our days
Pass sunward. We have walked the kindled skies
Inexorable and girded with your praise,

By the dove filled, and bees of Paradise.


[copyright Hart Crane, 1920]

Juggling Clouds

Wrap us and lift us; drop us then, returned
Like water, undestroyed, --like mist, unburned...
But do not claim a friend like him again,
Whose arrow must have pierced you beyond pain.


-excerpted from "To The Cloud Juggler"
by Hart Crane, 1920

Aqui Te Amo

alfred eisenstaedt

Aqui Te Amo
by Pablo Neruda

Here I love you.
In the dark pines the wind disentangles itself.
The moon glows like phosphorous on the vagrant waters.
Days, all one kind, go chasing each other.

The snow unfurls in dancing figures.
A silver gull slips down from the west.
Sometimes a sail. High, high stars.

Oh the black cross of a ship.
Alone.
Sometimes I get up early and even my soul is wet.
Far away the sea sounds and resounds.
This is a port.
Aqui te amo.

Here I love you and the horizon hides you in vain.
I love you still among these cold things.
Sometimes my kisses go on those heavy vessels
that cross the sea towards no arrival.
I see myself forgotten like those old anchors.
The piers sadden when the afternoon moors there.
My life grows tired, hungry to no purpose.
I love what I do not have. You are so far.
My loathing wrestles with the slow twilights.
But night comes and starts to sing to me.

The moon turns its clockwork dream.
The biggest stars look at me with your eyes.
And as I love you, the pines in the wind
want to sing your name with their leaves of wire.


[copyright w.s.merwin, 1969]