Or perhaps more comprehensibly,
Between the bird-cherry and the lilac tree.
(That is Swedish, okay? I am showing off my skills in totally useless languages here.)
Between the bird-cherry and the lilac tree lies the briefest of moments at the very cusp of spring and summer. One tree blooms first, then the other. Summer is hardly there yet at this magical time, everything still lies ahead; one feels like this time, perhaps, redemption may come, any day now, any day now, we might be released. So painfully sweet, so fleeting, the length of this time of hope and beauty decided in part by weather conditions. If it is windy, the bird-cherry blossom goes before it's really been there. Sometimes, though, if the weather is right, it can go on for a full week or even longer, and you can get a moment with both bird-cherry and lilac blossom.
It is now between the bird-cherry and the lilac tree. My mother lived to see it again; I doubt there will be another, for her.
Speaking of which, I thought today about how we always go on and on about "first loves". How sweet and blah and so on. How come one very rarely, if ever, hears talk about last loves?
The situation needs rectifying. Therefore, let us now, Dear Reader, hear it for last loves.
Is there anything, can there be anything quite so delicate and so violent as a last love? So ecstatic and so wounding. Such knowing throwing of oneself into an abyss one knows can lead nowhere but to pain. This is the difference, I think, between first loves and last: first loves, one thinks will last forever. Last loves, one knows one will lose, and lose soon, they are almost gone, like the Nordic spring, before they started, so grab hold of the madness, grab hold of the love, grab hold of your love, this is the last love there will be, the last burning yearning before one fizzles out and settles for the future of nevermore, no more a-roving so late into the night, though the heart be still as loving and the moon be still as bright.
How does one know it will be the very last, I hear you ask. I don't know; but I know there is a knowing within a last love, a desperation, an understanding, a deep-seated understanding of the transience of everything, of life not stretching out in front of one, unmeasurable; a deep-rooted appreciation, a gratitude, for this one more chance to burn, this one more loss of self, this one more suffering.
2 comments:
Mind if I plagiarise this post - take your words, arrange them into line breaks and call it my poem? Ok, I wouldn't really do this (though some would, be warned, and they'd call it 'found poetry and claim the right) but what I am saying is that it is having the poetry effect on me. And this after only 6/7 hours of sleep in two nights and sleazy-jetting back from Bari. So watch it.
There is more to be said, but it is probably of the unsayable kind .... c'era una volta.
The silver swan who living had no note
when death approached unlocked her silent throat ...
Ach du. Thou dost flatter me overmuch. Stealing my words would be totally unnecessary for you, Poet, and a bit too much hassle for anyone else (they'd have to find me first, for one), surely. I would, however, pay to know where you'd put the line breaks, mind.
It sounds like you've kicked up your heels for some sleazy sleeplessness. This sounds like a good thing (although I will be cross with the powers-that-be if I learn it has left you feeling like shit, okay?). How was Bari and Apulia in general? I snuck a look at some internetty pictures of Bari, and, well, it looked downright gorgeousness to me. Pray do tell…
x
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