One for today, and one for tomorrow

[flamingsword]

Night Stroll
by Julia de Burgos


Solitude of a night with soul,
you do not rhyme
with your shadow that sculpts darkness;
that you flee from your sleeping body
and strolling in the fronds you stay;
come, come closer to me,
because my soul also escapes me
from the silence of a body that sleeps,
to go and whip the nocturnal inertia.

Let's take a turn around the nocturnal arc
and laze through all the forest transnighting the pain of the leaves
sleeping and dry
and singing a couplet to life
that moves in things awake.
Solitude of a night with soul,
I want to be your ideal companion.

I have been seeking you for a while
so together we could stroll through the forest.
I am your image dressed as the world.

At bottom I am but a
restlessness alive and deep
in the ambient night that encloses me,
and thus my soul refuses
to sleep in the nocturnal inertia,
and invites you to stroll so that together
we may transnight our internal music.

--by Julia de Burgos



Variations on the Word Sleep

I would like to watch you sleeping,
which may not happen.
I would like to watch you,
sleeping. I would like to sleep
with you, to enter
your sleep as its smooth dark wave
slides over my head.

and walk with you through that lucent
wavering forest of bluegreen leaves
with its watery sun & three moons
towards the cave where you must descend,
towards your worst fear

I would like to give you the silver
branch, the small white flower, the one
word that will protect you
from the grief at the center
of your dream, from the grief
at the center. I would like to follow
you up the long stairway
again & become
the boat that would row you back
carefully, a flame
in two cupped hands
to where your body lies
beside you, and you enter
it as easily as breathing in

I would like to be the air
that inhabits you for a moment
only. I would like to be that unnoticed
& that necessary.

--Margaret Atwood