together

Translated from the Spanish by Christopher Logue

Drunk as drunk on turpentine
From your open kisses,
Your wet body wedged
Between my wet body and the strake
Of our boat that is made of flowers,
Feasted, we guide it - our fingers
Like tallows adorned with yellow metal -
Over the sky's hot rim,
The day's last breath in our sails.

Pinned by the sun between solstice
And equinox, drowsy and tangled together
We drifted for months and woke
With the bitter taste of land on our lips,

Driving a cardboard automobile without a license
      at the turn of the century
   my father ran into my mother
                  on a fun-ride at Coney Island
         having spied each other eating
             in a French boardinghouse nearby
            And having decided right there and then
                           that she was right for him entirely
   he followed her into
                           the playland of that evening
         where the headlong meeting

Settle home in person place
But no cart horse noise
Ask gentleman how able so
Heart far place self partial
Pluck chrysanthemum east hedge down
Leisurely look south mountain
Mountain air day night beautiful
Fly birds together return
This here have clear meaning
Wish argue already neglect speech

Author Note: In Finland there is a Castle which is called the New Rock, moated about with a river of unfounded depth, the water black and the fish therein
very distateful to the palate. In this are spectres often seen, which
foreshew either the death of the Governor, or some prime officer
belonging to the place; and most commonly it appeareth in the shape of
an harper, sweetly singing and dallying and playing under the water.

It is reported of one Donica, that after she was dead, the Devil walked

Dost thou remember ever, for my sake,
When we two rowed upon the rock-bound lake?
How the wind-fretted waters blew their spray
About our brows like blossom-falls of May
One memorable day?

Dost thou remember the glad mouth that cried--
"Were it not sweet to die now side by side,
To lie together tangled in the deep
Close as the heart-beat to the heart--so keep
The everlasting sleep?"

Dost thou remember? Ah, such death as this
Had set the seal upon my heart's young bliss!

Don't go far off, not even for a day, because --
because -- I don't know how to say it: a day is long
and I will be waiting for you, as in an empty station
when the trains are parked off somewhere else, asleep.

Don't leave me, even for an hour, because
then the little drops of anguish will all run together,
the smoke that roams looking for a home will drift
into me, choking my lost heart.

Oh, may your silhouette never dissolve on the beach;
may your eyelids never flutter into the empty distance.

Unreconciled by life's fleet years, that fled
With changeful clang of pinions wide and wild,
Though two great spirits had lived, and hence had sped
Unreconciled;

Though time and change, harsh time's imperious child,
That wed strange hands together, might not wed
High hearts by hope's misprision once beguiled;

Faith, by the light from either's memory shed,
Sees, radiant as their ends were undefiled,
One goal for each--not twain among the dead
Unreconciled.

Believe me, together
The bright gods come ever,
Still as of old;
Scarce see I Bacchus, the giver of joy,
Than comes up fair Eros, the laugh-loving boy,
And Phoebus, the stately, behold!

They come near and nearer,
The heavenly ones all--
The gods with their presence
Fill earth as their hall!

Say, how shall I welcome,
Human and earthborn,
Sons of the sky?

It is stormy, and raindrops cling like silver bees to the pane,
The thin sycamores in the playground are swinging with flattened leaves;
The heads of the boys move dimly through a yellow gloom that stains
The class; over them all the dark net of my discipline weaves.

It is no good, dear, gentleness and forbearance, I endured too long:
I have pushed my hands in the dark soil, under the flower of my soul
And the gentle leaves, and have felt where the roots are strong
Fixed in the darkness, grappling for the deep soil’s little control.

I

Said a Sov'reign to a Note,
In the pocket of my coat,
Where they met in a neat purse of leather,
"How happens it, I prithee,
That though I'm wedded with thee,
Fair Pound, we can never live together?

II

Like your sex, fond of change,
With silver you can range,
And of lots of young sixpences be mother;
While with me -- upon my word
Not my Lady and my Lord
Of W--stm--th see so little of each other!"

III