Penepole Says
…your splendid heart,
splendid since I chose it,
will always be somewhere else
and with the words I’ll sever
the threads that tie me
to a particular man
for who I long
until Odysseus becomes symbol
of nostalgia
and sails the seas
in everybody’s mind.
I forget you daily, passionately
that you’ll cleanse yourself of the sins
of sweetness and smell
and completely clean you’ll enter
the realm of immortality.
This job is hard and joyless.
my only reward
is that I finally understand
what’s human presence
what’s absence
or how the ego functions
in such desolation, in such long time
that nothing stops the tomorrow
the body always renews itself
gets up and goes to bed
as if someone chops it
sometimes sick, sometimes in love
hoping that
what of the touch it loses
it gains in substance.
(If this poem spoke to you, you may find more about this translation book in the following links)
