i wrung my hands

I wrung my hands under my dark veil...
"Why are you pale,what makes you reckless?"
—Because I have made my loved one drunk
with an astringent sadness.

I'll never forget.He went out,reeling;
his mouth was twisted,desolate...
I ran downstairs,not touching the banisters,
and followed him as far as the gate.

And shouted,choking: "I meant it all
in fun.Don't leave me,or I'll die of pain."
He smiled at me —oh so calmly,terribly—
and said:"Why don't you get out of the rain?"

Anna Akhmatova

we don't know how to say goodbye

We don't know how to say goodbye,
We wander on,shoulder to shoulder
Already the sun is going down
You're moody,and I am your shadow.
Let's step inside a church,hear prayers,masses for the dead
Why are we so different from the rest?
Outside in the graveyard we sit on a frozen branch.

That stick in your hand is tracing
Mansions in the snow in which we will always be together.

Anna Akhmatova

.

oh,tell me how to cure myself of irony,the gaze
that sees but doesn't penetrate

tell me how to cure myself of silence

A. Zagajewski

where love and death do not exist

*If we breathe too deeply,we can hear
each other's pains.

*My blood
is howling like a wolf in love.

*Two people cheered up by their own heart
are selling the light of the night
to my unknown wound.

Rhea Cristina

a broken appointment

You did not come,
And marching Time drew on,and wore me numb.—
Yet less for loss of your dear presence there
Than that I thus found lacking in your make
That high compassion which can overbear
Reluctance for pure lovingkindness’ sake
Grieved I, when, as the hope-hour stroked its sum,
You did not come.

You love not me,
And love alone can lend you loyalty;
—I know and knew it. But, unto the store
Of human deeds divine in all but name,
Was it not worth a little hour or more
To add yet this: Once you,a woman,came
To soothe a time-torn man;even though it be
You love not me.

Thomas Hardy

.

The flowers sent here by mistake,
signed with a name that no one knew,
are turning bad. What shall we do?
Our neighbor says they’re not for her,
and no one has a birthday near.
We should thank someone for the blunder.
Is one of us having an affair?
At first we laugh, and then we wonder.

The iris was the first to die,
enshrouded in its sickly-sweet
and lingering perfume. The roses
fell one petal at a time,
and now the ferns are turning dry.
The room smells like a funeral,
but there they sit, too much at home,
accusing us of some small crime,
like love forgotten, and we can’t
throw out a gift we’ve never owned.

D.Gioia

voyage to cythera