If I Die –Pablo Neruda
If I die, survive me with such sheer force
That you awaken the furies of the pallid and the cold,
From south to south lift your indelible eyes,
From sun to sun dream through your singing mouth,
I don’t want your laughter or your steps to waver,
I don’t want my heritage of joy to die.
Don’t call up my person. I am absent.
Live in my absence as if in a house.
Absence is a house so vast
That inside you will pass through its walls
And hang pictures on the air
Absence is a house so transparent
That I lifeless will see you, living
And if you suffer, my love, I will die again.
Monthly Archives: March 2012
For Ed
Al’s Birthday Poem
Safe in their alabaster chambers,
Untouched by morning and untouched by noon,
Sleep the meek members of the resurrection,
Rafter of satin, and roof of stone.
Light laughs the breeze in her castle of sunshine,
Babbles the bee in a solid ear:
Pipe the sweet birds in ignorant cadence,
Ah, what sagacity perished here!
Grand go the years in the crescent above them;
Worlds scoop their arcs, and firmaments row,
Diadems drop and Doges surrender,
Soundless as dots on a disk of snow.
Emily Dickinson
Photo Rob Perry