Second Poem, Absence of Love
I
Beloved
in whose body I rest,
What will your dream be like
when I have sought you without finding you?
Oh,
my love, most sweet
as the allusion of a spikenard
between distant brown scents,
What will become of your heart when I love you?
What will it be like to find you when your body is love
and your voice
a bouquet of light?
Beloved,
Today I have sought you
throughout my city
and your strange city,
where the buildings
do not rejoice to the sun,
like shells of fruit
and celestial dwellings.
And I walked
with twilight tangled around my tongue,
With a lagoon-like air
and a cloak of danger.
An aura of jasper
saw me from its tower,
As I walked searching for you
among the green smell of the city’s horses,
Among matrons
with diapers and birds;
Thinking about your mouth
my eyes rested
like diurnal doves
on bitter grasses.
And I searched for you then
through the immediacy of my body.
You could come to me then
from the fervid event
II
Beloved
Today I have sought you without finding you
throughout my city
and your strange city,
Close to wandering farmhouses
—guarded by fields—
surrounded and defeated by rustling pastures.
Suddenly you arrived,
host of my happiness,
and your brilliant offerings
filled me with islands.
From the cool breeze you arrived
like a boy with a white handkerchief
And night ascended dreaming among branches,
alongside the water’s joy and the bee’s trace.
Beloved,
in whose body I repose
and into whose arms my soul empties,
What will it be like to not find you in the distance,
to arrive at your body like food
reunited with the warmth of a necessary
and lost grace?
To exist where I am no more than transient
to not exist where your breath holds me
and shatters my soul
like a stone.
What will it be like
to have my body divided
and my heart in my hands
held together, yet alone?
Beloved
Today I have sought you without finding you
throughout my city and your strange city
and I have not found you.
What will it be like to seek you in the distance?
Eunice Odio