Bedtime Stories

If your eyes were not the color of the moon, of a day full [here, interrupted by the baby waking - continued about 26 hours later ] of a day full of clay, and work, and fire, if even held-in you did not move in agile grace like the air, if you were not an amber week, not the yellow moment when autumn climbs up through the vines; if you were not that bread the fragrant moon kneads, sprinkling its flour across the sky, oh, my dearest, I could not love you so! But when I hold you I hold everything that is - sand, time, the tree of the rain, everything is alive so that I can be alive: without moving I can see it all: in your life I see everything that lives.

This day, Today, was a brimming glass. This day, Today, was an immense wave. This day was all the Earth. This day, the storm-driven ocean lifted us up in a kiss so exalted we trembled at the lightning flash and bound as one, fell, and drowned, without being unbound. This day our bodies grew stretched out to Earth’s limits, orbited there, melded there to one globe of wax, or a meteor’s flame. A strange door opened, between us, and someone, with no face as yet, waited for us there.

i like for you to be still it is as though you are absent And you hear me from far away And my voice does not touch you it seems as though your eyes had flown away And it seems that a kiss had sealed your mouth As all things are filled with my soul You emerge from the things Filled with my soul You are like my soul A butterfly of dream And you are like the word: Melancholy i like for you to be still And you seem far away it sounds as though you are lamenting A butterfly cooing like a dove And you hear me from far away And my voice does not reach you Let me come to be still in your silence And let me talk to you with your silence That is bright as a lamp Simple, as a ring You are like the night With its stillness and constellations Your silence is that of a star As remote and candid i like for you to be still it is as though you are absent Distant and full of sorrow So you would've died One word then, One smile is enough And i'm happy; Happy that it's not true

To the solemn sea the old women come With their shawls knotted around their necks With their fragile feet cracking. They sit down alone on the shore Without moving their eyes or their hands Without changing the clouds or the silence. The obscene sea breaks and claws Rushes downhill trumpeting Shakes its bull's beard. The gentle old ladies seated As if in a transparent boat They look at the terrorist waves. Where will they go and where have they been? They come from every corner They come from our own lives. Now they have the ocean The cold and burning emptiness The solitude full of flames. They come from all the pasts From houses which were fragrant From burnt-up evenings. They look, or don't look, at the sea With their walking sticks they draw signs in the sand And the sea erases their calligraphy. The old women get up and go away With their fragile bird feet While the waves flood in Traveling naked in the wind.

The light that rises from your feet to your hair, the strength enfolding your delicate form, are not mother of pearl, not chilly silver: you are made of bread, a bread the fire adores. The grain grew high in its harvest of you, in good time the flour swelled; as the dough rose, doubling your breasts, my love was the coal waiting ready in the earth. Oh, bread your forehead, your legs, your mouth, bread I devour, born with the morning light, my love, beacon-flag of the bakeries: fire taugh you a lesson of the blood; you learned your holiness from flour, from bread your language and aroma.

When your legs don't work like they used to before And I can't sweep you off of your feet Will your mouth still remember the taste of my love? Will your eyes still smile from your cheeks? And, darling, I will be loving you 'til we're 70 And, baby, my heart could still fall as hard at 23 And I'm thinking 'bout how people fall in love in mysterious ways Maybe just the touch of a hand Well, me—I fall in love with you every single day And I just wanna tell you I am So honey now Take me into your loving arms Kiss me under the light of a thousand stars Place your head on my beating heart I'm thinking out loud That maybe we found love right where we are When my hair's all but gone and my memory fades And the crowds don't remember my name When my hands don't play the strings the same way I know you will still love me the same 'Cause honey your soul could never grow old, it's evergreen And, baby, your smile's forever in my mind and memory I'm thinking 'bout how people fall in love in mysterious ways Maybe it's all part of a plan Well, I'll just keep on making the same mistakes Hoping that you'll understand But, baby, now Take me into your loving arms Kiss me under the light of a thousand stars Place your head on my beating heart Thinking out loud That maybe we found love right where we are So, baby, now Take me into your loving arms Kiss me under the light of a thousand stars Oh, darling, place your head on my beating heart I'm thinking out loud That maybe we found love right where we are Oh, baby, we found love right where we are And we found love right where we are

Here I love you. In the dark pines the wind disentangles itself. The moon glows like phosphorous on the vagrant waters. Days, all one kind, go chasing each other. The snow unfurls in dancing figures. A silver gull slips down from the west. Sometimes a sail. High, high stars. Oh the black cross of a ship. Alone. Sometimes I get up early and even my soul is wet. Far away the sea sounds and resounds. This is a port. Here I love you. Here I love you and the horizon hides you in vain. I love you still among these cold things. Sometimes my kisses go on those heavy vessels that cross the sea towards no arrival. I see myself forgotten like those old anchors. The piers sadden when the afternoon moors there. My life grows tired, hungry to no purpose. I love what I do not have. You are so far. My loathing wrestles with the slow twilights. But night comes and starts to sing to me. The moon turns its clockwork dream. The biggest stars look at me with your eyes. And as I love you, the pines in the wind want to sing your name with their leaves of wire.

In my sky at twilight you are like a cloud and your form and colour are the way I love them. You are mine, mine, woman with sweet lips and in your life my infinite dreams live. The lamp of my soul dyes your feet, the sour wine is sweeter on your lips, oh reaper of my evening song, how solitary dreams believe you to be mine! You are mine, mine, I go shouting it to the afternoon's wind, and the wind hauls on my widowed voice. Huntress of the depth of my eyes, your plunder stills your nocturnal regard as though it were water. You are taken in the net of my music, my love, and my nets of music are wide as the sky. My soul is born on the shore of your eyes of mourning. In your eyes of mourning the land of dreams begin.