#balhann

I do not love you as if you were salt-rose, or topaz, or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off. I love you as certain dark things are to be loved, in secret, between the shadow and the soul. I love you as the plant that never blooms but carries in itself the light of hidden flowers; thanks to your love a certain solid fragrance, risen from the earth, lives darkly in my body. I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where. I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride; so I love you because I know no other way than this: where I does not exist, nor you, so close that your hand on my chest is my hand, so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep.

When I die, I want your hands on my eyes: I want the light and the wheat of your beloved hands to pass their freshness over me once more: I want to feel the softness that changed my destiny. I want you to live while I wait for you, asleep. I want your ears still to hear the wind, I want you to sniff the sea’s aroma that we loved together, to continue to walk on the sand we walk on. I want what I love to continue to live, and you whom I love and sang above everything else to continue to flourish, full-flowered: so that you can reach everything my love directs you to, so that my shadow can travel along in your hair, so that everything can learn the reason for my song.

If I die, survive me with such sheer force that you waken 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.