Buffo - Wislawa Szymborska

Another by Szymborska, the Nobel Laureate from Poland.  I'm not quite sure how to categorize it.... I like its concept and breadth, the ironic tone that ends in a note of.... of what?... about love.  You tell me!
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BUFFO

First, our love will die, alas,
then two hundred years will pass,
then we’ll meet again at last—

This time in the theater, played
by a couple of comedians,
him and her, the public’s darlings.

Just a little farce, with songs,
patter, jokes, and final bows,
a vaudeville comedy of manners,
certain to bring down the house.

You’ll amuse them endlessly
on the stage with your cravat
and your petty jealousy.

So will I, love’s silly pawn,
with my heart broken, my joy gone,
my crown tumbling to the ground.

To the laughter’s loud refrain,
we will meet and part again,
seven mountains, seven rivers
multiplying out pain.

If we haven’t had enough
of despair, grief, all that stuff,
lofty words will kill us off.

Then we’ll stand up, take our bows:
hope that you’ve enjoyed our show.
every patron with his spouse
will applaud, get up, and go.

They reenter their lives’ cages,
where love’s tiger sometimes rages,
but the beast’s too tame to bite.

We’ll remain the odd ones out,
silly heathens in their fools’caps,
listening to the small bells ringing
day and night.
                                                                  Wislawa Szymborska - Polish

Sonnet LI (100 Love Sonnets) - Pablo Neruda

Given that this - and the earlier one - come from the "100 Love Sonnets" volume  (in Spanish - 1960), it's a good bet that, before this blog is done, there will be more here!  Neruda's love poetry was his most popular in South America, more so than his political ones.  These sonnets were dedicated to his third wife, Matilde Urrutia.  (He was sensitive enough to delay publication, so as to not hurt the feelings of the ex-wives.)  In the dedication, he called the verses "... little houses, so that your eyes, which I adore and sing to, might live in them".  Sigh...
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Sonnet LI

                                                                    transl. from Spanish by Stephen Tapscott

Your laugh: it reminds me of a tree

fissured by a lightning streak, by a silver bolt

that drops from the sky, splitting the poll,

slicing the tree with its sword.

A laugh like yours I love is born

only in the foliage and snow of the highlands,

the air’s laugh that bursts loose in those altitudes,

dearest: the Araucanian tradition.

O my mountain woman, my dear Chillán volcano,

slash your laughter through the shadows

the night, morning, honey of the noon:

birds of the foliage will leap in the air

when your laugh like an extravagant

light breaks through the tree of life.

Pablo Neruda

Love - P. Neruda

Pablo Neruda (1904-1973) needs no introduction.....(The link to his name below is to bio on the Nobel Prize site.  He won in 1971.)  What Picasso was to visual arts for the Hispanic world, Neruda was his equal in poetry.   
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Love


Because of you, in gardens of blossoming flowers I ache from the
perfumes of spring.
I have forgotten your face, I no longer remember your hands;
how did your lips feel on mine?
Because of you, I love the white statues drowsing in the parks,
the white statues that have neither voice nor sight.
I have forgotten your voice, your happy voice; I have forgotten
your eyes.
Like a flower to its perfume, I am bound to my vague memory of
you. I live with pain that is like a wound; if you touch me, you will
do me irreparable harm.
Your caresses enfold me, like climbing vines on melancholy walls.
I have forgotten your love, yet I seem to glimpse you in every
window.
Because of you, the heady perfumes of summer pain me; because
of you, I again seek out the signs that precipitate desires: shooting
stars, falling objects. 

                                                                                                              
Pablo Neruda - Chilean

Love At First Sight - W. Szymborska

Wislawa Szymborska looks like someone's sweet grandmother (which she probably also is!), but in the realm of literature she is in rarefied company as a Nobel Prize winner.  As I am not an academic, I won't expound on what makes her worthy.  As a reader of poetry, I can tell you that she is easy to read and understand, her word choices from every-day usage.  But what she constructs with them!  It's like being given the same set of Lego blocks, and she builds Cinderella's Castle in Disneyworld and we - or at least I - make a squarish Soviet-era building.


This poem appeals to my sense of Fate (or lack thereof) about the things that happen to us.  Is there inevitability and all that preceded it was preparation for the main event? 
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Love At First Sight


They would be quite surprised,
that for a long time
chance had been toying with them.

Not altogether ready
to turn into their fate,
it would draw them together, pull them apart,
cut them off on their path,
and, swallowing a giggle,
leap to the side.

There were doorknobs and doorbells,
where touch lay on touch
beforehand.
Suitcases next to one another in the baggage check.
Maybe one night the same dream,
blurred upon awakening.

Every beginning, after all,
is nothing but a sequel,
and the book of events
is always open in the middle.
                                             

Wyslawa Szymborska - Polish