Poetry and Regret, Hand in Hand Partners

Poetry and Regret: Hand in Hand Partners

One of my favorite poems, by my favorite poet that I know as such, is arguably one of the best of all time.

Here it is, his most famous and quoted. Peruse at your own peril. Spanish first, then English.

Poema XX

Puedo escribir los versos más tristes esta noche.
.
Escribir, por ejemplo: "La noche está estrellada,
y tiritan, azules, los astros, a lo lejos".
.
El viento de la noche gira en el cielo y canta.
.
Puedo escribir los versos más tristes esta noche.
Yo la quise, y a veces ella también me quiso.
.
En las noches como ésta la tuve entre mis brazos.
¡La besé tantas veces bajo el cielo infinito!
.
Ella me quiso, a veces yo también la quería.
¡Como no haber amado sus grandes ojos fijos!
.
Puedo escribir los versos más tristes esta noche.
Pensar que no la tengo. Sentir que la he perdido,
.
Oír la noche inmensa, más inmensa sin ella.
Y el verso cae al alma como al pasto el rocío.
.
Qué importa que mi amor no pudiera guardarla.
La noche está estrellada y ella no está conmigo.
.
Eso es todo. A lo lejos alguien canta. A lo lejos.
Mi alma no se contenta con haberla perdido.
.
Como para acercarla mi mirada la busca.
Mi corazón la busca, y ella no está conmigo.
.
La misma noche que hace blanquear los mismos árboles.
Nosotros, los de entonces, ya no somos los mismos.
.
Ya no la quiero, es cierto, pero cuánto la quise!
Mi voz buscaba el viento para tocar su oído.
.
De otro. Será de otro. Como antes de mis besos.
Su voz, su cuerpo claro. Sus ojos infinitos.
.
Ya no la quiero, es cierto, pero tal vez la quiero.
Es tan corto el amor, y es tan largo el olvido.
.
Porque en noches como ésta, la tuve entre mis brazos,
mi alma no se contenta con haberla perdido.
.
Aunque éste sea el último dolor que ella me causa,
y éstos sean los últimos versos que yo le escribo

Poem XX (Twenty)

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.

Write, for example,'The night is shattered
and the blue stars shiver in the distance.'

The night wind revolves in the sky and sings.

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.

Through nights like this one I held her in my arms
I kissed her again and again under the endless sky.

She loved me sometimes, and I loved her too.
How could one not have loved her great still eyes.

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
To think that I do not have her. To feel that I have lost her.

To hear the immense night, still more immense without her.
And the verse falls to the soul like dew to the pasture.

What does it matter that my love could not keep her.
The night is shattered and she is not with me.

This is all. In the distance someone is singing. In the distance.
My soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.

My sight searches for her as though to go to her.
My heart looks for her, and she is not with me.

The same night whitening the same trees.
We, of that time, are no longer the same.

I no longer love her, that's certain, but how I loved her.
My voice tried to find the wind to touch her hearing.

Another's. She will be another's. Like my kisses before.
Her voice. Her bright body. Her infinite eyes.

I no longer love her, that's certain, but maybe I love her.
Love is so short, forgetting is so long.

Because through nights like this one I held her in my arms
my soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.

Though this be the last pain that she makes me suffer
and these the last verses that I write for her. 

Pablo Neruda

Granted, this poem is generated and true of romantic love. I believed it applied to me in 1993, after a brief yet intense relationship that came and went. It went for a few weeks, I thought it was very real. It affected me for years. Maybe it always will. But there are long periods I forget about it. The feelings have subsumed beneath a few seas or oceans, but the poetry has recorded it. Etched it, more or less.

And, in my case, this case, things recurred or resumed in 1996. That made things trickier, harder to deny. It was not until 1998 when I received the distant wedding invitation that I could finally put this one away on a dusty shelf. 

But the poetry remains. Hard, nearly impossible to erase.

Thank you very much, fate and Neruda! The Poet. The friend of my professor Don Gonzalo. Chile is full of tricksters and artists like this. Mistral and Allende, and hundreds of others from that fruitful, fecund, filial land, the ocean-kissed deserts and mountains and rivers...

I keep going back physically, as well as mentally and emotionally.

I loved it. Chile, tierra de promision. I loved them. Chilenos, pueblo de esfuerzo.  That will not change. Some love is eternal, no matter how embittered or non-requited.

Some still remember, some still care. I know this.

My namesake, Edward, and his mother, they are one example. He will be 30 soon enough. Children of that Edward may know an odd glimpse of that gringo North American.

But this post that I now compose is not about a love I knew as a younger man, nor the feelings for a land and people that I grew to care for.

No, perhaps deeper and more poignant, if I dare say, it is about my daughter.

I held her so many times from birth to infancy, to toddler and beyond.

Now I hold her in metaphysical esteem. She is her own entity, part of me but separate. Right there but not right there.

Illusive ghost of myself, she is that White Whale that Captain Ahab dreams of chasing. But she is no nemesis, she is rather the forward momentum of my wife and I. She is part her, part me, and all herself.

I like to posit that God has a share in the ownership as well. She is born in the covenant within the faith of my fathers and mothers, and my supreme beings, heavenly parents and Redeemers.

But on a personal scale, she is my hope and dreams. Stronger than romantic inklings, she is my flesh and blood, she is the light of my soul, she is my hope and my desire for the future.

She is the future, she is the past. She is mine. Always will be.

When I hear of her exploits, it strikes me like hearing of my own past, or those of my parents, or those of my wife: intimate and personal, it all comes together for me.

The heart needs the lungs, the organs all work together. I have had my gall bladder and tonsils removed; I am doing all right without them. She is no lesser unnecessary part to me.

My daughter is a vital organ that cannot be replaced. No matter how distant, or how long the break in communication, she is there inside of me.

I held her in 2001 and since, rocked her to sleep hundreds of times. Not as much as my wife was privy to, but I was there for countless episodes of those unconscious journeys... through the night when hungry, driving across the Los Angeles freeways, at church, on picnics or campouts in the snowy mountains. In plane trips and boat rides. We experienced this rapture of waking and sleeping so many times, a bliss and a torture. Blissful sleep and sucking of this God given life form.

Where is the chupon?! (Binky, pacifier). We forgot it! Again!

Then she walked. And ran. And disappeared at times! Ahh, the rapture of loving one creature this much! The large bruise on the forehead from slipping against the bed board. The bloody gashed gums from slipping in the tub. The very cheese-like skin in that Redlands hospital, curiously labeled vernix, when newly arrived. She kicked in the womb when she heard my voice at night.

Some memories slip and fade, like my own childhood and life behind me, but she never will.

She was mine, she was ours, she was our life. We did things for her, with her, did not go on trips because of this pestilence called RSV, a condition that combined to take the life of a friend these last six months. 

Life is precious, we do not take it for granted.

Like Neruda, now as a father and over the stigma of losing a romantic persona of the past, I can write of my daughter:

 Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
To think that I do not have her. To feel that I have lost her.

To hear the immense night, still more immense without her.
And the verse falls to the soul like dew to the pasture.

What does it matter that my love could not keep her?
The night is shattered and she is not with me.

This is all. In the distance someone is singing. In the distance.
My soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.

My sight searches for her as though to go to her.
My heart looks for her, and she is not with me.

The same night whitening the same trees.
We, of that time, are no longer the same.

And ultimately, the younger version of Pablo emotes:

Love is so short, forgetting is so long.

Because through nights like this one I held her in my arms
my soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.

Gratefully, graciously, I have not lost her, my now adult daughter; my lovely baby that looked to her dutiful parents as her lifeline and soulmates.

We looked at her, fed her, bathed her, cleaned her, sang to her, laughed with her. She grew up with our odd assortment of Spanish and English, and even neighborhood Chinese.

We took her to Indiana, across the mountains and coasts, Mexico and South America. The intrepid little one, we kept her, she was and is ours.

We have not lost her.

We have gained an extra heart floating across our beautiful universe.

She is on terra firma, she is in the moon, she is in the sky by day and stars at night.

She is always with us, with me.

She is mine. I am hers.

And with these saddest verses and no real forgetting, I, the student of poetry and art and history and humanity must declare:

Hand in Hand we are partners for life.

Blood and sweat and tears and kin, father and daughter, forever. 

13,000 miles away and decades later, whether in Balkh Province or whichever town of Europe, we are together still. 

There is no regret for having loved so, just the mild reminder that the time rushing through the hour glass has slipped my fingers as it is want to do, as life and existence list.

Journay at the beach. Day and sunset and night with cool breezes and long distant lights floating out to seas. Sand and sun and waves, laughter and giggles and cries.

She is there with me.

I am there.

I hold her there, always. 

You can find me there, in all your dreams and visions.

I am there with you. 

And there are others close by.

We hold you. We sing to you. We utter our prayers to you and for you. 

Your grandmother held you, and even dreamed of you before you were born. According to her, you were one of those premortal babies that healed her. Your grandfather held you. They all loved and held you many times; he showed how to burp you better. From California to Washington to Utah and Arizona to Indiana and North Carolina. Your uncles and aunts and cousins held and you and laughed and played with you, in Glendora, in Yucaipa, in Palm Springs, in Riverside, in Longview and Bountiful, Bloomington and Chicago, Ashville and Sandy, Parawan, Manti, and Las Vegas.

Love is not ephemeral.

You are real and we are yours.

Partners, associates, colleagues, friends, cohorts, lifelines. 

If I had a thousand more lives I would live them all for you.

And I would give more, share more, that is the only regret.

Unlike Neruda, this love, this partnership, will continue to grow.

Poetry in such things is sure and pure.