| Tonight I Can Write the Saddest Lines | |
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| Pablo Neruda (1924) | |
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Tonight I can write the saddest lines. Write, for example, ‘The night is starry and the stars are blue and 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 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 starry 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 tries to find her as though to bring her closer. 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. As she was before my kisses. 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.
Trans. W.S. Merwin
Poem XX from Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair |
In less cryptic news, I got my last two wisdom teeth pulled on Thursday. The first two were pulled back in 2001, just before I left the Air Force. My blood sugar crashed the night before that one, so I had to eat and couldn't get the anesthesia, so they couldn't pull the bottom two. They have been periodically driving me insane for the last thirteen years, but they were impacted, which meant oral surgery. Shortly after I moved into this apartment, I got a Groupon for xrays, exam, and cleaning from Kwong Dental Care and was very impressed with Dr. Kwong, and his confidence about being able to get the teeth without surgery. It took a while (and a raise) to get my money in order enough to be able to swing it, but Dad took over, saying that I had been working hard to get out of debt, and he didn't want me set further back.
So everything went well, except my motor skills.
I couldn't feel my lower lip, tongue, or chin, and so I had no idea that I'd missed. Pudding face. Today, Tracy told me I needed a smoothie, so Jody came and took me to Jamba Juice.
I've been mostly Percocet napping for the last couple days. Dad sent me a message earlier asking how I was today and my actual response was "Percovet napsxdctoda."
Lots of people have been texting and stopping by to check on me, feed me soup, walk the dogs... My coworker made me homemade chicken soup, and Paulette has been the ice pack police.
But that's it, the teeth are gone. And now I'm nauseated again, so it's time to put on Lord of the Rings and fall asleep.
