"The song of despair"
12/03/10 01:38
I just finished playing a gig with George Victory... it was beautiful... as are most gigs I play with George... but when we started I was a little under the weather...
...see I worked a crazy long 14 hour bartending spring break marathon yesterday and it caught up with me at 5am as I sat numb in front of the tv wondering what I should eat before I went to bed... I was heavily congested... heavily unrested... slightly innebriated... ridiculously frustrated... apparently righteously violated... and painfully aware of the sorrow that I have caused to the most important person in my life for the past two years...
... so I took a pill, quoted myself on facebook and went to sleep to avoid the thought of it and all things reality based...
... now I’m home tonight... feeling purified... I floated for the first 2 hours of the set tonight from cough medicine... then teetered the rest of the set on Jack Daniels and Miller Lite...
...but the whole time I was on stage I wanted to come home so I could write something wonderful... and apologetic...
... something to start the healing process... something to help ease the pain... and somehow help us both understand how and why love lifts and levels with such a lack of rhyme or reason at times...
... I wanted to say I was sorry...
... and so tonight I came home to write... but the first line of this Neruda poem kept coming into my brain and it made me seek it out to read the whole thing again... and suddenly I realized that somehow Pablo had already written my apology... and until I can think of a better way to phrase it, this is all I have to say....
The Song of Despair by Pablo Neruda
The memory of you emerges from the night around me.
The river mingles its stubborn lament with the sea.
Deserted like the wharves at dawn.
It is the hour of departure, oh deserted one!
Cold flower heads are raining over my heart.
Oh pit of debris, fierce cave of the shipwrecked.
In you the wars and the flights accumulated.
From you the wings of the song birds rose.
You swallowed everything, like distance.
Like the sea, like time. In you everything sank!
It was the happy hour of assault and the kiss.
The hour of the spell that blazed like a lighthouse.
Pilot’s dread, fury of a blind diver,
turbulent drunkenness of love, in you everything sank!
In the childhood of mist my soul, winged and wounded.
Lost discoverer, in you everything sank!
You girdled sorrow, you clung to desire,
sadness stunned you, in you everything sank!
I made the wall of shadow draw back,
beyond desire and act, I walked on.
Oh flesh, my own flesh, woman whom I loved and lost,
I summon you in the moist hour, I raise my song to you.
Like a jar you housed the infinite tenderness,
and the infinite oblivion shattered you like a jar.
There was the black solitude of the islands,
and there, woman of love, your arms took me in.
There were thirst and hunger, and you were the fruit.
There were grief and the ruins, and you were the miracle.
Ah woman, I do not know how you could contain me
in the earth of your soul, in the cross of your arms!
How terrible and brief was my desire of you!
How difficult and drunken, how tensed and avid.
Cemetery of kisses, there is still fire in your tombs,
still the fruited boughs burn, pecked at by birds.
Oh the bitten mouth, oh the kissed limbs,
oh the hungering teeth, oh the entwined bodies.
Oh the mad coupling of hope and force
in which we merged and despaired.
And the tenderness, light as water and as flour.
And the word scarcely begun on the lips.
This was my destiny and in it was the voyage of my longing,
and in it my longing fell, in you everything sank!
Oh pit of debris, everything fell into you,
what sorrow did you not express, in what sorrow are you not drowned!
From billow to billow you still called and sang.
Standing like a sailor in the prow of a vessel.
You still flowered in songs, you still broke in currents.
Oh pit of debris, open and bitter well.
Pale blind diver, luckless slinger,
lost discoverer, in you everything sank!
It is the hour of departure, the hard cold hour
which the night fastens to all the timetables.
The rustling belt of the sea girdles the shore.
Cold stars heave up, black birds migrate.
Deserted like the wharves at dawn.
Only the tremulous shadow twists in my hands.
Oh farther than everything. Oh farther than everything.
It is the hour of departure. Oh abandoned one.
...see I worked a crazy long 14 hour bartending spring break marathon yesterday and it caught up with me at 5am as I sat numb in front of the tv wondering what I should eat before I went to bed... I was heavily congested... heavily unrested... slightly innebriated... ridiculously frustrated... apparently righteously violated... and painfully aware of the sorrow that I have caused to the most important person in my life for the past two years...
... so I took a pill, quoted myself on facebook and went to sleep to avoid the thought of it and all things reality based...
... now I’m home tonight... feeling purified... I floated for the first 2 hours of the set tonight from cough medicine... then teetered the rest of the set on Jack Daniels and Miller Lite...
...but the whole time I was on stage I wanted to come home so I could write something wonderful... and apologetic...
... something to start the healing process... something to help ease the pain... and somehow help us both understand how and why love lifts and levels with such a lack of rhyme or reason at times...
... I wanted to say I was sorry...
... and so tonight I came home to write... but the first line of this Neruda poem kept coming into my brain and it made me seek it out to read the whole thing again... and suddenly I realized that somehow Pablo had already written my apology... and until I can think of a better way to phrase it, this is all I have to say....
The Song of Despair by Pablo Neruda
The memory of you emerges from the night around me.
The river mingles its stubborn lament with the sea.
Deserted like the wharves at dawn.
It is the hour of departure, oh deserted one!
Cold flower heads are raining over my heart.
Oh pit of debris, fierce cave of the shipwrecked.
In you the wars and the flights accumulated.
From you the wings of the song birds rose.
You swallowed everything, like distance.
Like the sea, like time. In you everything sank!
It was the happy hour of assault and the kiss.
The hour of the spell that blazed like a lighthouse.
Pilot’s dread, fury of a blind diver,
turbulent drunkenness of love, in you everything sank!
In the childhood of mist my soul, winged and wounded.
Lost discoverer, in you everything sank!
You girdled sorrow, you clung to desire,
sadness stunned you, in you everything sank!
I made the wall of shadow draw back,
beyond desire and act, I walked on.
Oh flesh, my own flesh, woman whom I loved and lost,
I summon you in the moist hour, I raise my song to you.
Like a jar you housed the infinite tenderness,
and the infinite oblivion shattered you like a jar.
There was the black solitude of the islands,
and there, woman of love, your arms took me in.
There were thirst and hunger, and you were the fruit.
There were grief and the ruins, and you were the miracle.
Ah woman, I do not know how you could contain me
in the earth of your soul, in the cross of your arms!
How terrible and brief was my desire of you!
How difficult and drunken, how tensed and avid.
Cemetery of kisses, there is still fire in your tombs,
still the fruited boughs burn, pecked at by birds.
Oh the bitten mouth, oh the kissed limbs,
oh the hungering teeth, oh the entwined bodies.
Oh the mad coupling of hope and force
in which we merged and despaired.
And the tenderness, light as water and as flour.
And the word scarcely begun on the lips.
This was my destiny and in it was the voyage of my longing,
and in it my longing fell, in you everything sank!
Oh pit of debris, everything fell into you,
what sorrow did you not express, in what sorrow are you not drowned!
From billow to billow you still called and sang.
Standing like a sailor in the prow of a vessel.
You still flowered in songs, you still broke in currents.
Oh pit of debris, open and bitter well.
Pale blind diver, luckless slinger,
lost discoverer, in you everything sank!
It is the hour of departure, the hard cold hour
which the night fastens to all the timetables.
The rustling belt of the sea girdles the shore.
Cold stars heave up, black birds migrate.
Deserted like the wharves at dawn.
Only the tremulous shadow twists in my hands.
Oh farther than everything. Oh farther than everything.
It is the hour of departure. Oh abandoned one.