Tonight I Can Write (The Saddest Lines)

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.

SONNET 116

Let me not to the marriage of true minds

Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no; it is an ever-fixed mark,
That looks on tempests, and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
   If this be error and upon me proved,
   I never writ, nor no man ever loved.
 Las Ruinas del Corazon
Eric Gamalinda

Juana the Mad married the handsomest man in Spain

and that was the end of it, because when you marry a man

more beautiful than you, they say you pretty much lost control
of the situation. Did she ever listen? No. When he was away

annexing more kingdoms, she had horrible dreams

of him being cut and blown away, or spread on the rack,

or sleeping with exotic women. She prayed to the twin guardians

of the Alhambra, Saint Ursula and Saint Susana, to send him home

and make him stay forever. And they answered her prayers,
and killed Philip the Handsome at twenty-eight.

Juana the Mad was beside herself with grief, and she wrapped
his body in oils and lavender, and laid him out in a casket of lead,

and built a marble effigy of the young monarch in sleep,

and beside it her own dead figure, so he would never think

he was alone. And she kept his body beside her, and every day
for the next twenty years, while pungent potions filled the rooms,

she peeked into his coffin like a chef peeks into his pot,
and memories of his young body woke her adamant desire.

She wanted to possess him entirely, and since not even death
may oppose the queen, she found a way to merge death and life

by eating a piece of him, slowly, lovingly, until he was entirely

in her being. She cut a finger and chewed the fragrant skin,

then sliced thick portions of his once ruddy cheeks. Then she ate
an ear, the side of a thigh, the solid muscles of the chest,

then lunged for an eye, a kidney, part of the large intestine.

Then she diced his penis and his pebble-like testicles

and washed everything down with sweet jerez.

Then she decided she was ready to die.

But before she did, she asked the poets to record these moments
in song, and the architects to carve the song in marble,

and the marble to be extracted from the most secret veins

of the earth and placed where no man could see it,

because that is the nature of love, because one walks alone

through the ruins of the heart, because the young must sleep

with their eyes open, because the angels tremble

from so much beauty, because memory moves in orbits

of absence, because she holds her hands out in the rain,

and rain remembers nothing, not even how it became itself.
 Velveteen Rabbit

There was once a velveteen rabbit, and in the beginning he was really splendid. He was fat and bunchy, as
a rabbit should be; his coat was spotted brown and white, he had real thread whiskers, and his ears were
lined with pink sateen. On Christmas morning, when he sat wedged in the top of the Boy's stocking, with
a sprig of holly between his paws, the effect was charming.

There were other things in the stocking, nuts and oranges and a toy engine, and chocolate almonds and a
clockwork mouse, but the Rabbit was quite the best of all. For at least two hours the Boy loved him, and
then Aunts and Uncles came to dinner, and there was a great rustling of tissue paper and unwrapping of
parcels, and in the excitement of looking at all the new presents the Velveteen Rabbit was forgotten.

For a long time he lived in the toy cupboard or on the nursery floor, and no one thought very much about
him. He was naturally shy, and being only made of velveteen, some of the more expensive toys quite
snubbed him. The mechanical toys were very superior, and looked down upon every one else; they were
full of modern ideas, and pretended they were real. The model boat, who had lived through two seasons
and lost most of his paint, caught the tone from them and never missed an opportunity of referring to his
rigging in technical terms. The Rabbit could not claim to be a model of anything, for he didn't know that
real rabbits existed; he thought they were all stuffed with sawdust like himself, and he understood that
sawdust was quite out-of-date and should never be mentioned in modern circles. Even Timothy, the
jointed wooden lion, who was made by the disabled soldiers, and should have had broader views, put on
airs and pretended he was connected with Government. Between them all the poor little Rabbit was made
to feel himself very insignificant and commonplace, and the only person who was kind to him at all was
the Skin Horse.

The Skin Horse had lived longer in the nursery than any of the others. He was so old that his brown coat
was bald in patches and showed the seams underneath, and most of the hairs in his tail had been pulled
out to string bead necklaces. He was wise, for he had seen a long succession of mechanical toys arrive to
boast and swagger, and by-and-by break their mainsprings and pass away, and he knew that they were
only toys, and would never turn into anything else. For nursery magic is very strange and wonderful, and
only those playthings that are old and wise and experienced like the Skin Horse understand all about it.

"What is REAL?" asked the Rabbit one day, when they were lying side by side near the nursery fender,
before Nana came to tidy the room. "Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out
handle?"

"Real isn't how you are made," said the Skin Horse. "It's a thing that happens to you. When a child loves
you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real."

"Does it hurt?" asked the Rabbit.

"Sometimes," said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. "When you are Real you don't mind being
hurt."

"Does it happen all at once, like being wound up," he asked, "or bit by bit?"

"It doesn't happen all at once," said the Skin Horse. "You become. It takes a long time. That's why it
doesn't happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept.
Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you
get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you
can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand."

"I suppose you are real?" said the Rabbit. And then he wished he had not said it, for he thought the Skin
Horse might be sensitive. But the Skin Horse only smiled.

"The Boy's Uncle made me Real," he said. "That was a great many years ago; but once you are Real you
can't become unreal again. It lasts for always."

The Rabbit sighed. He thought it would be a long time before this magic called Real happened to him. He
longed to become Real, to know what it felt like; and yet the idea of growing shabby and losing his eyes
and whiskers was rather sad. He wished that he could become it without these uncomfortable things
happening to him.

There was a person called Nana who ruled the nursery. Sometimes she took no notice of the playthings
lying about, and sometimes, for no reason whatever, she went swooping about like a great wind and
hustled them away in cupboards. She called this "tidying up," and the playthings all hated it, especially
the tin ones. The Rabbit didn't mind it so much, for wherever he was thrown he came down soft.

One evening, when the Boy was going to bed, he couldn't find the china dog that always slept with him.
Nana was in a hurry, and it was too much trouble to hunt for china dogs at bedtime, so she simply looked
about her, and seeing that the toy cupboard door stood open, she made a swoop.
"Here," she said, "take your old Bunny! He'll do to sleep with you!" And she dragged the Rabbit out by
one ear, and put him into the Boy's arms.

That night, and for many nights after, the Velveteen Rabbit slept in the Boy's bed. At first he found it
rather uncomfortable, for the Boy hugged him very tight, and sometimes he rolled over on him, and
sometimes he pushed him so far under the pillow that the Rabbit could scarcely breathe. And he missed,
too, those long moonlight hours in the nursery, when all the house was silent, and his talks with the Skin
Horse. But very soon he grew to like it, for the Boy used to talk to him, and made nice tunnels for him
under the bedclothes that he said were like the burrows the real rabbits lived in. And they had splendid
games together, in whispers, when Nana had gone away to her supper and left the night-light burning on
the mantelpiece. And when the Boy dropped off to sleep, the Rabbit would snuggle down close under his
little warm chin and dream, with the Boy's hands clasped close round him all night long.

And so time went on, and the little Rabbit was very happy–so happy that he never noticed how his
beautiful velveteen fur was getting shabbier and shabbier, and his tail becoming unsewn, and all the pink
rubbed off his nose where the Boy had kissed him.

Spring came, and they had long days in the garden, for wherever the Boy went the Rabbit went too. He
had rides in the wheelbarrow, and picnics on the grass, and lovely fairy huts built for him under the
raspberry canes behind the flower border. And once, when the Boy was called away suddenly to go out to
tea, the Rabbit was left out on the lawn until long after dusk, and Nana had to come and look for him with
the candle because the Boy couldn't go to sleep unless he was there. He was wet through with the dew and
quite earthy from diving into the burrows the Boy had made for him in the flower bed, and Nana
grumbled as she rubbed him off with a corner of her apron.

"You must have your old Bunny!" she said. "Fancy all that fuss for a toy!"

The Boy sat up in bed and stretched out his hands.

"Give me my Bunny!" he said. "You mustn't say that. He isn't a toy. He's REAL!"

When the little Rabbit heard that he was happy, for he knew that what the Skin Horse had said was true at
last. The nursery magic had happened to him, and he was a toy no longer. He was Real. The Boy himself
had said it.

That night he was almost too happy to sleep, and so much love stirred in his little sawdust heart that it
almost burst. And into his boot-button eyes, that had long ago lost their polish, there came a look of
wisdom and beauty, so that even Nana noticed it next morning when she picked him up, and said, "I
declare if that old Bunny hasn't got quite a knowing expression!"

That was a wonderful Summer!

Near the house where they lived there was a wood, and in the long June evenings the Boy liked to go
there after tea to play. He took the Velveteen Rabbit with him, and before he wandered off to pick
flowers, or play at brigands among the trees, he always made the Rabbit a little nest somewhere among
the bracken, where he would be quite cosy, for he was a kind-hearted little boy and he liked Bunny to be
comfortable. One evening, while the Rabbit was lying there alone, watching the ants that ran to and fro
between his velvet paws in the grass, he saw two strange beings creep out of the tall bracken near him.

They were rabbits like himself, but quite furry and brand-new. They must have been very well made, for
their seams didn't show at all, and they changed shape in a queer way when they moved; one minute they
were long and thin and the next minute fat and bunchy, instead of always staying the same like he did.
Their feet padded softly on the ground, and they crept quite close to him, twitching their noses, while the
Rabbit stared hard to see which side the clockwork stuck out, for he knew that people who jump generally
have something to wind them up. But he couldn't see it. They were evidently a new kind of rabbit
altogether.

They stared at him, and the little Rabbit stared back. And all the time their noses twitched.

"Why don't you get up and play with us?" one of them asked.

"I don't feel like it," said the Rabbit, for he didn't want to explain that he had no clockwork.
"Ho!" said the furry rabbit. "It's as easy as anything," And he gave a big hop sideways and stood on his
hind legs.

"I don't believe you can!" he said.

"I can!" said the little Rabbit. "I can jump higher than anything!" He meant when the Boy threw him, but
of course he didn't want to say so.

"Can you hop on your hind legs?" asked the furry rabbit.

That was a dreadful question, for the Velveteen Rabbit had no hind legs at all! The back of him was made
all in one piece, like a pincushion. He sat still in the bracken, and hoped that the other rabbits wouldn't
notice.

"I don't want to!" he said again.

But the wild rabbits have very sharp eyes. And this one stretched out his neck and looked.

"He hasn't got any hind legs!" he called out. "Fancy a rabbit without any hind legs!" And he began to
laugh.

"I have!" cried the little Rabbit. "I have got hind legs! I am sitting on them!"

"Then stretch them out and show me, like this!" said the wild rabbit. And he began to whirl round and
dance, till the little Rabbit got quite dizzy.

"I don't like dancing," he said. "I'd rather sit still!"

But all the while he was longing to dance, for a funny new tickly feeling ran through him, and he felt he
would give anything in the world to be able to jump about like these rabbits did.

The strange rabbit stopped dancing, and came quite close. He came so close this time that his long
whiskers brushed the Velveteen Rabbit's ear, and then he wrinkled his nose suddenly and flattened his
ears and jumped backwards.

"He doesn't smell right!" he exclaimed. "He isn't a rabbit at all! He isn't real!"

"I am Real!" said the little Rabbit. "I am Real! The Boy said so!" And he nearly began to cry.

Just then there was a sound of footsteps, and the Boy ran past near them, and with a stamp of feet and a
flash of white tails the two strange rabbits disappeared.

"Come back and play with me!" called the little Rabbit. "Oh, do come back! I know I am Real!"

But there was no answer, only the little ants ran to and fro, and the bracken swayed gently where the two
strangers had passed. The Velveteen Rabbit was all alone.

"Oh, dear!" he thought. "Why did they run away like that? Why couldn't they stop and talk to me?"

For a long time he lay very still, watching the bracken, and hoping that they would come back. But they
never returned, and presently the sun sank lower and the little white moths fluttered out, and the Boy
came and carried him home.

Weeks passed, and the little Rabbit grew very old and shabby, but the Boy loved him just as much. He
loved him so hard that he loved all his whiskers off, and the pink lining to his ears turned grey, and his
brown spots faded. He even began to lose his shape, and he scarcely looked like a rabbit any more, except
to the Boy. To him he was always beautiful, and that was all that the little Rabbit cared about. He didn't
mind how he looked to other people, because the nursery magic had made him Real, and when you are
Real shabbiness doesn't matter.

And then, one day, the Boy was ill.

His face grew very flushed, and he talked in his sleep, and his little body was so hot that it burned the
Rabbit when he held him close. Strange people came and went in the nursery, and a light burned all night
and through it all the little Velveteen Rabbit lay there, hidden from sight under the bedclothes, and he
never stirred, for he was afraid that if they found him some one might take him away, and he knew that
the Boy needed him.
It was a long weary time, for the Boy was too ill to play, and the little Rabbit found it rather dull with
nothing to do all day long. But he snuggled down patiently, and looked forward to the time when the Boy
should be well again, and they would go out in the garden amongst the flowers and the butterflies and
play splendid games in the raspberry thicket like they used to. All sorts of delightful things he planned,
and while the Boy lay half asleep he crept up close to the pillow and whispered them in his ear. And
presently the fever turned, and the Boy got better. He was able to sit up in bed and look at picture-books,
while the little Rabbit cuddled close at his side. And one day, they let him get up and dress.

It was a bright, sunny morning, and the windows stood wide open. They had carried the Boy out on to the
balcony, wrapped in a shawl, and the little Rabbit lay tangled up among the bedclothes, thinking.

The Boy was going to the seaside to-morrow. Everything was arranged, and now it only remained to carry
out the doctor's orders. They talked about it all, while the little Rabbit lay under the bedclothes, with just
his head peeping out, and listened. The room was to be disinfected, and all the books and toys that the
Boy had played with in bed must be burnt.

"Hurrah!" thought the little Rabbit. "To-morrow we shall go to the seaside!" For the boy had often talked
of the seaside, and he wanted very much to see the big waves coming in, and the tiny crabs, and the sand
castles.

Just then Nana caught sight of him.

"How about his old Bunny?" she asked.

"That?" said the doctor. "Why, it's a mass of scarlet fever germs!–Burn it at once. What? Nonsense! Get
him a new one. He mustn't have that any more!"

And so the little Rabbit was put into a sack with the old picture-books and a lot of rubbish, and carried out
to the end of the garden behind the fowl-house. That was a fine place to make a bonfire, only the gardener
was too busy just then to attend to it. He had the potatoes to dig and the green peas to gather, but next
morning he promised to come quite early and burn the whole lot.

That night the Boy slept in a different bedroom, and he had a new bunny to sleep with him. It was a
splendid bunny, all white plush with real glass eyes, but the Boy was too excited to care very much about
it. For to-morrow he was going to the seaside, and that in itself was such a wonderful thing that he could
think of nothing else.

And while the Boy was asleep, dreaming of the seaside, the little Rabbit lay among the old picture-books
in the corner behind the fowl-house, and he felt very lonely. The sack had been left untied, and so by
wriggling a bit he was able to get his head through the opening and look out. He was shivering a little, for
he had always been used to sleeping in a proper bed, and by this time his coat had worn so thin and
threadbare from hugging that it was no longer any protection to him. Near by he could see the thicket of
raspberry canes, growing tall and close like a tropical jungle, in whose shadow he had played with the
Boy on bygone mornings. He thought of those long sunlit hours in the garden–how happy they were–and
a great sadness came over him. He seemed to see them all pass before him, each more beautiful than the
other, the fairy huts in the flower-bed, the quiet evenings in the wood when he lay in the bracken and the
little ants ran over his paws; the wonderful day when he first knew that he was Real. He thought of the
Skin Horse, so wise and gentle, and all that he had told him. Of what use was it to be loved and lose one's
beauty and become Real if it all ended like this? And a tear, a real tear, trickled down his little shabby
velvet nose and fell to the ground.

And then a strange thing happened. For where the tear had fallen a flower grew out of the ground, a
mysterious flower, not at all like any that grew in the garden. It had slender green leaves the colour of
emeralds, and in the centre of the leaves a blossom like a golden cup. It was so beautiful that the little
Rabbit forgot to cry, and just lay there watching it. And presently the blossom opened, and out of it there
stepped a fairy.

She was quite the loveliest fairy in the whole world. Her dress was of pearl and dew-drops, and there
were flowers round her neck and in her hair, and her face was like the most perfect flower of all. And she
came close to the little Rabbit and gathered him up in her arms and kissed him on his velveteen nose that
was all damp from crying.

"Little Rabbit," she said, "don't you know who I am?"

The Rabbit looked up at her, and it seemed to him that he had seen her face before, but he couldn't think
where.

"I am the nursery magic Fairy," she said. "I take care of all the playthings that the children have loved.
When they are old and worn out and the children don't need them any more, then I come and take them
away with me and turn them into Real."
"Wasn't I Real before?" asked the little Rabbit.

"You were Real to the Boy," the Fairy said, "because he loved you. Now you shall be Real to every one."

And she held the little Rabbit close in her arms and flew with him into the wood.

It was light now, for the moon had risen. All the forest was beautiful, and the fronds of the bracken shone
like frosted silver. In the open glade between the tree-trunks the wild rabbits danced with their shadows
on the velvet grass, but when they saw the Fairy they all stopped dancing and stood round in a ring to
stare at her.

"I've brought you a new playfellow," the Fairy said. "You must be very kind to him and teach him all he
needs to know in Rabbit-land, for he is going to live with you for ever and ever!"

And she kissed the little Rabbit again and put him down on the grass.

"Run and play, little Rabbit!" she said.

But the little Rabbit sat quite still for a moment and never moved. For when he saw all the wild rabbits
dancing around him he suddenly remembered about his hind legs, and he didn't want them to see that he
was made all in one piece. He did not know that when the Fairy kissed him that last time she had changed
him altogether. And he might have sat there a long time, too shy to move, if just then something hadn't
tickled his nose, and before he thought what he was doing he lifted his hind toe to scratch it.

And he found that he actually had hind legs! Instead of dingy velveteen he had brown fur, soft and shiny,
his ears twitched by themselves, and his whiskers were so long that they brushed the grass. He gave one
leap and the joy of using those hind legs was so great that he went springing about the turf on them,
jumping sideways and whirling round as the others did, and he grew so excited that when at last he did
stop to look for the Fairy she had gone.

He was a Real Rabbit at last, at home with the other rabbits.

Autumn passed and Winter, and in the Spring, when the days grew warm and sunny, the Boy went out to
play in the wood behind the house. And while he was playing, two rabbits crept out from the bracken and
peeped at him. One of them was brown all over, but the other had strange markings under his fur, as
though long ago he had been spotted, and the spots still showed through. And about his little soft nose and
his round black eyes there was something familiar, so that the Boy thought to himself:

"Why, he looks just like my old Bunny that was lost when I had scarlet fever!"

But he never knew that it really was his own Bunny, come back to look at the child who had first helped
him to be Real.
 Eve to Her Daughters

It was not I who began it.

Turned out into drafty caves,
hungry so often, having to work for our bread,
hearing the children whining,
I was nevertheless not unhappy.
Where Adam went I was fairly contented to go.
I adapted myself to the punishment: it was my life.

But Adam, you know…!

He kept brooding over the insult,
over the trick They had played on us, over the scolding.
He had discovered a flaw in himself
and he had to make up for it.

Outside Eden the earth was imperfect,

the seasons changed, the game was flee-footed,
he had to work for our living, and he didn’t like it.
He even complained of my cooking
(it was hard to compete with Heaven).

So he set to work.
The earth must be made a new Eden
with central heating, domesticated animals,
mechanical harvesters, combustion engines,
escalators, refrigerators,
and modern means of communication
and multiplied opportunities for safe investment
and higher education for Abel and Cain
and the rest of the family.
You can see how his pride had been hurt.

In the process he had to unravel everything,

because he believed that mechanism
was the whole secret—he was always mechanical-minded.
He got to the very inside of the whole machine
exclaiming as he went, So this is how it works!
And now that I know how it works, why, I must have invented it.
As for God and the Other, they cannot be demonstrated,
and what cannot be demonstrated
doesn’t exist.
You see, he had always been jealous.

Yes, he got to the center

where nothing at all can be demonstrated.
And clearly he doesn’t exist; but he refuses
to accept the conclusion
You see, he was always an egoist.

It was warmer than this in the cave;

there was none of this fall-out.
I would suggest, for the sake of the children,
that it’s time you took over.

But you are my daughters, you inherit my own faults of character;

you are submissive, following Adam
even beyond existence.
Faults of character have their own logic
and it always works out.
I observed this with Abel and Cain.

Perhaps the whole elaborate fable

right from the beginning
is meant to demonstrate this; perhaps it’s the whole secret.
Perhaps nothing exists but our faults?
At least they can be demonstrated.

But it’s useless to make

such a suggestion to Adam.
He has turned himself into God,
who is faultless, and doesn’t exist.
 Sonnet Xvii- Pablo Neruda

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.

How do I love thee?

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.
I love thee to the level of everyday's
Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.
I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;
I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.
I love thee with a passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints, --- I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life! --- and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.