Poetry

"You are fond of poetry", someone said to me the other day, almost accusingly.
Yes, I am. I love poetry almost as much as I love beautiful landscapes, pretty flowers or funny cloudshapes. No, I cannot explain how much I love poetry ("shall I count the ways?"). I don't think I love poetry, so much as I need it; needing it the way other people need caffeine or sugar.
And then, this morning, S posted a poem by Pablo Neruda on his page on another site. Reading that poem was like being punched in the solar plexus. Because, when my love affair with poetry began all those years ago, there was Pablo Neruda. Neruda, who strode across my young heart like an angel with flaming wings. His words, melancholic, sensuous, silken, lacerated me, caressed me. I soared with them on a magical flight on a moonlit night. Back then, I hadn't yet fallen in love. Through Neruda, I was to prepare myself for the ecstacy, the pain, the magic and the despair.....

And it was at that age ... Poetry arrived
in search of me. I don't know, I don't know where
it came from, from winter or a river.
I don't know how or when,
no they were not voices, they were not
words, nor silence,
but from a street I was summoned,
from the branches of night,
abruptly from the others,
among violent fires
or returning alone,
there I was without a face
and it touched me.

I did not know what to say, my mouth
had no way
with names,
my eyes were blind,
and something started in my soul,
fever or forgotten wings,
and I made my own way,
deciphering
that fire,
and I wrote the first faint line,
faint, without substance, pure
nonsense,
pure wisdom
of someone who knows nothing,
and suddenly I saw
the heavens
unfastened
and open,
planets,
palpitating plantations,
shadow perforated,
riddled
with arrows, fire and flowers,
the winding night, the universe.

And I, infinitesimal being,
drunk with the great starry
void,
likeness, image of
mystery,
felt myself a pure part
of the abyss,
I wheeled with the stars,
my heart broke loose on the wind.