GARCIA VILLA, José


Pastorale

We can love well. This

I can tell.
Her eyes

O they were dark,

her hair O as the

very dark.

Birdley cooed she

Birdly o birdly

to me.

Leafly her mouth

folded to a kiss,

leafly
O leafly in bliss.

But it was this

told me

how much I was

loved: so fairly,

so fairly

fell she to a sleep,

to a sleep –

bird of

love my name

on her lips.

First, a poem must be magical,

First, a poem must be magical,

Then musical as a sea-gull.

It must be a brightness moving

And hold secret a bird's flowering.

It must be slender as a bell,

And it must hold fire as well.

It must have the wisdom of bows

And it must kneel like a rose.

It must be able to hear

The luminance of dove and deer.

It must be able to hide

What it seeks, like a bride.

And over all I would like to hover

God, smiling from the poem's cover.


Lyric 17

I can no more hear Love’s

Voice. No more moves

The mouth of her. Birds

No more sing. Words

I speak return lonely.

Flowers I pick turn ghostly.

Fire that I burn glows

Pale. No more blows

The wind. Time tells

No more truth. Bells

Ring no more in me.

I am all alone singly.

Lonely rests my head.

—O my God! I am dead.

Lyric 57

My most. My most. O my lost!

O my bright, my ineradicable ghost.

At whose bright coast God seeks

Shelter and is lost is lost. O

Coast of Brightness. O cause of

Grief. O rose of purest grief.

O thou in my breast so stark and

Holy-bright. O thou melancholy

Light. Me. Me. My own perfidy.

O my most my most, O the bright

The beautiful the terrible Accost.

I shall talk to you

I shall talk to you through trees,

through the arms of dancers,

through sweet words uttered by many lovers.

The arms of dancers round you shall be my arms.

The eyes of men admiring you shall be my eyes.

I have many arms, many eyes.

It is that, loving you, I have become many lovers


In my desire to be Nude

In my desire to be Nude

I clothed myself in fire: —

Burned down my walls, my roof,

Burned all these down.

Emerged myself supremely lean

Unsheathed like a holy knife.

With only His Hand to find

To hold me beyond annul.

And found Him found Him found Him

Found the Hand to hold me up!

He held me like a burning poem

And waved me all over the world.


Invisible

My body is a bottle of white glass:

why has not somebody poured red whine into me

that I should become beautiful?

My body is a green leaf:

why have I not dried, that I should blow away

to infinity, with many winds?

Poem written beneath a blue lampshade

I speak this poem tenderly

It being for you And

For you only – We were not

Afraid and we did take love

Gorgeously.

We had no fears.

We knew love we knew it and

We were dancers for it And also

We were rivers, we were moonlight

And also we were winds As also

We were gods. And all this

Is remembrance, and all this

Is desire.

But also it is love.