Storms of Flour

True appreciation of everything another is is always rooted in everyday reality. That includes the depths of sensual love.

Today there was mention of flour flying (you know who you are), and it drew me to memory of a favorite poem--and a favorite image. The image in Neruda's sonnet is made sweeter by drawing in thoughts of domesticity. (It was written to his wife, Matilde Urrutia).

The wonder of love is that we ordinary mortals touch the universe through one another.

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Sonnet XII

Full woman, fleshly apple, hot moon,
thick smell of seaweed, crushed mud and light,
what obscure brilliance opens between your columns?
What ancient night does a man touch with his senses?

Loving is a journey with water and with stars,
with smothered air and abrupt storms of flour:
loving is a clash of lightning-bolts
and two bodies defeated by a single drop of honey.

Kiss by kiss I move across your small infinity,
your borders, your rivers, your tiny villages,
and the genital fire transformed into delight

runs through the narrow pathways of the blood
until it plunges down, like a dark carnation,
until it is and is no more than a flash in the night.


Pablo Neruda

Tactic and Strategy

I was doing some reading today and ran across this poem by Mario Benedetti, an Uraguayan poet. I had to smile as I read it. I saw myself. Did you?


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TACTIC AND STRATEGY

My tactic is
Looking at you,
Learning how you are,
Loving you as you are,
My tactic is
Talking to you
And listening to you
To build with words
An indestructible bridge
My tactic is
Remaining in your memories
I don't know how
Nor with which pretext
But remaining with you.
My tactic is
Being frank,
And knowing that you are frank,
And not selling each other
Simulations
So that between us
There is no curtain
Nor abyss.

My strategy is,
However,
Deeper and
Easier,
My strategy is
That one of these days
I don't know how
Nor with which pretext
You finally
Need me.


Mario Benedetti