Poem for Friday

Soneto de la Noche LXXXIX
By Pablo Neruda

Cuando yo muera quiero tus manos en mis ojos:
quiero la luz y el trigo de tus manos amadas
pasar una vez más sobre mí su frescura:
sentir la suavidad que cambió mi destino.

Quiero que vivas mientras yo, dormido, te espero,
quiero que tus oídos sigan oyendo el viento,
que huelas el aroma del mar que amamos juntos
y que sigas pisando la arena que pisamos.

Quiero que lo que amo siga vivo
y a ti te amé y canté sobre todas las cosas,
por eso sigue tú floreciendo, florida,

para que alcances todo lo que mi amor te ordena,
para que se pasee mi sombra por tu pelo,
para que así conozcan la razón de mi canto.

When I die, I want your hands on my eyes:
I want the light and the wheat of your beloved hands
to pass their freshness over me once more:
I want to feel the softness that changed my destiny.

I want you to live while I wait for you, asleep.
I want your ears still to hear the wind, I want you
to sniff the sea's aroma that we loved together,
to continue to walk on the sand we walk on.

I want what I love to continue to live,
and you whom I love and sang above everything else
to continue to flourish, full-flowered:

so that you can reach everything my love directs you to,
so that my shadow can travel along in your hair,
so that everything can learn the reason for my song.

--------

Another poem from who tells me that composer Morten Lauridsen has set Neruda, Rilke, and Agee to music as a set of three pieces that flow into each other.

Thursday morning we drove to Columbus, Ohio by way of West Virginia, reading Susan Cooper and watching Valiant in the car. We had lunch at Columbus' Deaf School Park Topiary Garden, in which bushes have been trimmed and wrapped around wire in the shapes of the figures from Georges Seurat's Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte. There is also a flower garden there with water and lily pads in the style of those painted by Monet.

Then we went to the Columbus Zoo. It was nearly 100 degrees, with stifling humidity, and I had a raging headache within half an hour. We went to see the penguins, of course, which were outdoors and being fed by a marine biologist who told us about the two new babies; then we went to see the reptile house and the manatees, both of which thankfully were indoors. We saw several other animals in the Australia exhibit including a baby koala bear and kangaroos, and took refuge in a terrific exhibit on nocturnal animals in a very dark building where there were active kiwis, bats, geckos, some kind of small leopard and several rodents. By the time we had made it to the gibbons, the sky was turning very dark, so we started to head back toward the front of the zoo.

Columbus proceeded to be hammered by one of the worst thunderstorms I have ever experienced, which we watched from inside the zoo gift shop along with many other damp refugees. I thought that perhaps Ohio typically has more impressive storms than we've had on the east coast or Chicago, where the hills and water tend to hamper the severity somewhat, but apparently this one was a big deal even by local standards and northern Ohio declared a state of emergency after severe flooding. When we finally escaped (into rain and temperatures which thankfully had dropped nearly 20 degrees), we arrived at our hotel to learn that the cable was out and there were reports of uprooted trees and downed power lines. So we had a quiet evening in the hotel making microwave chili and reading.


One of the manatees at the Columbus Zoo chows down on a head of romaine lettuce. They eat for more than eight hours a day.


The manatees and rays share space in the aquarium exhibit.


A marine biologist feeds the African penguins at the Columbus Zoo, making this hungry bird happy...


...as well as the parents of this baby penguin, which may be as big as they are but was just born this year and is not yet eating fish on its own.


The daddy penguin regurgitates fish for the baby.


The baby koala on its mother's back.


The Deaf School Park Topiary Garden, where the bushes are trimmed in the shapes...


...of figures from Georges Seurat's Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte.

I am still utterly fried from the heat and haven't made a dent in e-mail, comments, etc. and will be no better tomorrow as we are going to the replica of the Santa Maria and the Star Wars exhibit at the science center before going to Cincinnati to meet . Sorry! But we are getting to see lots!