A Casa ...

Detail ...
Originally uploaded by Berta...

Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer

Rima LXXXIV. Tu voz es el aliento de las flores...

A Casta

Tu voz es el aliento de las flores,
tu voz es de los cisnes la armonía;
es tu mirada el esplendor del día,
y el color de la rosa es tu color.

Tú prestas nueva vida y esperanza
a un corazón para el amor ya muerto:
tú creces de mi vida en el desierto
como crece en un páramo la flor.


Rhyme LXXXIV. Your voice is the breath of flowers...

To Chastity

Your voice is the breath of flowers,
your voice is the harmony of swans;
the splendor of the day is your glance,
and the color of roses is your color.

You lend new life and hope
to a heart that already died for love:
you grow in the desert of my life
like a flower on a bleak plateau.

Translated by H. Landman

Thanks to Londeswein

Old Tulips on Old Paper ...

Old Tulips on Old Paper ...
Originally uploaded by Berta...

Silvia Plath
Tulips (fragments)

...Nobody watched me before, now I am watched.
The tulips turn to me, and the window behind me
Where once a day the light slowly widens and slowly thins,
And I see myself, flat, ridiculous, a cut-paper shadow
Between the eye of the sun and the eyes of the tulips,
And I hve no face, I have wanted to efface myself.
The vivid tulips eat my oxygen.

Before they came the air was calm enough,
Coming and going, breath by breath, without any fuss.
Then the tulips filled it up like a loud noise.
Now the air snags and eddies round them the way a river
Snags and eddies round a sunken rust-red engine.
They concentrate my attention, that was happy
Playing and resting without committing itself.

The walls, also, seem to be warming themselves.
The tulips should be behind bars like dangerous animals;
They are opening like the mouth of some great African cat,
And I am aware of my heart: it opens and closes
Its bowl of red blooms out of sheer love of me.
The water I taste is warm and salt, like the sea,
And comes from a country far away as health.

Thanks to Londeswein