Breaking Up -- Yevgeny Yevtushenko

I fell out of love: that’s our story’s dull ending,
as flat as life is, as dull as the grave.
Excuse me—I’ll break off the string of this love song
and smash the guitar. We have nothing to save.
The puppy is puzzled. Our furry small monster
can’t decide why we complicate simple things so—
he whines at your door and I let him enter,
when he scratches at my door, you always go.
Dog, sentimental dog, you’ll surely go crazy,
running from one to the other like this—
too young to conceive of an ancient idea:
it’s ended, done with, over, kaput. Finis.
Get sentimental and we end up by playing
the old melodrama, “Salvation of Love.”
“Forgiveness,” we whisper, and hope for an echo;
but nothing returns from the silence above.
Better save love at the very beginning,
avoiding all passionate “nevers,” “forevers;”
we ought to have heard what the train wheels were shouting,
“Do not make promises!” Promises are levers.
We should have made note of the broken branches,
we should have looked up at the smoky sky,
warning the witless pretensions of lovers—
the greater the hope is, the greater the lie.
True kindness in love means staying quite sober,
weighing each link of the chain you must bear.
Don’t promise her heaven—suggest half an acre;
not “unto death,” but at least to next year.
And don’t keep declaring, “I love you, I love you.”
That little phrase leads a durable life—
when remembered again in some loveless hereafter,
it can sting like a hornet or stab like a knife.
So—our little dog in all his confusion
turns and returns from door to door.
I won’t say “forgive me” because I have left you;
I ask pardon for one thing: I loved you before.

--

A little bit too mercury-retrogradish, I know, but it's too beautiful not to re-post.

"If I should have a daughter" - Sarah Kay

"Baby," I'll tell her, "remember, your mama is a worrier, and your papa is a warrior, and you are the girl with small hands and big eyes who never stops asking for more."

A life of one's choosing

From the Book of Hours: 

I am too alone in the world, and yet not alone enough

to make every hour holy.

I am too small in the world, and yet not tiny enough

just to stand before you like a thing,

dark and shrewd.

I want my will, and I want to be with my will

as it moves towards deed;

and in those quiet, somehow hesitating times,

when something is approaching,

I want to be with those who are wise 

or else alone.

I want always to be a mirror that reflects your whole being,

and never to be too blind or too old 

to hold your heavy, swaying image.

I want to unfold.

Nowhere do I want to remain folded,

because where I am bent and folded, there I am lie.

And I want my meaning

true for you. I want to describe myself

like a painting that I studied

closely for a long, long time,

like a word I finally understood,

like the pitcher of water I use every day ,

like the face of my mother,

like a ship

that carried me

through the deadliest storm of all.

Rainer Maria Rilke

*Italics, mine.