SUNDAY POETRY: "PREGUNTAS HERMOSAS"

Preguntas Hermosas from S�perfad is a bittersweet animated pas de deux of poetry. From the Vimeo description:

Preguntas Hermosas is a story about a time that was shared between two people, told through a combination of Poema X by Pablo Neruda and Under the Harvest Moon by Carl Sandburg.  It unfolds in three parts; a fond remembrance, loss, and then finally acceptance.

Night Sea, Edward Gindin

Forthwith, the two poems. Since I can't find the Spanish text of the Neruda online, and since someone has borrowed my Neruda and not yet returned it, Poema X is presented here in an interestingly Googlemangled translation, found online.

POEMA X

WE HAVE LOST EVEN THIS TWILIGHT...

Pablo Neruda

We have lost even this twilight. No one saw us this evening hand in hand
while the blue night dropped on the world.
I have seen from my window
the fiesta of sunset in the distant hills.
Sometimes as a coin
lit a piece of sun in my hands. I remembered you with my soul clenched
in that sadness of mine that you know.
So, where were you?
Who else was there?
Saying what?
Why all the love I will suddenly
feel when I am sad and far away?
The book that always closed at dusk fell,
and rolled like a hurt dog at my feet my cloak.
Always, always you recede through the evenings
toward the twilight-erasing statues. 

(By brentbat on Flickr.)

UNDER THE HARVEST MOON

Carl Sandburg

Under the harvest moon,
When the soft silver
Drips shimmering
Over the garden nights,
Death, the gray mocker,
Comes and whispers to you
As a beautiful friend
Who remembers.

Under the summer roses
When the flagrant crimson
Lurks in the dusk
Of the wild red leaves,
Love, with little hands,
Comes and touches you
With a thousand memories,
And asks you
Beautiful, unanswerable questions.

(Image from here.)

On Father's Day, in memory of my father, the melancholic poetry-loving Tasmanian engineer. In remembrance of Ian's dad, mostly disappeared from Alzheimer's.