espesura de besos

 a thicket of kisses 

 

    Variación

       Federico García Lorca

     El remanso del aire

     bajo la rama del eco.

     El remanso del agua

     bajo fronda de luceros.

     El remanso de tu boca

     bajo espesura de besos.

My Spanish isn’t very good – that’s an understatement – but I feel as if I almost understand this little poem which avers there are still waters, a haven, a safe harbor underneath, or behind or within, quite dangerous things: a multiplication of echoes, a dazzle of stars, a thicket of kisses.

I wish the poem were more first-person, if that makes sense, the last verse

     El remanso de mi boca

     bajo espesura de tus besos.

Garcia Lorca, El Beso

I am remembering a time a girl I had been dating – we met for a movie, because we had stopped and were seeing other people. Then, afterward, down the street from the theater, in the dark around a corner, she turned and rocked to her toes and kissed me so hard our teeth knocked together. How many quiet times beneath – or since – that kiss I have thought of it?
      And how many times when I have thought about it, have I wondered when desire for that kind of desire, passion that knocks people’s teeth together so they hurt or creates a thicket of rough kisses between their lips – when did desire for that kind of desire go out of my life? I usually think immediately (even now when I am almost sixty), “No. That’s not right.” Because the desire for desire remains. It’s the foolish spirit to sneak away and to look for it around a dark corner; that’s what we decided one clear, earnestly sober day to misplace with a sad but relieved sigh.

     Because we had become unconvinced that there is un remanso beneath desire’s danger to catch us when we fall.

04.06.17