You promised me poems

© 2024  José Pereira Torrejón. All rights reserved. No part of the content of this blog may be distributed, published or reproduced without prior authorization from the author.

Penance

My lover died a century ago,
Her dear heart stricken by my sland’rous breath,
Wherefore the Gods forbade that I should know
The peace of death.

Men pass my grave, and say, “‘Twere well to sleep,
Like such an one, amid the uncaring dead!”
How should they know the vigil that I keep,
The tears I shed?

Upon the grave, I count with lifeless breath,
Each night, each year, the flowers that bloom and die,
Deeming the leaves, that fall to dreamless death,
More blest than I.

 

‘Twas just last year—I heard two lovers pass
So near, I caught the tender words he said:
To-night the rain-drenched breezes sway the grass
Above his head.

That night full envious of his life was I,
That youth and love should stand at his behest;
To-night, I envy him, that he should lie
At utter rest.

John McCrae (1872 – 1918)

 

© 2023  José Pereira Torrejón. All rights reserved. No part of the content of this blog may be distributed, published or reproduced without prior authorization from the author.

While you Sleep

Your picture ignited a poem in me.
A brusque stirring of the soul,
a thunder, and then, finally,
the words came crashing down like rain.
Oblivious of the conquest your image achieved,
you sleep.
Will you answer my heart's muffled scream?
Will you meet me, in a dream?

José Pereira Torrejón

 

© 2023  José Pereira Torrejón. All rights reserved. No part of the content of this blog may be distributed, published or reproduced without prior authorization from the author.

Elegy for a lost Friend

Now that you're gone

There's nothing 

that I ever wanted more

than to feel you breathe 

just like before.

As the day turns into night

and the pale stars shine on me

I cannot shed 

this sense of dread

nor the shadows in my dreams.

I can not sleep, 

I can not rest, 

nor drown in tears, 

my soul's distress.

Please stay with me, 

don't go just yet

Just one more day, 

my dearest friend!

 

 

The silence screams 

with emptiness

It's getting light 

and you're not there.

Come back to me, 

my sweet old friend

Before the night 

is here again.

And the day turns into night

and the pale stars shine again

And I still can't shed off me

this abhorrent sense of dread.

José Pereira Torrejón

© 2023  José Pereira Torrejón. All rights reserved. No part of the content of this blog may be distributed, published or reproduced without prior authorization from the author.

 

 

Dear

"She will love well," I said,
"If love be of that heart inhabiter,
The flowers of the dead;
The red anemone that with no sound
Moves in the wind, and from another wound
That sprang, the heavily-sweet blue hyacinth,
That blossoms underground,
And sallow poppies, will be dear to her.

Extract from "Ode to Silence" by Edna St Vincent Millay (1892-1950) 

© 2023  José Pereira Torrejón. All rights reserved. No part of the content of this blog may be distributed, published or reproduced without prior authorization from the author.

Piu Avanti

 Don’t embrace defeat, even defeated,

Proceed like God, who never cries,
or like Lucifer, who never prays;
or be like the oak grove, whose grandeur
has need of water and won’t beg…

Extract from the poem "Piu Avanti," by Pedro Bonifacio Palacios (1854 – 1917)

 

 

© 2023  José Pereira Torrejón. All rights reserved. No part of the content of this blog may be distributed, published or reproduced without prior authorization from the author.

Consolation

He is not dead, this friend – not dead,
But in the path we mortals tread
Got some few trifling steps ahead
And nearer to the end;
So that you too, once past the bend,
Shall meet again, as face to face, this friend
You fancy dead.

Extract from "Consolation" by Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894) 

To you, because I care.

© 2023  José Pereira Torrejón. All rights reserved. No part of the content of this blog may be distributed, published or reproduced without prior authorization from the author.