It hurts me this longing for the shock of bodies wounding each other with tenderness it pains me that distant memory of your dress falling at our feet
It hurts me the longing for that time when I inhabited you like salt infusing the sea like light contracting the surprised pupils of the eyes
When will I be your shadow again, your desire your relentless nights your persistence, your need I am weak without you I was water, vegetal sap Now I’m a trembling droplet, an exposed root
My love bring again the clarity of water put my vagabond tenderness back to work dive your fingers into the spell of my chest and chase from my deepest cave the beasts that torment my sleep
The Portuguese title of Mia Couto’s poem, "Longing," is "Saudade," a word so freighted with meaning it’s almost untranslatable. Saudade means longing, but longing moistened with sweet nostalgia. Saudade also translates as yearning, missing someone, or homesickness. Those deep emotions are why saudade appears in so many Portuguese-language songs. In Couto’s intimate message of longing for a lover, the unpunctuated lines give the poem an urgent, breathless voice.
"Virtually no poetry in Donne’s hand survives. That’s why these manuscript copies are so important. It offers evidence as to how Donne’s poetry was written, copied and circulated, as well as helping to further shape our understanding of his audiences and patrons."
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"In difference to the traditional lyric model, where any 'inconsistencies' make the artwork suspect, Martell argues that it is these very rifts that open the poem up, throw the reader into a 'real' of artistic encounter. I would say that Olsson’s book is a 'rifted' lyric. It’s a lyric but it goes on too long, it confuses who is reader and who is writer, who is angel and who is human. It even confuses the angel with a dress worn as a teenager."
