Ante el velo de la noche se manifiestan los espíritus, y del cielo bajan las memorias de lo que alguna vez nos habitó. Hoy honramos la esencia de la noche y te compartimos algunos versos y piezas esenciales para celebrar la oscuridad.
Amor fantasma
The Hour and the Ghost, Christina Rossetti (1860)
O love, love, hold me fast,
He draws me away from thee;
I cannot stem the blast,
Nor the cold strong sea:
Far away a light shines
Beyond the hills and pines;
It is lit for me.
Bridegroom
I have thee close, my dear,
No terror can come near;
Only far off the northern light shines clear.
Ghost
Come with me, fair and false,
To our home, come home.
It is my voice that calls:
Once thou wast not afraid
When I woo’d, and said,
‘Come, our nest is newly made’—
Now cross the tossing foam.
Bride
Hold me one moment longer!
He taunts me with the past,
His clutch is waxing stronger;
Hold me fast, hold me fast.
He draws me from thy heart,
And I cannot withhold:
He bids my spirit depart
With him into the cold:—
Oh bitter vows of old!
Bridegroom
Lean on me, hide thine eyes:
Only ourselves, earth and skies,
Are present here: be wise.
Ghost
Lean on me, come away,
I will guide and steady:
Come, for I will not stay:
Come, for house and bed are ready.
Ah sure bed and house,
For better and worse, for life and death,
Goal won with shortened breath!
Come, crown our vows.
Bride
One moment, one more word,
While my heart beats still,
While my breath is stirred
By my fainting will.
O friend, forsake me not,
Forget not as I forgot:
But keep thy heart for me,
Keep thy faith true and bright;
Through the lone cold winter night
Perhaps I may come to thee.
Bridegroom
Nay peace, my darling, peace:
Let these dreams and terrors cease:
Who spoke of death or change or aught but ease?
Ghost
O fair frail sin,
O poor harvest gathered in!
Thou shalt visit him again
To watch his heart grow cold:
To know the gnawing pain
I knew of old;
To see one much more fair
Fill up the vacant chair,
Fill his heart, his children bear;
While thou and I together,
In the outcast weather,
Toss and howl and spin.
Cuerpo espectro
One need not be a Chamber — to be Haunted—, Emily Dickinson (1863)
One need not be a Chamber — to be Haunted—
One need not be a House —
The Brain has Corridors — surpassing
Material Place —
Far safer, of a Midnight Meeting
External Ghost
Than its interior Confronting —
That Cooler Host.
Far safer, through an Abbey gallop,
The Stones a’chase —
Than Unarmed, one’s a’self encounter —
In lonesome Place —
Ourself behind ourself, concealed —
Should startle most —
Assassin hid in our Apartment
Be Horror’s least.
The Body — borrows a Revolver —
He bolts the Door —
O’erlooking a superior spectre —
Or More —
Miradora del tiempo
Ex Libris, Eleanor Wilner (1997)
By the stream, where the ground is soft
and gives, under the slightest pressure—even
the fly would leave its footprint here
and the paw of the shrew the crescent
of its claws like the strokes of a chisel
in clay; where the lightest chill, lighter
than the least rumor of winter, sets the reeds
to a kind of speaking, and a single drop of rain
leaves a crater to catch the first silver
glint of sun when the clouds slide away
from each other like two tired lovers,
and the light returns, pale, though brightened
by the last chapter of late autumn:
copper, rusted oak, gold aspen, and the red
pages of maple, the wind leafing through to the end
the annals of beech, the slim volumes
of birch, the elegant script of the ferns …
for the birds, it is all
notations for a coda, for the otter
an invitation to the river,
and for the deer—a dream
in which to disappear, light-footed
on the still open book of earth,
adding the marks of their passage,
adding it all in, waiting only
for the first thick flurry of snowflakes
for cover, soft cover that carries
no title, no name.