my love, my own (translation)

for ron w., the last man in my life

my man, i hate it when
we talk about death
i don't want to go there
to think about our leaving because
my life would be worth nothing without yours
comprised of so many beautiful things
too many to enumerate, without speaking of
the face i loved so much
and your boxes full to overflowing
with all your creations that speak to me:

the articles you cut out everyday
from the newspaper about transportation and bridges
ports and the Astoria that you adored
with its fishing boats rolling on
the great river Columbia, and then calm
without any movement, the seagulls crying
circling the cloudy sky of deep gray-black
but you were never sad when it rained
even in Paris when we traveled in the bad season

your hard drives full of toys to buy
you were always an enthousiast for childhood
your wooden planes you passed along to our grandson
but you had to keep all the trains and their rails
for the little village that you only dreamed of building
and the classic cars, old American Dames
or the Citroën 2cv that you loved
from your time in Paris with Marla
your first love back in the 70s
and in Barcelona you fell in love with Europe
but you lost your youth in the face of the traitor of
your heart when you chose another woman
then regretted your choice but too late, old man
you learned a lot of things during that adventure
and with me you were able to find your youth again
and the trains that went away
and the trains that come back

so many memory cards full of music
which i have no idea how to play or
on which machine of your techno genius
because you followed each innovation as if it were
the first time on your first instrument
but i would be able to hear all your songs
if i were to close my eyes in silence
the silence that you always sought in
in nature on the banks of the river
but that escaped you later due to tinnitus
how you suffered from that, in seeing
your pretty sounds become prickly things!
but you never stopped composing and perhaps
it was that which saved you in the end

i played your music one day in
the corridors of congress in the capital
many people approached me, asking
"what is that beautiful music?"
and i spoke of you and your talent for
hours and there was a joy in
that building decorated with gold without
anyone understanding what it denoted:
it was you, i asked myself
why you had never become famous
and then, that there was i time when you were
but that you avoided it now because
you didn't like ego and jazz like that

and then your photos taken
in all the seasons, you had
ecstasies and wounds that
that life gave you as you tried to
understand each facet, each gesture
and your videos and 16mm film cans
slides, box on box
of all the young years
and all your petite women
and you so beautiful and thin like you were
that beautiful day of summer when
when i made your acquaintance
almost boy, with your fat mustache
that you cut because it pinched my lips

you were always kind and gentle
with me the rock star who
could never stop talking
or crying about my bad luck
and you said, "but yes, it was true"
and lead me toward healing, you
and your strong arms that held me when
i was too broken to support myself
you rocked me in the night
when my tears flowed acid
until at last they froze
and i stopped crying
except someone else cry

you taught me to listen and your lessons
made of me what i could never hope
i could believe in the constancy of the stars
i would say later to someone, "you can believe
that tomorrow is another day and
each step you take to instruct yourself
makes you grow more than you know
and love is going to come just for you, for sure"

after you will be gone
i will see only a mountain of your work
at the summit of which i will be sitting,
and i believe i will not move anymore
because to move denotes something living
and after you will be gone, there will be no more of that
there will be only an enormous funeral pyre
and me at the interior: but no
there will be no fire either
because i will have to deliver you to the world
that will, like me before, have need of you
and your teeming boxes of pretty things
too many to enumerate