The Eternal (Florit)
The Eternal, by Eugenio Florit (1903-1999)
You didn’t know that the sea with its colors
–green, yellow, blue, gray, black,lunar —
would come to possess you forever.
Its rocky shore
so much yesterday, so far away,
saw you enter into its love when it was tame
enclosed in its circle of harsh mountains,
and saw you upon it headed west.
Like blood it was going with you. Intimate voices
of conch shells sounded
in your ears and then fell silent.
The sea of sands was arriving later
under the terrible light of the tropics. Terrible
light, and so gentle in the evening. Fearsome at night
when the dark seems ghostly.
Forever. Until now where once it passed
it remains in absence
as a memory, a flying albatross
coming and going on breezes and distances.
A single memory and the exact presence
of its being, existing, living, beating where it always had.
Unmoored, you had to return to it;
absent, to go back in memory;
dead, when you may be, on an eternal voyage,
and be, yes, to be above all like the light that slips away
and in waves of color catches its kiss.