The Sweetest Songs

As I drove to the airport on the morning of December 30th, the city was still asleep and the traffic was minimal. Because of these unusual factors, I was able to listen to the radio pretty intently. There is one particular piece that I heard on that morning that has stayed with me. I have thought of it often, and I think it might be one of the more beautiful stories that I have heard in quite some time.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6696483

Pablo Neruda is one of my favorite poets. Even in translation, his writing is haunting and sublime. His expressions of love are not filled with trite rhyme but are instead infused with a constant sense of longing, loss, and tenderness. He realizes that life is short and that true love is not. I cannot express it in any other fashion: I love these sonnets. Obviously, Peter Lieberman does, too.

The story of this couple moved me for so many reasons. First, they shared a common love of music and of art. Secondly, they truly loved each other and seemed to value each other's passions and talents. Their love was cut short, and hearing Peter Lieberson's cracking voice from his hospital room in Houston was enough to move me to tears. Few people find love like that. Even fewer have it for long.

"When I die, I want your hands on my eyes:
I want the light and wheat of your beloved hands
to pass their freshness over me once more:
I want to feel the softness that changed my destiny.

I want you to live while I wait for you, asleep.
I want your ears still to hear the wind, I want you
to sniff the sea's aroma that we loved together,
to continue to walk on the sand we walk on.

I want what I love to continue to live,
and you whom I love and sang above everything else
to continue to flourish, full-flowered:

so that you can reach everything my love directs you to.
so that my shadow can travel along in your hair,
so that everything can learn the reason for my song."

Pablo Neruda-