Unrequited Love

Lately, I've been thinking a lot about unrequited love and the poetry of regret. In terms of poetry, such topics are deep, deep wells from which to draw. I've often found myself tranfixed on literature--poetry and prose--bearing some kind nod to regret, genuine angst, and loss, and lately my own work has taken on darker and more emotionally bald renderings of abject longing and unbridled remorse.

One of my favorite poems touching on this topic is Neruda's "White Bee."

Please to enjoy.

"White Bee"
By Pablo Neruda

White bee, you buzz in my soul, drunk with honey,
and your flight winds in slow spirals of smoke.

I am the one without hope, the word without echoes,
he who lost everything and he who had everything.

Last hawser, in you creaks my last longing.
In my barren land you are the final rose.

Ah you who are silent!

Let your deep eyes close. There the night flutters.
Ah your body, a frightened statue, naked.

You have deep eyes in which the night flails.
Cool arms of flowers and a lap of rose.

Your breasts seem like white snails.
A butterfly of shadow has come to sleep on your belly.

Ah you who are silent!

Here is the solitude from which you are absent.
It is raining. The sea wind is hunting stray gulls.

The water walks barefoot in the wet streets.
From that tree the leaves complain as though they were sick.

White bee, even when you are gone you buzz in my soul.
You live again in time, slender and silent.

Ah, you who are silent!