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The
Literary Shelf
Amaru – The Lyric
Poet – 2
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 No one has dared to speak of you to me since you went away. But I have
said your name to the wind as he passed me, and to a certain man as he lay
dying. If you are alive, O my mistress, the wind will some day meet you as
he passes, and if you are dead, the dead man will tell you I have not
forgotten.
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My thirst has redoubled since first I drank her lips. Nor am I astonished.
There was much salt in that kissing.
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I told you that I knew how to make you happy. I said the very old words
which put a woman’s fears to sleep. Now your tears smile at me as a child
smiles at a dream.
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Why have you no pity for my love? The stars do not disdain the sea. They
can admire themselves in it.
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She is alive no more, and the flowers still appear. O Death, now that you
have got this girl how can you find time to go on killing?
Amaru's Verses on Women in Love:
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See how his violence has
dispersed my powder of sandal; I spread it with so much art upon my breasts!
See how tired my lips are still, and how the down of the couch has been
soiled beyond all cleansing, and this veil torn in pieces!
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‘He sleeps, sleep now in your
turn,’ said my women, and they left me. Then, in a drunken fit of love, I
brushed the cheek of my young bridegroom with my lips. I felt him tremble,
and saw that he had only pretended. I was ashamed at the time, but soon I
groaned with happiness.
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Sometimes you can be so fair, O
day; O night, so desolate. Sometimes so sweet, O night; so torturing, O day.
If he means never to come back, I wish you were both dead.
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I write this letter by the
sufficient moonlight. My friends have called me, but I preferred to stay in
this room since it is full of you. I am still weeping. I looked into the
garden, and the shadow of a leaf of the bamboo wrote out an unknown word on
the blue sand. It may have been your name.
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I take a long time in carefully
giving a severe fold to my eyebrows, and know how to harden my looks. I am
an expert in correcting smiles. When my companions rally me, I fasten an
absolute silence upon myself. When my heart is like to break, I tighten my
girdle (waistband). But the success of these things is in the hands of God.
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O night, you have often come to
me softly and covered my face when it was weeping. A nectar glistens in my
cup this evening, and my lover lies upon my breast. Stay with me as long as
you will tonight, O night.
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If you remember my kisses, say my
name once very softly as you crush your mistress.
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She teaches me all her secrets:
that it is better to soak our cheek-betel in snow water, that the powdered
root of lemon-grass brightens our teeth, that nothing is better than the
juice of green strawberries to reaffirm our breasts; but not how to forget a
door I wept outside all night.
– Continued
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