ABELARD AND HELOISE Poem by Orietta Lozano

He said: I am yours,
I am the son and father of us two
and I look for you among the rocks and the fish,
in the four corners
of your devotion and your wrath.
I do not forget you,
time is an unrepeatable sphinx,
the seventh hungry, wakeful eye,
the infinite look of love,
and at night we shall look at each other
in the mirror of the night,
and during the day
in the water of days.

She said: don't give me anything,
just take from me the sign and leprosy of oblivion,
I will join you slowly, cautiously,
as when I feed the fire
with branches, species, spirals,
and I withdraw to the top of the flame
to contemplate the consumption of everything.
Treat me with the hour in which calm
survives after the raging tempest.

He said: I am yours
and in the senses
of contemplation and of the flesh,
I shall surely give you my small sapphire Christ,
a trifle and the first tree on Earth,
a void
and the language spoken
by those who lose the sense of time.
Let me see the sunset
through your look,
that petrifies, that fixes,
that does not remember.

She said: do not give me anything,
just forget me,
because in oblivion
is the essence of memory,
of the beginning,
in your oblivion you come near to me,
you encroach upon me and defeat me
and vanquished at last
I penetrate, untouchable, softly
in the darkest crack
you light for me.
Trembling and devoid of haste
come back and touch the wound of my rain
with the tips of your fingers,
and do try not to come
with the painful apparel of guilt,
with the original tattoo of the sentence,
do not leave and come soon
like the wind softly galloping
on the back of the waters.
Mix me in the water of your God
draw it and drink it and retain it forever
at the time of your thirst.

He said: I am the father of the son you've never seen,
I am the son in the bowels of the Earth
and after possessing nothing and being lost
I am the fugitive, your eternal friend.
That you be saved, my eternal friend
from the overflowing water in the sea of your affliction;
you forever the most unknown,
and new in my memory.

She said: let nothing save me,
except the thorn of pain
already trembling and always
in the thorn of my back,
except the pain where the alchemy
of my longing lies.
Become one with the father and the son,
become one with God,
and, omnipresent, being in your abode,
present yourself in my dwelling.
Sit at the table and drink of my wine
and sometime, drunk, tear up the tremor
of your flesh in the crossroads of my body.

He said: I will join you slowly,
you deranged girl,
taking in my words the prayer of foolishness,
and like before and now and already forever
I tremble in the crossroads of your flesh.
Being with them I am with you
and like water and oil
my thought is divided;
and after touching and seizing you
there will not be another, no other
anointed in my memory.

She said: hurry for my body does not hold out,
and even though I usually smell the ointment of the anointed one
innocence is not enough for me
nor the ascent of your desire
toward the arch of the skies.