Follow your own road without fearing you’ll lose me. You will find me when you return, even if you’re a thousand years late.

Since your weak and you let life push you around, go wherever it pulls you. Why struggle if you’ll only struggle in vain.

I will be strong for you. I will build a mountain with your failures and sit atop the peak waiting for you.

Don’t worry. The night won’t frighten me and the cold won’t drive me away. There is no winter as cold as my winter, no night as deep as my night. I myself freeze the wind. I myself darken the sky.

Follow your road. While I wait for you. I will be immovable. Like a boulder. Or better yet. Like a tree (cross) clutching the earth with a savage fury.

‘Absolute Solitude’ Dulce Maria Loynaz

XVII

I know you were afraid last night. I saw you turn toward the wall trembling with fear.

It was the darkest part of the night. The wind had died down and the clock with the broken minute hand began to tick and every second was absurd.

I saw you push the lamp against the wall. I saw your hands shaking and your fingers quivering. I heard the gnashing of your teeth and the labored galloping of your heart.

And now you come to me with a look of strength and purity, and with magnificent gestures and a newborn smile, you speak to me of life, and you have never spoken so wisely.

But last night, before the smile and before the gestures, I know you were afraid.

Poetry prose by Dulce Maria Loynaz

My blood is like a river that brings me landscapes both reflected and erased, landscapes from other shores I have never seen.

It is like a long, mysterious river I feel flowing within me and whose name I shall ignore.

It comes from a depth so remote I am afraid to look into it. It goes I know not where, and meanwhile, passes like a river dragging sand, flowers, and remnants of me myself, prisoner of a flow without meaning.

Dulce Maria Loynaz

I know you were afraid last night. I saw you turn toward the wall trembling with fear.

It was the darkest part of the night. The wind had died down and the clock with the broken minute hand began to tick and every second was absurd.

I saw you push the lamp against the wall. I saw your hands shaking and your fingers quivering. I heard the gnashing of your teeth and the labored galloping of your heart.

And now you come to me with a look of strength and purity, and with magnificent gestures and a newborn smile, you speak to me of life, and you have never spoken so wisely.

But last night, before the smile and before the gestures, I know you were afraid.

Poetry prose by Dulce Maria Loynaz

Poetry prose by Dulce Maria Loynaz from the collection ‘Absolute Solitude’

Like this river that keeps running although it will never arrive anywhere, I chose life, my love, running toward you (Christ).

Running toward you along a path that was always longer than my water, even though my water never ended and it was my heart pushing it along.

I have lived my death and I have died my life in your direction, feeling my way through darkness, confusing faces.

Like this river. Yes, like this slow, blind river that can’t stop or turn back or break away from the rock from which it was born.

The distance of a river has been our distance, the river that never ends, even if I walk, day and night, my entire life.