Your Laughter - a poem for Dawn

I adapted this poem for my friend, Dawn Lunt, who passed in January 2017. The original Pablo Neruda Poem follows.

Your Laughter

For Dawn, after a poem by Pablo Neruda

January 30, 2017

You have taken a bit of light with you into the dark

Night of the universe

A bit of chocolate from our days

Salt from our stews –

Not bread, not air, for our lives go on –

Full and brisk and elemental

As seasons’ change.

But your laughter

Its echo

Its warmth

Lingers like candle smoke

The rose’s prick

The water’s chill

The salt in the caramel’s sweet –

The silver of your love

Ringing against our bell chamber hearts

That fill and empty again

As each wave of memory fills us with joy

And recedes into loss.

We do not struggle to honor you

To feel saturated with the light in which you lived your days

To see through your love-colored glasses

The changing earth

Our daily struggles

Our small triumphs of growth

And to feel again the gravity of your goodness

Your belief in the inevitability of our betterment

The impossible strength of your twisted hands.

And when we hear again your laugh

See the twinkle of your baby blues

In the brash vastness of the sky

The tap-dance of dew on the flagrant softness of petals

Your love enters again

Rising to seek the best in us

To open the doors of our belief in ourselves and the good we can do

To gouge beauty into us as water into canyons

Deep

Where only love can go.

Dawn, in this hour

When we listen for you

Your laughter opens

Us to life –

Its dark challenges

And extravagant blessings.

And if suddenly

You feel us lose hope,

Laugh, because your laughter

Will be for our hands

A fresh task

To weave love

Out of our life’s work

In all the ways we work –

Working together

And working to gather

The joy in each moment

As you did.

As you managed to do,

Right to the end.

Next to the volcanoes at sunrise,

Your laughter must raise

Its bubbly cascade,

And in the evening, Dawn,

We want your laughter like

The moment we were waiting for,

The quiet confirmation of the trick to your

Endless energy to add your light to the world,

Which echoes with the light of your love.

Laugh at the night,

At the day, at the moon,

Laugh at the congested

Streets of this city,

Laugh at these clumsy

Friends who love you,

But when we close our eyes

And open them,

When our steps go,

When our steps return,

Deny us chocolate,

Deny us salt,

Light, spring,

But never your laughter

For in that sound echoing in our ears

You will never die.

Your Laughter, Pablo Neruda

Take bread away from me, if you wish,
take air away, but
do not take from me your laughter.

Do not take away the rose,
the lance flower that you pluck,
the water that suddenly
bursts forth in joy,
the sudden wave
of silver born in you.

My struggle is harsh and I come back
with eyes tired
at times from having seen
the unchanging earth,
but when your laughter enters
it rises to the sky seeking me
and it opens for me all
the doors of life.

My love, in the darkest
hour your laughter
opens, and if suddenly
you see my blood staining
the stones of the street,
laugh, because your laughter
will be for my hands
like a fresh sword.

Next to the sea in the autumn,
your laughter must raise
its foamy cascade,
and in the spring, love,
I want your laughter like
the flower I was waiting for,
the blue flower, the rose
of my echoing country.

Laugh at the night,
at the day, at the moon,
laugh at the twisted
streets of the island,
laugh at this clumsy
boy who loves you,
but when I open
my eyes and close them,
when my steps go,
when my steps return,
deny me bread, air,
light, spring,
but never your laughter
for I would die.