Friday, June 4, 2010

"For myself I wept here..."




















Over here it was that my love stole from me,
In his mercy, my heart and, farther on, my life.
Here with his beautiful eyes he promised me help,
And with the same eyes here he stole it back.
Over here he bound me and here released me;
For myself I wept here, and with infinite sorrow
From this rock I saw him leave,
He who stole myself from me and never turned back.


Michelangelo, translated by Richard Hooker


Drawing by Jean Cocteau, from Historia del Arte Erotico.

3 comments:

Alyssa said...

That poem is lovely, and very sad. It reminds me of Sappho, a little, in it's address and simplicity, and the starkness of the emotions.

When I click on the link to see the uncropped drawing I get to a page that says FORBIDDEN, which I find very funny, given the context...

Hope you are well, and not to identified with these melancholy snippets...

BitterGrace said...

Well, so much for trying to be discreet. The link worked fine last night, but doesn't work for me now either. I cropped that image because I thought I might link to this post on Facebook--also because I thought the oversized penises of the 2 men (gotta love Cocteau) might be more than Blogger could handle. Not that I haven't pushed the envelope before, but there's something about the male member that seems to incite passionate prudery.

Anyway, I think the poem is very sad, too--it captures something about heartbreak that often goes unspoken. And I'm well, yes, hope you are the same. But the heartbreak is irresistible...

chayaruchama said...

Such an exquisite ache.
I love the pairing...

Cocteau is very dear to me.

[You smell gorgeous, BTW ;-0]