From redroom.com

Poema 6

Te recuerdo como eras en el último otoño.
Eras la boina gris y el corazón en calma.
En tus ojos peleaban las llamas del crepúsculo
Y las hojas caían en el agua de tu alma.

Apegada a mis brazos como una enredadera.
las hojas recogían tu voz lenta y en calma.
Hoguera de estupor en que mi sed ardía.
Dulce jacinto azul torcido sobre mi alma.

Siento viajar tus ojos y es distante el otoño:
boina gris, voz de pájaro y corazón de casa
hacia donde emigraban mis profundos anhelos
y caían mis besos alegres como brasas.

Cielo desde un navío. Campo desde los cerros.
Tu recuerdo es de luz, de humo, de estanque en calma!
Más allá de tus ojos ardían los crepúsculos.
Hojas secas de otoño giraban en tu alma.

Poem 6

I remember you, how you were last Fall.
You were the gray beret and the becalmed heart.
In your eyes fought the flames of dusk
and leaves fell to the water of your soul.

Clinging to my arms like a climbing plant,
the leaves gathered up your slow, becalmed voice.
Blaze of astonishment in which my thirst burned.
Sweet blue hyacinth twisted about my soul.

I feel your voyaging eyes, and Fall is far away;
Gray beret, bird’s voice and heart of the house
toward which migrated my deep desires,
where my gleeful kisses fell like burning embers.

Heaven from a ship. Field from a hill.
The memory of you is of light from smoke, a becalmed pool!
Dusks burned beyond your eyes.
Dry autumn leaves turned about in your soul.

Translation: Terence Clarke

It's been ages since I've sat on my favorite bench on the SJSU campus.

Right by the entrance to Sweeney Hall where i did most of my SJSU schooling.
Under the classrooms on the second floor...
right next to the elevators and the soda machines (man do they look different)

I look around and have never felt older...

most of the kids around here appear to still be in high school for crying out loud
or it may be simply that I'm getting old and I'm starting to miss the carefree days when being here didn't mean I was running away from something or someone and shiai at the dojo and good company was all I needed to be happy.

It's been almost a week since things ended and her words come back over and over to haunt me.

Was I right in what I said?
Did I do the right thing?

Yes. and even if it wasn't it's too later to be having second thoughts, made a choice and now I have to live with it.

It's still amazing after all these years how quickly we fall into our regular patterns even when they've stopped being regular.

I remember the nights when it was just sensei and me outside the university gyms and how much we enjoyed just practicing for the sake of practice.

I wonder if I'll ever be able to regain that.

I wonder if I've become too old,
too cynical,
too much of a loner
to get back to the simple pleasure of just doing something without any ulterior expectation.

I ask myself over and over if it's too late to learn to let go of everything again.

At times I question my commitment to the kind of life I had planned when I was younger. What happened to simplicity and taking risks? Did you ever 'learn to live life to its fullest? Where is your potential?

I look around and I want to scream to the kids on skateboards and bicycles that life is short. That the risks they don't take now are the risks that they'll be too afraid to take later.

I see the couples holding each other as they walk past and wonder where are those dreams lying now? where did the desire for a simple and pure relationship go?

Did I really change that much?

Neruda says that we of that time are no longer the same.

To which I add that we never were.

I sustain that the girl lithe and tawny of my younger days is hiding and working really hard at not being found.

She's holding my dreams hostage and doesn't want to give them back to me.

She wants me to do all these things in exchange for my dreams and I'm not sure That i want to do them.

She reminds me of the people who were a part of my life when I grew up here. She continues to show me what I gave up