I Like It When You Are Quiet

I Like It When You Are Quiet

By Pablo Neruda


I like you when you are quiet because it is as though you are absent,
and you hear me from far away, and my voice does not touch you.
It looks as though your eyes had flown away
and it looks as if a kiss had sealed your mouth.

Like all things are full of my soul
You emerge from the things, full of my soul.
Dream butterfly, you look like my soul,
and you look like a melancholy word.

I like you when you are quiet and it is as though you are distant.
It is as though you are complaining, butterfly in lullaby.
And you hear me from far away, and my voice does not reach you:
let me fall quiet with your own silence.

Let me also speak to you with your silence
Clear like a lamp, simple like a ring.
You are like the night, quiet and constellated.
Your silence is of a star, so far away and solitary.

I like you when you are quiet because it is as though you are absent.
Distant and painful as if you had died.
A word then, a smile is enough.
And I am happy, happy that it is not true.

At night when we both are supposed to be sleeping  but I am not, I look over at you.  Now is the time I have you completely to myself, but you are somewhere in your head dreaming.  And snoring loudly sometimes.  And I am thinking of my solitary bed where I once slept to the sound of nothing and no one.  When you are sleep sometimes I look over at you, and I studying the landscape of your profile.  I think how odd it is to meet someone in the middle of your life and come to think that life would not mean much now in the absence of this person. Now that I have found you, I'd be lost without you.  How could you come to mean so much in the span of so little time?  I take your hand under the covers, Baba, and you squeeze back gently like you know it is me.  

In the morning, you go from zero to 90.  Your phone rings, the first thing that will take you from me.  Someone from back home needs you, and you do not hesitate to lend a hand. You rush from our bed to get your son from his and move farther away. I am new to mothering and don't quite know how to wedge myself into you and your son's morning routine.  On your knees, you face the east in prayer as I drain my second cup of coffee.  I say a prayer, standing at the mirror, just having finished brushing my teeth or applying mascara.  You have reminded me to pray--not in words but in action.  Although I am standing, I am acknowledging blessings.  While at times I feel lost, I feel so blessed to have this new family and this new energy swirling around.  We speed off in separate directions.  You will not slow down until way after midnight.  After work, you continue to receive calls, texts, emails. So many people need you.  I have become your protector, not in the possessive way--but in a way that someone will protect someone else who cannot say "no".   I often tell you how important it is to rest and be still and to take care of self.  My words sound selfish in your selfless world. We recognize that we are different--that I need to take breaks from the world, and that you will give it your all until you have nothing more to give.  We are different this way.

Neruda's poem is my voice speaking softly to you when you are sleeping and I am still wake, looking at your face and holding your hand, pleased to have you, for this moment, all to myself.