Beyond Forgetting

First time I heard this poem was some two decades ago, when GM Blue Cadavillo, then GM of Quezon Metro WD, delivered it during a fellowship night in one PAWD meeting somewhere in Laguna. I heard the poem, I fell in love with it and never left my heart ever since. Sonnets from the Portuguese by Elizabeth Barret Browning only takes second place.

BEYOND FORGETTING

Rolando A. Carbonell

For a moment I thought I could forget you.

For a moment I thought I could still the restlessness in my heart.

I thought the past could no longer haunt me-nor hurt me.

How wrong I was!

For the past, no matter how distant is as much a part of me as life itself.

And you are part of that life.

You are so much a part of me-my dreams, my early hopes, my youth and my ambitions-

that in all my tasks I can’t help remembering you.

Many little delights and things remind me of you.

Yes, I came. And would my pride mock my real feelings?

Would the love song, the sweet and lovely smile on your face,

be lost among the deepening shadows?

I have wanted to be alone.

I thought I could make myself forget you in silence and in song . . .

And yet I remembered.

For who could forget the memory of the once lovely,

the once beautiful, the once happy world such as ours?

I came

because the song that I kept through the years was waiting to be sung.

I cannot sing it without you.

The song when sung alone will lose the essence of its tune,

because you and I had been one.

I have wanted this misery to end, because it is part of my restlessness.

Can’t you understand?

Can’t you define the depth and the tenderness of my feelings towards you?

Yes, can’t you see how I suffer in this even darkness without you?

You went away because you mistook my silence for indifference.

But silence, my dear, is the language of my heart.

For how could I essay the intensity of my love

when silence speaks a more eloquent tone?

But, perhaps you didn’t understand

Remember, I came,

because the gnawing loneliness is there

and it will not be lost until the music is sung,

until the poem is heard,

until the silence is understood . . .

until you come to me again.

For you alone can blend music and memory

into one consuming ecstasy.

You alone . . .