Saudade

 'Saudade (English: /ˌsaʊˈdɑːdə/,[1] European Portuguese: [sɐwˈðaðɨ], Brazilian Portuguese: [sawˈdad(ʒ)i], Galician: [sawˈðaðɪ]; plural saudades)[2] 

is a deep emotional state of nostalgic or profound melancholic longing for an absent something or someone that one cares for and/or loves. Moreover, it often carries a repressed knowledge that the object of longing might never be had again. It is the recollection of feelings, experiences, places, or events that once brought excitement, pleasure, and well-being, which now trigger the senses and make one experience the pain of separation from those joyous sensations. However it acknowledges that to long for the past would detract from the excitement you feel towards the future. Saudade describes both happy and sad at the same time, which is most closely translated to the English saying ‘bitter sweet’.'

'..a yearning for a happiness that has passed, or perhaps never even existed.'

Nostalgia for a past, inhabited by people, places, objects, that perhaps never even existed.

Reading Dickens and longing for the wild and overgrown dusty Kentish lanes that were never actually experienced.

Looking at photographs, lived in, experienced, how can the feelings evoked be expressed? 

 

horizons

lamplit

writing by lamplight's
soft womanly glow,
shadows arc to secret corners
where white chrysanthemums whisper
and a skyblue paper fan unfolds,
above a single silken peony,
its carmine petals reflected
in the baroque and gilded mirror.

a distant shutter opens
to the beckoning clamour of sunday bells
and the wheeling gulls are laughing,
suspended between sky and sea.


coffee in a pearly seagreen mug,
cats, like lovers, between my legs,
words drift across the  page like clouds,
an inky memory,
a breathy silence,
a ticking clock.

Colour Me Gone

Force of habit brought me here
Back to where we started
The point from which all directions take form
And rivers and skies
Each bridge a story that encompasses another day
A second, a lifetime.
A map which delineates the changes
Made by us and for us by each other
And those others that we knew and didn't know
Our emotional footprint
We share a silence that speaks for us
For we ourselves have nothing more to say
That hasn't already been wept
Or laughed or burned or lived
Our dictionary in every language has been exhausted
The binding undone, the pages lost.
Force of habit turns my steps south
To the light, to the sun
To another place far from this darkness

Another Place; Tender is the Night

Tangled in the sheets and one another,
Drenched in the cool clean air of early morning,
Listening to the ringing of the sail boat masts
And the seagull laughter carried on the water.

We lay now silent, now talking, resting,
Fingers tracing skin by touch connected.
The greater seperation of our bodies
Reminds us of the need to not let go.
Silently we engrave one upon the other
The memory of ourselves.
You make some coffee, we share a cigarette.
This 4.00 am madness.

And in the end
True intimacy is not measured by the sweated thrusts,
Our  straining bodies, the convulsing cries,
Nor by the passion spent
Or the quality and quantity of pleasure gained.
 No.
It  is your hand
Resting on my arm,
The way our breathing moves and fits,
Your lips against my shoulder,
The comfort of our silence,
The knowing when to cease, to sleep.
It is in these things that we are us,
Where we finally come to rest
And where we know the real intimacy of love

Another Place; Other People's Parties

No, don't move
Stay just there, right there where you are
At the bottom of the stairs
Caught in the laughing light
Radiantly alive, shining, golden.
Stay right there
And let me stand here watching
From a half opened door
Lost in quiet shadows
And a trembling personal dusk,
Falling, falling, drowning.
Please, no please, don't go
Don't leave and leaving 
Take the very breath, the essence of life with you.
But if you go, before you go, turn
Remember me for a moment
And bequeath me the memory of your smile.