Modern Love Lxi (Yellow Double Moon) Poem by Liberatore Suffoletta

From darkness above
yellow double moon
slowly was gobbled
by a black cat
only a golden smile,
remained
among specks of twinkling
binary stars
A sunny entrance
To your universe.

famished ardor,
mad passion unchanged,
family rediscovered
facing images of manhood-
sudden terrible feeling
time slipping away,
wanting that woman to love,
oh yes,
still wanting to love her
with a great love,
with heart,
with body too,
yes, with her a fervent desire,
a passionate harmony with the world,
wanting to love her for her beauty,
her openhearted despairing
passion for life-
that was hers,
that made her deny,
deny,
that time would pass,
though she knew
at that very moment,
it was passing
not wanting people
to say she was still young,
rather to stay young,
always young,
so in love with love,
intelligent, outstanding
in so many ways.
Perhaps just because
she truly was intelligent
and outstanding,
she rejected the world
as it was,
as it had been
in the days when,
returning after
a stay in a country
where her children were born—
her blood on fire,
she wanted to flee,
flee to a country
where no one
would grow ill,
old or die,
where beauty was imperishable,
where life would always
be wild and radiant,
that did not exist;
she wept in his arms
when she returned and
he loved her desperately.

And he, perhaps more than she,
living in a land without forefathers,
where annihilation preceded
all
where solace in melancholy
finds old age
like in civilized lands,
he, a broken man,
destined to be shattered forever,
passion for life confronting utter death;
people slipping away,
without being able to hold on
to any of them,
left with only
an obscure force
that for so many years
had raised him
above daily routine,
nourished him unstintingly,
been equal
to the most difficult circumstances—
that, as it had with endless
generosity
given him reason to live,
would also
give him reason to die.

He began to love her
in tears,
and through her
at last
himself.

From darkness above
yellow double moon
slowly was gobbled
By a black cat
only a memory,
remained
among cold crypts
of dead stars
A dark entrance
To your universe.