José Hierro

King Lear at the Cloisters

SAY that you love me. Say, “I love you.”
Say it to me for the first and for the last time.
Only: “I love you.” Don’t tell me how much.
Those three words are enough.
“More than my salvation,” said Regan.
“More than springtime,” said Goneril.
(He didn’t suspect that they were lying.)
Say that you love me. Say, “I love you,”
Cordelia, even if you are lying to me,
even if you don’t know that you’re lying to yourself.

Everything has faded into dreams.
The ship in which I crossed the sea,
lashed at by the lightning flashes,
was a dream from which I still have not awakened.
I live embraced by a dream,
helpless in its viscous web
for all eternity,
unless eternity is but another dream.

The storm carried off my Buffoon,
that scourged, prattling, insolent scoundrel,
who was my companion, was really me,
a reflection of myself in the mirrors
—concave and convex—invented by Valle-Inclán.
The arms of the waves dashed me
against the cliffs. And one fine day,
I no longer remember when, I awoke,
and I found upon the sand
stones cut with great skill,
ashlar stones, eaten away, worn smooth, scratched
by the teeth and claws of the algae.
Then, set free from my dream,
I began to rebuild a world of my own
that shook off its slumber beneath a different sun.

And here it is, finally, before my eyes.
I hear how it pants
with the heavy breathing of one dying, of one beyond death.
I’m waiting for you to arrive
and to tell me, “I love you.”
I still have the skies that traveled with my
gray ringdoves from Brittany, cobalt blues from Provence,
indigos from Castille.
Only you can give them back
the transparency, the luminosity
and the warmth that made them unique.
Here they are, awaiting you.

I want to hear you say, Cordelia, “I love you.”
They are the same words that issued from
the lips of Regan and Goneril,
not from their hearts. Later,
they rid themselves of my knights,
sons of the storm, braggarts, drunkards,
lascivious, quarrelsome... They returned
to silence and nothingness.

Into the mist went their armor,
their helmets, their sculpted shields,
that fervor and delirium, passion and madness
of eagles, chimeras, unicorns,
swans, dolphins, griffins...
Through what kingdom do their shadows ride today?

My kingdom for one “I love you,” bleeding on your lips.
My eternity for just three words.
Whisper them or sing them against some royal background
—spring water on river rocks,
arrows that rend the air with a hiss—
thus, reality will make real
the words that you never uttered
—why didn’t you ever say them!—
and that ring out in a point
in time and space
whence I must rescue them
before I leave.
Come and say to me, “I love you”,
it doesn’t matter that your words might last
no longer than the trace of a teardrop
on a crumpled piece of silk.

In this new-found peace
—I know it’s just a stage—I play
my part, that’s to say, I pretend,
because I am finally awake.
I no longer confuse the swallow’s song
with the nightingale’s. And here I live, waiting for you,
counting the days, and the hours, and the seasons.
And when you arrive, announced
by the fanfare
of my phantom huntsmen,
I know that you’ll recognize me
by my gold crown missing its gems
(plucked out by the thieving magpies),
by the little wooden shield bequeathed me by the buffoon,
in which oaks and maples bestow
their fiery alms, their winged tithe,
autumn’s fleeting glance.

Come quickly, my time
is running out. And don’t bring me flowers
as if I had died.
Come before I plunge
into the whirlwind of my dreams.
Come and say to me, “I love you,” and vanish at once.

Disappear before I see you
floating in a tremulous and turbid liquor,
as if through a hazy glass,
before I say to you:
“I know that I have loved you deeply,
but I don’t know who you are.”

Translated by Gordon McNeer