WHY DO I LOVE YOU SO DEARLY

WHY DO I LOVE YOU SO DEARLY

Erle Frayne Argonza y Delago

Why do I love you so dearly?

As if love were an omnipresent elixir

From the teapots of Eros

Its fading is now next to impossible?

Certainly and o! so certainly because

You’ve been a person unto me who

Never ran out of kindness

Never ran out of reasonableness

Never ran out of sweetness

And so you deserve my love and tenderness.

O! Sweet daughter of the race of Zarathustra!

Behold! I’ve come for you! I am a gift

A present by my forebears Apollo and Dionysos.

I’ve come armed with the edict of my Will—

Evoked is my will to Love!

I am a harbinger of the Shadow—

The benign shadow of Love

That ceaselessly follows you:

It has been anchored in your bosom.

The forces of the Past can’t seem to leave you

Even as the Future now knocks upon your present

But the Past will be incinerated by its own twilight

And the Future gleefully glides before your countenance.

Shudder not with the sight of the Future

You shall find the door to its halls

And I’m the guardian who’d patiently waited for you

I’d lead you to Future’s spaces where we

Shall celebrate our affinity with dances

And fancies.

The Future will be delighted as we’ll dance

Together on its sacred floor

And Love’s the tune that we as ordained

Lovers never can ignore.

[Writ. 20 Jan.’89, U.P. Village, Quezon City, M.Manila]