Homecoming of Love on the Sands
by Rafael Alberti
This morning, my love, we are twenty years old.
Let us go, very slowly, braiding together
Our barefoot shadows, on paths through orchards
That face the blue of the sea with all their greenness.
You ar almost an apparition,
The same one which came once in the lightless evening
Between two lights,
When the young citizen, pensive and idle,
Loitered along his homeward road.
You are still the one seeking, beside me,
The steep secret of the dunes,
The hidden slope of sand, the occult
Reeds which hold
Their curtains before the sea eyes of the wind.
You are there. I am there beside you. I control
The vast temperature of the happy waves,
The heart of the sea, blindly rising,
And dying in tatters of foam and sweet salt.
The collapsing castles rear their battelments,
The seaweeds offer us their crowns, the sails
Tense in flight, sing over the towers.
This morning, my love, we are twenty years old.
