A Paradise of Poems

This is a non-editing/filtering version of a live rehearsal session between me and João Grillo (guitarist).

One day later, we performed at Lovecraft Beer Lounge Aveiro :)

I seem to have loved you in numberless forms, numberless times…
In life after life, in age after age, forever.
My spellbound heart has made and remade the necklace of songs,
That you take as a gift, wear round your neck in your many forms,
In life after life, in age after age, forever.
Whenever I hear old chronicles of love, its age-old pain,
Its ancient tale of being apart or together.
As I stare on and on into the past, in the end you emerge,
Clad in the light of a pole-star piercing the darkness of time:
You become an image of what is remembered forever.
You and I have floated here on the stream that brings from the fount.
At the heart of time, love of one for another.
We have played alongside millions of lovers, shared in the same
Shy sweetness of meeting, the same distressful tears of farewell-
Old love but in shapes that renew and renew forever.
Today it is heaped at your feet, it has found its end in you
The love of all man’s days both past and forever:
Universal joy, universal sorrow, universal life.
The memories of all loves merging with this one love of ours –
And the songs of every poet past and forever.

BGM by Katrina Stone - Digging Tunnels - Instrumental Version

You too wanted better things, but love
          forces all of us down.  Sorrow bends us more
          forcefully, but the arc doesn't return to its
          point of origin without a reason.
 
          Upwards or downwards!  In holy Night,
          where mute Nature plans the coming days,
          doesn't there reign in the most twisted Orcus
          something straight and direct?
 
          This I have learned.  Never to my knowledge
          did you, all-preserving gods, like mortal
          masters, lead me providentially
          along a straight path.
 
          The gods say that man should test
          everything, and that strongly nourished
          he be thankful for everything, and understand
          the freedom to set forth wherever he will.

BGM by Aleksey Chistilin - The Story of One Life