h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Grief

I tell you, hopeless grief is passionless;
That only men incredulous of despair,
Half-taught in anguish, through the midnight air
Beat upwards to God's throne in loud access
Of shrieking and reproach. Full desertness
In souls as countries lieth silent-bare
Under the blanching, vertical eye-glare
Of the absolute Heavens. Deep-hearted man, express
Grief for thy Dead in silence like to Death -
Most like a monumental statue set
In everlasting watch and moveless woe
Till itself crumble to the dust beneath.
Touch it' the marble eyes are not wet:
If it could weep it could arise and go.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

"No"

The night crushes you so I look for you
like a maniac in shadow, in a dream, in death.
My heart burns up like a single bird.
Your absence murders me, life has closed.

What loneliness, what darkness,
what a parched moon goes by,
what distant people are looking for your lost body.
They ask your blood, your lips, your sound,
your inseparable absence in the growing night.

My hands don't hold you and my eyes miss you.
My words look for you on foot, uselessly.
Inside me the quiet niight is long, lies down,
stretches like a river whose banks are alone.

But I go on looking for you, digging you up,
dissolving you
in shadow, in a dream. I nail you down in memory.
Silence creates your unsayable truth.
The world has closed. For me, permanently.

-- Jose Luis Hidalgo
[trans. by Stephen Berg]

Thank you for this.