Colors

Tonight my mother asked me to find this poem on google, I believe to read at my father's memorial tomorrow. My sister lost her husband only a few months ago, and so I dedicate this to my own husband-to-be, whom I only hope with all my heart to have as much time as a liftetime with, as my mother and sister had with theirs...


Colours

When your face
appeared over my crumpled life
at first I understood
only the poverty of what I have.
Then its particular light
on woods, on rivers, on the sea,
became my beginning in the coloured world
in which I had not yet had my beginning.
I am so frightened, I am so frightened,
of the unexpected sunrise finishing,
of revelations
and tears and the excitement finishing.
I don't fight it, my love is this fear,
I nourish it who can nourish nothing,
love's slipshod watchman.
Fear hems me in.
I am conscious that these minutes are short
and that the colours in my eyes will vanish
when your face sets.

Yevgeny Yevtushenko