Great Moments

When a friend shows up and there's nothing in the house,
but my girl brings forth anchovies, ham and cheese,
olives and crab and bottles of white wine,
and I assist at the miracle - knowing it's all on credit -
and I don't want to worry about having to pay for it,
and we drink and babble like there's no tomorrow,
and my friend is well off and he figures we are too,
and maybe we are, laughing at death that way,
isn't that happiness which suddenly breaks through?

When I wake up, I stay stretched out,
by the open balcony. And dawn comes: the birds
trill sweetly in their heathen arabics;
and I ought to get up, but I don't;
and looking up, I watch the rippling light of the sea
dancing on the ceiling, prism of its mother-of-pearl,
and I go on lying there and nothing matters a damn -
don't I annihilate time? And save myself from terror?
Isn't it happiness that comes with the dawn?

from Great Moments, Gabriel Celaya
Translated by Robert Mezey