Letters of Chopin

Chopin to George Sand, 1847

The delicate touch you felt on your neck 
is the same as on a piano, with the same lyrical rush,
the music of leaves in the resolute winds.
It is the same idiomatic language of geese leaving.
My heart has the same feeling, restless, yearning.
When I play a rondo, no one can hear the silence after.
I leave these early movements behind 
like I must leave you.
Some things are finished when they are finished.

I thought of returning to you. 
I hesitated at your window.
I knew if you saw me with that melodic look you have,
it would enrapture me.
Our bodies would become counterpoints.
But it would be fragmentary motifs. Textural nuances
of what used to be.

Our love was illicit, some say. 
I say, it was melodic, rhythmic, and full of music.
Our love was repetitions of a single note.

You criticized me for my primitive sense of form 
when we would lie in bed, soaked in harmonic intonations.
You were right about me as well as everything else.
I cannot help being in the soundscape of textures, 
in the lightness of sound, in the last moment leaving you.
For life is opening one door and descending unknown stairs.