Love Letter to King Tutankhamen

excerpt from La Carta de Amor al Rey Tut-Ank-Amen/
The Love Letter to King Tutankhamen

by Dulce María Loynaz
translated by Judith Kerman

Young King Tut-Ank-Amen:

Yesterday afternoon in the museum, I saw the little ivory column which you painted blue and pink and yellow.

For that fragile object, useless and meaningless in our mean existence, for that simple little column painted by your fine hands—leaves of autumn—I would have given the most beautiful ten years of my life, also useless and meaningless. Ten years of love and faith.

Next to the little column I also saw, young King Tut-Ank-Amen, I also saw yesterday afternoon—one of those brilliant afternoons of your Egypt—I also saw your heart, kept safe in a gold box.

For that little heart crumbled to dust, for that little heart kept in a box of enamelled gold, I would have given my own heart, young and warm; still pure.

Because yesterday afternoon, King filled with death, my heart beat for you, full of life, and my life embraced your death and, it seemed to me, melted it.

It melted the hard death clinging to your bones, with the heat of my breath, with the blood of my dream, and after that uproar of love and death I am still intoxicated with love and with death...

Dulce María Loynaz (1902-1997), one of Cuba's leading 20th century poets, received the Cervantes Prize in 1992. Most of her work was reissued in Cuba beginning in the 1980's. Dulce María Loynaz: A Woman in Her Garden (Selected Poems) was edited and translated by Judith Kerman and published by White Pine Press in 2002.

Updated 8/11/04