sleeping at a distance.I am not, I’m of no use, I do not knowanyone; I have no weapons of ocean or wood,I do not live in this house.My mouth is full of night and water.The abiding moon determineswhat I do not have.What I have is in the midst of the waves,a ray of water, a…
layered, through a hundred million years.Agate, cornelian, gemstonetransmuted the timber and sapuntil damp corruptionsfissured the giant’s trunkfusing a parallel being:the living leavesunmade themselvesand when the pillar was overthrownfire in the forest, blaze of the dust-cloud,celestial ashes mantled it round,until time, and the lava, createdthis gift, of translucent stone.
yo seguiré viviendo.No me atrevo,no me atrevo a escribirlo,si te mueres.Yo seguiré viviendo.Porque donde no tiene voz un hombreallí, mi voz.Donde los negros sean apaleados,yo no puedo estar muerto.Cuando entren en la cárcel mis hermanosentraré yo con ellos.Cuando la victoria,no mi victoria,sino la gran Victoria llegue,aunque esté mudo debo hablar:yo la veré llegar aunque esté…
I would choose your far-off repose, your contour of steel,your vigilant spaces of air and darkness,and the power of your white tongue,that shatters and overthrows columns,breaking them down to your proper purity.Not the final breaker, heavy with brine,that thunders onshore, and createsthe silence of sand, that encircles the world,but the inner spaces of force,the naked…
maybe it was the voice of the rain crying,a cracked bell, or a torn heart.Something from far off it seemeddeep and secret to me, hidden by the earth,a shout muffled by huge autumns,by the moist half-open darkness of the leaves.Wakening from the dreaming forest there, the hazel-sprigsang under my tongue, its drifting fragranceclimbed up through…
spiderweb egg,scramble-brained rat,bitch’s skeleton:No entry here.Don’t come in.Go away.Go backsouth with your umbrella,go backnorth with your serpent’s teeth.A poet lives here.No sadness maycross this threshold.Through these windowscomes the breath of the world,fresh red roses,flags embroidered withthe victories of the people.No.No entry.Flapyour bat’s wings,I will trample the feathersthat fall from your mantle,I will sweep the bits…
The night turns on its invisible wheels,and you are pure beside me as a sleeping amber.No one else, Love, will sleep in my dreams. You will go,we will go together, over the waters of time.No one else will travel through the shadows with me,only you, evergreen, ever sun, ever moon.Your hands have already opened their…
on the moonlight, love’slashed and insatiableessences,sodden with fragrance,the lemon tree’s yellowemerges,the lemonsmove downfrom the tree’s planetariumDelicate merchandise!The harbors are big with it-bazaarsfor the light and thebarbarous gold.We openthe halvesof a miracle,and a clotting of acidsbrimsinto the starrydivisions:creation’soriginal juices,irreducible, changeless,alive:so the freshness lives onin a lemon,in the sweet-smelling house of the rind,the proportions, arcane and acerb.Cutting…
The truth is in the prologue. Death to the romantic fool,to the expert in solitary confinement,I’m the same as the teacher from Colombia,the rotarian from Philadelphia, the merchantfrom Paysandu who save his silverto come here. We all arrive by different streets,by unequal languages, at Silence.
In winter like a green beast.Everything just lay there, the silence,The unfolding gray, the heavy lightOf space, some land now and then.Over everything there was passingA flightAnd another flightOf dark birds, winter bodiesTrembling trianglesWhose wings,Frantically flapping, hardlyCan carry the gray cold, the desolate daysFrom one place to anotherAlong the coast of Chile.I am here while…
