Sonnet VIII

If your eyes were not the color of the moon,of a day full [here, interrupted by the baby waking — continued about 26hours later ]of a day full of clay, and work, and fire,if even held-in you did not move in agile grace like the air,if you were not an amber week, not the yellow … Read more

Tell Me, Is The Rose Naked?

Tell me, is the rose naked Or is that her only dress? Why do trees concealThe splendor of their roots? Who hears the regretsOf the thieving automobile? Is there anything in the world sadderThan a train standing in the rain?

The Saddest Poem

I can write the saddest poem of all tonight. Write, for instance: "The night is full of stars,and the stars, blue, shiver in the distance." The night wind whirls in the sky and sings. I can write the saddest poem of all tonight.I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too. On nights like this, … Read more

We Are Many

Of the many men whom I am, whom we are,I cannot settle on a single one.They are lost to me under the cover of clothingThey have departed for another city. When everything seems to be setto show me off as a man of intelligence,the fool I keep concealed on my persontakes over my talk and … Read more

The Dead Woman

If suddenly you do not exist,if suddenly you no longer live,I shall live on. I do not dare,I do not dare to write it,if you die. I shall live on. For where a man has no voice,there, my voice. Where blacks are beaten,I cannot be dead.When my brothers go to prisonI shall go with them. … Read more

The Song of Despair

You swallowed everything, like distance. Like the sea, like time. In you everything sank! It was the happy hour of assault and the kiss. The hour of the spell that blazed like a lighthouse. Pilot’s dread, fury of a blind diver, turbulent drunkenness of love, in you everything sank!

What Spain Was Like

Spain was a taut, dry drum-head Daily beating a dull thud Flatlands and eagle’s nest Silence lashed by the storm. How much, to the point of weeping, in my soul I love your hard soil, your poor bread, Your poor people, how much in the deep place Of my being there is still the lost … Read more

Sonnet XCV:Who ever desired each other as we do

Who ever desired each other as we do? Let us lookfor the ancient ashes of hearts that burned,and let our kisses touch there, one by one,till the flower, disembodied, rises again. Let us love that Desire that consumed its own fruitand went down, aspect and power, into the earth:We are its continuing light,its indestructible, fragile … Read more

The Dictators

An odor has remained among the sugarcane:a mixture of blood and body, a penetratingpetal that brings nausea.Between the coconut palms the graves are fullof ruined bones, of speechless death-rattles.The delicate dictator is talkingwith top hats, gold braid, and collars.The tiny palace gleams like a watchand the rapid laughs with gloves oncross the corridors at timesand … Read more