Poems

It was passed from one bird to another,the whole gift of the day.The day went from flute to flute,went dressed in vegetation,in flights which opened a tunnelthrough the wind would passto where birds were breaking openthe dense blue air –and there, night came in. When I returned from so many journeys,I stayed suspended and greenbetween … Read more

The young maricones and the horny muchachas,The big fat widows delirious from insomnia,The young wives thirty hours’ pregnant,And the hoarse tomcats that cross my garden at night,Like a collar of palpitating sexual oystersSurround my solitary home,Enemies of my soul,Conspirators in pajamasWho exchange deep kisses for passwords.Radiant summer brings out the loversIn melancholy regiments,Fat and thin … Read more

The gay young men and the love-sick girls, and the abandoned widows suffering in sleepless delirium, and the young pregnant wives of thirty hours, and the raucous cats that cruise my garden in the shadows, like a necklace of pulsating oysters of sex surround my lonely residence, like enemies lined up against my soul, like … Read more

America, from a grainof maize you grewto crownwith spacious landsthe ocean foam.A grain of maize was your geography.From the graina green lance rose,was covered with gold,to grace the heightsof Peru with its yellow tassels. But, poet, lethistory rest in its shroud;praise with your lyrethe grain in its granaries:sing to the simple maize in the kitchen. … Read more

So that you will hear memy wordssometimes grow thinas the tracks of the gulls on the beaches. Necklace, drunken bellfor your hands smooth as grapes. And I watch my words from a long way off.They are more yours than mine.They climb on my old suffering like ivy. It climbs the same way on damp walls.You … Read more

How neatly a cat sleeps,sleeps with its paws and its posture,sleeps with its wicked claws,and with its unfeeling blood,sleeps with all the rings–a series of burnt circles–which have formed the odd geologyof its sand-colored tail. I should like to sleep like a cat,with all the fur of time,with a tongue rough as flint,with the dry … Read more

Brown and agile child, the sun which forms the fruitAnd ripens the grain and twists the seaweedHas made your happy body and your luminous eyesAnd given your mouth the smile of water. A black and anguished sun is entangled in the twigsOf your black mane when you hold out your arms.You play in the sun … Read more

Here I love you. In the dark pines the wind disentangles itself.The moon glows like phosphorous on the vagrant waters.Days, all one kind, go chasing each other. The snow unfurls in dancing figures.A silver gull slips down from the west.Sometimes a sail. High, high stars. Oh the black cross of a ship.Alone. Sometimes I get … Read more

Lost in the forest, I broke off a dark twigand lifted its whisper to my thirsty lips: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 … Read more

Mara Mori brought mea pair of sockswhich she knitted herselfwith her sheepherder’s hands,two socks as soft as rabbits.I slipped my feet into themas if they were two casesknitted with threads of twilight and goatskin,Violent socks,my feet were two fish made of wool,two long sharkssea blue, shot throughby one golden thread,two immense blackbirds,two cannons,my feet were … Read more