Poems

I want you to knowone thing. You know how this is: if I look at the crystal moon, at the red branch of the slow autumn at my window, if I touch near the fire the impalpable ash or the wrinkled body of the log, everything carries me to you, as if everything that exists, … Read more

One time more, my love, the net of light extinguisheswork, wheels, flames, boredoms and farewells,and we surrender the swaying wheat to night,the wheat that noon stole from earth and light.The moon alone in the midst of its clear pagesustains the pillars of Heaven’s Bay,the room acquires the slowness of gold,and your hands go here and … Read more

Day-colored wine,night-colored wine,wine with purple feetor wine with topaz blood,wine,starry childof earth,wine, smoothas a golden sword,softas lascivious velvet,wine, spiral-seashelledand full of wonder,amorous,marine;never has one goblet contained you,one song, one man,you are choral, gregarious,at the least, you must be shared.At timesyou feed on mortalmemories;your wave carries usfrom tomb to tomb,stonecutter of icy sepulchers,and we weeptransitory tears;yourgloriousspring … Read more

Perhaps not to be is to be without your being,without your going, that cuts noon lightlike a blue flower, without your passinglater through fog and stones,without the torch you lift in your handthat others may not see as golden,that perhaps no one believed blossomedthe glowing origin of the rose,without, in the end, your being, your … Read more

Beloved of the rivers,beset By azure water and transparent drops,Like a tree of veins your spectre Of dark goddess biting apples: And then awakening naked To be tattoed by the rivers, And in the wet heights your head Filled the world with new dew. Water rose to your waist, You are made of wellsprings And … Read more

You are going to ask: and where are the lilacs?and the poppy-petalled metaphysics?and the rain repeatedly spatteringits words and drilling them fullof apertures and birds?I’ll tell you all the news. I lived in a suburb,a suburb of Madrid, with bells,and clocks, and trees. From there you could look outover Castille’s dry face:a leather ocean.My house … Read more

Neither clown nor child nor blacknor white but verticleand a questioning innocencedressed in night and snow:The mother smiles at the sailor,the fisherman at the astronaunt,but the child child does not smilewhen he looks at the bird child,and from the disorderly oceanthe immaculate passengeremerges in snowy mourning. I was without doubt the child birdthere in the … Read more

Y fue a esa edad… Llegó la poesía a buscarme. No sé, no sé de dónde salió, de invierno o río. No sé cómo ni cuándo, no, no eran voces, no eran palabras, ni silencio, pero desde una calle me llamaba, desde las ramas de la noche, de pronto entre los otros, entre fuegos violentos … Read more

My dog has died.I buried him in the gardennext to a rusted old machine. Some day I’ll join him right there,but now he’s gone with his shaggy coat,his bad manners and his cold nose,and I, the materialist, who never believedin any promised heaven in the skyfor any human being,I believe in a heaven I’ll never … Read more

All those men were there inside,when she came in totally naked.They had been drinking: they began to spit.Newly come from the river, she knew nothing.She was a mermaid who had lost her way.The insults flowed down her gleaming flesh.Obscenities drowned her golden breasts.Not knowing tears, she did not weep tears.Not knowing clothes, she did not … Read more