When I walk the streets, lonely and absent,
I’m thinking of your body. You are in the porticoes
that howl your hugs, the melancholia of aimless women,
the stones on the road to nowhere, and I know you’re mine
regardless of rituals and ceremonies. I know I love you because
my arms hurt every time I evoke your arms , and the space
I occupy becomes dark and cold. Your eyes hide behind
my eyes. Once you’ve seen me grow and multiply
you hurt and abandon me in front of women.
…
You’re the one who throws himself into the water
with his magnificent body then lets the sea
drip down his hips and mine. The one that smiles at me
as uncontestable proof of his affection. Innocent warrior,
putrid pile of splendid beauty. The only one that knows how
I lost the fight and that’s why you perceive me with a certain
kind of sweetness. The one who drags my severed body
through the battlefield, yet still has the habit of kissing my feet,
that’s the man I love.
…
You fed me bread and cheese
flavored with fennel and anise
out of your own hand —like a bird—
You brought the wine glass to my lips
and I welcomed it with thirst.
I wore new shoes and marched
into oblivion. (But I knew
the longest route for me
was loneliness.)
…
The mother
“These blue days and this sun from infancy”
Antonio Machado
When his mother died he almost didn’t find out.
She left him an album of snakes, a painting
of a garden, and a street made of lead.
He hardly cried, but who cares about that now.
Today, as he remembers her from behind
that childless city of glass he’s troubled by the image
of her body, the window, the granite pier with golden
prisms, the house, the sugar apple trees, the sea,
the banana fields, the dark covered havens of fine salt,
and an absurd short little girl watching the water die
behind the horizon.
