Poems

Your whole body hasa fullness or a gentleness destined for me. When I move my hand upI find in each place a dovethat was seeking me, asif they had, love, made you of clayfor my own potter’s hands. Your knees, your breasts,your waistare missing parts of me like the hollowof a thirsty earthfrom which they … Read more

Puedo escribir los versos más tristes esta noche. Escribir, por ejemplo: ‘La noche está estrellada,y tiritan, azules, los astros, a lo lejos.’ El viento de la noche gira en el cielo y canta. Puedo escribir los versos más tristes esta noche.Yo la quise, y a veces ella también me quiso. En las noches como ésta … Read more

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

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

It was the twilight of the iguana: From a rainbowing battlement,a tongue like a javelinlunging in verdure;an ant heap treading the jungle,monastic, on musical feet;the guanaco, oxygen-finein the high places swarthed with distances,cobbling his feet into gold;the llama of scrupulous eyethe widens his gaze on the dewsof a delicate world. A monkey is weavinga thread … Read more

Arise to birth with me, my brother.Give me your hand out of the depthssown by your sorrows.You will not return from these stone fastnesses.You will not emerge from subterranean time.Your rasping voice will not come back,nor your pierced eyes rise from their sockets. Look at me from the depths of the earth,tiller of fields, weaver, … Read more

Castro Alves from Brazil, for whom did you sing? Did you sing for the flower? For the water whose beauty whispered words to the stones? Did you sing to the eyes, to the torn profileof the woman you once loved? For the spring? Yes, but those petals were not dewed, those black waters had no … 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

Our Father thou art in Heaven, in water, in airin all our silent and broad latitudeeverything bears your name, Father in our dwelling: your name raises sweetness in sugar caneBolivar tin has a Bolivar gleamthe Bolívar bird flies over the Bolivar volcanothe potato, the saltpeter, the special shadows, the brooks, the phosphorous stone veinseverything comes … Read more