Brown and agile child, the sun which forms the fruit And ripens the grain and twists the seaweed Has made your happy body and your luminous eyes And given your mouth the smile of water. A black and anguished sun is entangled in the twigs Of your black mane when you hold out your arms. You play in the sun as in a tidal river And it leaves two dark...Learn More

In the wave-strike over unquiet stones the brightness bursts and bears the rose and the ring of water contracts to a cluster to one drop of azure brine that falls. O magnolia radiance breaking in spume, magnetic voyager whose death flowers and returns, eternal, to being and nothingness: shattered brine, dazzling leap of the ocean. Merged, you and...Learn More

Rise up in birth with me, my brother. Give me your hand out of the deep zone of your wide-spread sorrow. You will not return from the bedrock depths. You will not return from subterranean time. It will not return, your hardened voice. They will not return, your pierced eyes. Look at me from the depths of the earth, you, the farm worker, the...Learn More

It so happens I am sick of being a man. And it happens that I walk into tailorshops and movie houses dried up, waterproof, like a swan made of felt steering my way in a water of wombs and ashes. The smell of barbershops makes me break into hoarse sobs. The only thing I want is to lie still like stones or wool. The only thing I want is to see no...Learn More

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 tunnel through the wind would pass to where birds were breaking open the dense blue air - and there, night came in. When I returned from so many journeys, I stayed suspended and green between...Learn More

Victory. It has come late, I had not learnt how to arrive, like the lily, at will, the white figure, that pierces the motionless eternity of earth, pushing at clear, faint, form, till the hour strikes: that clay, with a white ray, or a spur of milk. Shedding of clothing, the thick darkness of soil, on whose cliff the fair flower advances, till the...Learn More

Matilde, years or days sleeping, feverish, here or there, gazing off, twisting my spine, bleeding true blood, perhaps I awaken or am lost, sleeping: hospital beds, foreign windows, white uniforms of the silent walkers, the clumsiness of feet. And then, these journeys and my sea of renewal: your head on the pillow, your hands floating in the light,...Learn More

There are lone cemeteries, tombs full of soundless bones, the heart threading a tunnel, a dark, dark tunnel : like a wreck we die to the very core, as if drowning at the heart or collapsing inwards from skin to soul. There are corpses, clammy slabs for feet, there is death in the bones, like a pure sound, a bark without its dog, out of certain...Learn More

Era el crepúsculo de la iguana. Desde la arcoirisada crestería su leengua como un dardo se hundía en la verdura, el hormiguero monacal pisaba con melodioso pie la selva, el guanaco fino como el oxigeno en las anchas alturas pardas iba calzando botas de oro, mientras la llama abria cándidos ojos en la delicadeza del mundo lleno de rocio. Los monos...Learn More

I am not jealous of what came before me. Come with a man on your shoulders, come with a hundred men in your hair, come with a thousand men between your breasts and your feet, come like a river full of drowned men which flows down to the wild sea, to the eternal surf, to Time! Bring them all to where I am waiting for you; we shall always be...Learn 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 profile of the woman you once loved? For the spring? Yes, but those petals were not dewed, those black waters had no words, those eyes were those who saw death, still burning...Learn More

Fleas interest me so much that I let them bite me for hours. They are perfect, ancient, Sanskrit, machines that admit of no appeal. They do not bite to eat, they bite only to jump; they are the dancers of the celestial sphere, delicate acrobats in the softest and most profound circus; let them gallop on my skin, divulge their emotions, amuse...Learn More