Poetry is fierce and capricious,

When I tell her let’s go honorably

to the town, I upset her wildly.

I tell her the complete truth and don’t abuse;

I don’t dishonor her while she’s sleeping,

quietly dreaming and spent with my love,

as I plead with the sky for some strength;

I don’t paint her with saffron or amaranth

like those revolting poets; I don’t brand

her with a hot iron on the bare breast

not even rhetorical strings would bind

her golden hair I’d loosen  to the air.

.

No, I won’t place her in fancy vases

where she’d die; I will pour out the world

for her to grow be fertile and expand

and after release her seeds in the wind.

And, yes, I would take care the air is pure;

musically, its pure bed is fitted

with soft fabric for shelter in sleep.

 

In clean fragrant clothes, when she goes to town,

she returns wounded, dry-eyed, and estranged

with her cheeks sunken-in from her terror:

both of her lips thickened, softened, and stained,

one and then both of her pure hands and  heart

grieving and muddied as though a basket

of burning thorns beneath a broken breast:

she always comes from this city like this:

more even than this is eased by the air

of the countryside in the serene night

a tonic that erases injuries.

Lift up oh my heart!  Who calls out to death?

 

I do not imitate my poetry

Never would I wake it from wandering

nor am I bothered by its long absence.

At times it arrives terribly!  It takes

my hand and places its burning carbon

and it forces it up to the mountains!

Others and so few! come happy and well,

to caress my head or talk of sweet love

and invites me to share a bath! We have

one another, she and I, a certain

modesty that turns deep within my chest.

Tangled up in fragrant entanglement!

I say that I won’t force or adorn it,

though I know how to adorn I don’t dare,

even if I’m swept up in tremendous

shadows as it sometimes happens with me,

I wait for it crying down on my knees