Like a bird flying clear across the air

I feel your thinking coming toward me

and here in my heart it’s building its nest.

My soul flowers open; the stems tremble

like the fresh lips of a youth’s first embrace

of a beauty, the leaves stab like a knife

as jealously bitter as the servants

of a lady of the wealthy classes

while busy preparing her marriage bed.

My heart is large and it belongs to you

All of sadness can fit inside my soul

as long as the world cries, suffers, and dies!

With the dry leaves, dust, and fallen branches

I clean and carefully brush each leaf’s brush;

I take the eaten petals from the worms

I trim the lawn and look what I have found

See how your bird is now shrinking my heart!

A winged cup who else has seen it but me?

Yesterday was when it surfaced by slow

majesty, as in the gradually

pouring of oil of an anointing

and at its sweet edge my blessed lips tightened.

Not even a drop, not even a drop!

of your balm did I allow to be lost

Your dark head of hair.  Do you remember?

I stroked with my hands because as you spoke

the words from those generous lips I kissed

and though my kiss was bland it transformed me

as the softness of the ambiance.

I felt my whole life  and in hugging you

I was hugged too! I couldn’t see the world

or hear its noise nor recall the vengeful,

barbarous battle! A cup flew in the air.

And I, held in unseen arms, reclined

behind it, near its sweet edges,

and I rose up to the blue firmament.

Oh love, oh how immense, oh fine artist!

On wheel or rail the iron smith

fuses iron; a flower a woman

an eagle an angel made of gold

or silver by the jeweler’s chisel:

You, you, only you know how to reduce

the size of the universe to a kiss.

A vile race of tenacious persons

self-made they inflate themselves on their own

from head to foot and by their clothes and  jaws

there are others like a flower who cast

exhalations of humanity’s love.

As there are turtle doves and wild beasts

in the forest, plants that are infested

and sterling carnations in a garden

some have been fed off the soul of mankind

and perfuming their gluttonous teeth

as does the cold iron in the body

of a virgin kill while its heated.

The tyrants are seated at a banquet

and when their blood-stained hands delve in the meal

beaming a light, a martyr re-surges ,

large flowers, as a sudden cross appears,

escape, and reddened mouths are aghast

at the sight of their blackened entrails,

the tyrants, the ones who love themselves most

who in the face of proper reasoning

are an affront to the face of honor,

and the strip of light grown under the yoke

compares to the sun as it casts hot coals

that abound from its breast:

the tyrants do not carry decorous

humanity in sane breasts:  they are best,

or second-best at life, with ruined joys,

watched-over wealth and reactionary

“no” to the concierto universal.

Dance, food, music, and harems, but never

approbation of honorable persons

if by chance it could happen without blood

“Get out of the way…hang them hang them

and from the highest noose out on the road

out front in the middle of the village.”

Against humanity’s greatness: traitors

like a worker pounding copper rails,

they divvy up the nation with teeth marks.

One star lights the whole world and one flower

perfumes vast space with its scent, a wild

and mysterious spiral of tender

light suffuses the earth and an image,

brought together in half-images springs

upward from a humane battle.  Silence!

Among the colors seen in a dark sky,

while the sun illuminates, a vibrant

city sparkles, and the white moonlight glows.

A vision is being born in the eyes

seeking the essence ruptured from its seal

the aroma surges toward the eyes

as the weight of the eyelid lifts from them

like a flower folding its perfumed wings

unfolds itself to decant its perfume

then from the interior of a solemn

temple a pale figure rises in a sad lament.

Is there a divine purpose for a life?

Meanwhile the entire universe

which never loses its shape, wraps over

the body of a beloved woman,

as her absent husband foresees his death

in the purification of the sky.

I hate the ocean as its loveliness

pleases only when the force of a ship

with dominating keel thunders loudly

like a demon’s fantastic colossal

black cape shelters it from the cold night wind

and as a sublime champion moves past:–

while the light of the stars is enclosed in

globes of crystal, there crossing a bridge

a man returns like a page turns from a book–

I hate the ocean: vast as a plain, cold

monotonous, unlike the forest gives

its branches as arms to hug my sorrow

these injuries were caused by hardened men

and of the good in life make me suspect

I’m no longer an honorable fighter

standing on solid ground, sure in my chest,

but wary of enemy arenas

as the quicksand may contain a lethal

snake hidden within.–And in the ocean,

is also the sun as well as nature

directing a person to have virtues

to be franker and to live in honor–

without the palm trees without the flowers

my soul just seems a deserted shadow.

That I am dead is clear: nobody cares

not even I do,  but as beautiful

as life is–so igneous and shifting

and eternal–I love being alive.

It is not living that causes me pain

what hurts me is if I do not live well

I love my suffering, its noble shield,

and refuse to blame providential life

my solitary misfortune’s mine

nor will I poison others with my pains.

The earth is good and existence holy,

and in the same anguish are new reasons

for me to want to live in complete bliss,

clearly as the aurora penetrates

The foolish will die thinking the  deluge

of tears from their eyes is more enormous

and even lovelier than the ocean.

I hate the ocean, huge and moribund,

that sadly lost its life to torpid sea-

creatures, gluttonous and hateful, so like

the dull look in the eyes of dying fish,

those brutes who quiver in the embraces

of a libidinous and awful fuck:

as vile as I say it are cowards

what they feel and what they see they silence:

Not me: if I encounter a lecher

on my path, I yell out: there is a lecher,

I’m unlike the ocean hiding its breast.

Not even my sacred verse nor myself

have I saved for making of rosaries

of women or masks of honor for thieves.

I hate the ocean for its dispassionate

mode of transporting on complacent back

a ship with accompanying music

which along with flowers, brings a tyrant.

Sure as the palm tree is born upon sand

and the rose grows beside the salt ocean

the pain within my verses re-surges,

convulsive, raging, aflame and perfumed.

And on those oceans over green waters,

a candle sinks a mast is torn and with hull

toward hungry waves the vessel is pulled

in the aftermath of a great battle

winds still keep the boat in its motion.

The horror!  The horror!  On earth, at sea

there’s been nothing but the grind of fury,

fog, tears!  Mountains dispersed on gathered plains;

what was once a llano’s turbulent force

had become merely departing rivers

when once emptied in the sea  were at each

turn there were deposited great cities

but the stars in the sky have been shut down

and shattered the winds scrambled by shadows,

escaped crashing into themselves and fell;

on the mountainous air a sound clamored

a noisily clattering flourish sang

while crazy stars began discharging flames!

Water,  and later, sun;  earth and ocean

shine in tranquil and crystalline marriage.

And the storm is both fertile and pure

Already from the blue air have been strung

two huge cloths formed together with features

embossed with the facade of the twilight

clattering together a sublime clash;

yet true as the tender edge of a wound

remains pink long after the sore is cured.

A ship is a child playing with wings

and rocks on the waves in misbehavior

Standing in front of the homes in ruins

in the same sacred places where Franklin

glimpsed and held lightning, among falling walls,

stone hillsides, gaping pits, the foundation

exposed looks as though teeth when breaking

through the gums.  The gigantic portico.

Near it there had gathered a large group

of people lured by the new construction,

a distinctive habit of the foolish,

absorbed by the size;  as stone the sun

is unable to enter enrages

because its mass is greater than they are.

Between the gruff scaffolds and nascent wall

is the portico like a topless skull

appearing as though an enormous lip,

livid and swelling, the crowd and wagons

exposed to daylight moved toward the shade;

as it went higher than any church could

the wonder was attached onto the clouds.

And from the middle of its large-sized walls,

the beautiful portico is rising.

I want to give myself up completely

to those spaces where one can live in peace

under cloth of light, drunken joy swelling

beneath white clouds traveling overhead

and where both Dante and the stars reside.

I know, I know why I’ve seen this vision

in certain of those purest of hours

like a calyx a flower breaks to bloom,

no, no, there can be no other option

but the same for the breaking of the soul.

Listen, I’ll tell you how swiftly as dawn

arrives unannounced and the spring’s first light

covers the friendly lilacs in flower..

Melancholy me…I wanted to say

while waiting for a verse of grandiose

visions they flew toward me in a line

like happy eagles I watched each one land

just as the voice of the people has sent

me golden birds that remain at my side

See them fly!  See them fly! See how they spin

from the blood of my wounds.  If you ask me

for a symbol of the world:  just look here:

a ruptured wing.  Gold is malleable.

The soul not at all!  Look how I suffer

I have lived in my soul like a young deer

corralled in a cave.  Not good. What a wrong!

I will take my revenge with my weeping!

What startled horse’s horns hair-raising fright

perceives the fangs and claws of a great wolf

in dead tree trunks, my verses are destroyed,

will they rise again?  Yes, but in their own

style like a knife sliced into the neck

of a steer sends blood threads up to the sky.

Only love produces melodies.