A Paean

Feelings needn’t be understood,
they are meant to be lived.
Pigs needn’t be understood,
they are meant to be eaten.
Flowers needn’t be understood,
they are meant to be smelled.
The bird needn’t be understood,
it is meant to be on its own ;
don’t shape your heart into a branch,
don’t drink its air with your breath,
the air below its wings…
We particularly needn’t understand,
above all, we are meant to be ;
yet we particularly must have been,
definitely we particularly must have been.

 

Love Song on the Seashore

Scratch-ankled, I’m eagerly awaiting your tread
amongst the seashore cliffs, so cold in their firm stead.
The sea will turn into winsome translucent birds,
as many as the wide-awake eyes can embrace,
and they’ll flutteringly soar, when they hear your words,
up to the air’s peak surging a star to enlace.

 

Precipes and caves will abide vain and hollow,
the fish will strike the shattered air with their tailfins,
stirring the serene and slow-paced corals below
thus arousing the most tender strings into sheens.

 

Behold, the wrecked ship of poor Sinbad the sailor
props her proud prow against the evergrey seashells,
her huge stern stabs the core of the crystal’s parlour,
live crawfish crawl all over her decks where hell dwells.

 

I gift you with a starfish, a crab, and a dolphin !
Rightly carry them on your back to the beach sands.
I’ll pretend to be blind and lurkingly join in
my arm’s stretched, to caress your face’s fairylands.

 

Sentimental Story

Thereafter we would meet more often.

I would stand at one side of the hour,

you were standing at the other,

like the handles of an amphora.

Only the words would flutter between us,

forwards and backwards.

Their swirl could almost be sighted,

and, on the spur of the moment,

I would bend down on one knee,

thrusting my elbow into the ground,

to merely watch the grass tilted

by some flinging word,

as if under the paw blow from a running lion.

The words would twirl and twirl between us,

forwards and backwards,

and the more I loved you, the more

they reiterated, in an almost visible whirl,

the structure of the matter, from its very beginnings.

 

Of Love

There she stays bored and so beautiful
her black hair is tempestuous,
her lustrous hand

buried me into oblivion long ago, –
buried itself into oblivion long ago,
while hanging from the chair’s nape.
I bathe myself in the light
and grit my teeth along the year’s orbit.
I show her my teeth
although she grasps I am not laughing,
lovely being of light
she reveals myself to me while
there she stays bored and so beautiful
whereas I live solely for her
in the fierce world
beneath the celestial vault.

 

Autumn Emotion

Autumn has shown up, cover my heart with some thing,

the shadow of a tree though I’d sooner you cast your shadow’s wing.

 

I fear that I might not behold you every so often,

that my pointed wings might grow to the clouds and unsoften,

that you might conceal yourself within an unfamiliar eye,

which will close its bitter wormwood lid and dry.

 

And so I draw nearer to the stones and cease to speak,

I gather my words and drown them in the sea.

I whistle the moon to make it rise and turn its cheek

into a tremendous love that will never fail me.

 

Sad Love Song

Only my life will die for me in truth,

some day.

Only the grass knows the taste of the earth.

Only my blood truly longs

for my heart while deserting it.

The air is high, you are tall,

my despondency is tall.

There comes a time when horses die.

There comes a time when cars grow old,

There comes a time when the rain is dispassionate

and each woman seems to wear your head

and your frocks.

There also comes a huge white bird.

English version by Gabriela PACHIA