Layers

I am digging into my stratum,
The surface one, the latest,
On the underlying layer
A shadow is digging into the substratum.

And so on and so forth,
All the departed are digging,
Feverishly seeking
Deeper and deeper.

The clacks and clanks of shovels
Resound against their cheeks,
From the other side
Lively shovel stirs thrust up against us.

Humankind is digging,
Practising archaeology,
Thus far we haven’t uncovered
Anything else but this earthen globe.

Anyway it must be a big something
In this world of stars.

Perpetuum mobile

The people’s ideals
And their accomplishment
Will always be disjoined

Like the crest and the base
By the ever gaping plunge
Wider than the highest of cascades.

This hopefall
Can be harnessed
Rationally,
By building something much like

A hydropower plant next to it.

The energy thus supplied,
Though we can barely use it

To light our cigarettes,
Means just a bit more than nothing,
Since, while smoking, we allow pondering
On some even more otherworldly ideals.

The Alphabet

He did not quite exactly notice
When he dropped the first letter.

He kept on talking,
Vigilantly shunning
The words
Which included that letter.

Later he dropped another,
It seems to have been A.
The Sun, the Moon,
Endured being left out.

Then one after the other,
Until happiness, love
Fell short of understanding him.

The last letter
Stayed behind thrust into a syllable,
Like a fatigued tooth.

Now he can hear, he can see,
But he is barren of words for life,
Mainly wrought from the letters
He has dropped.

English version by Gabriela PACHIA