Bloodless Moon

Standing

Being, that is to say, standing
It is far more heroic than departing
Out of the deepest wound
In agony without lust or friends

You still can see the birth of sorrow
Surviving, without inspiring hopes
Beauty shining on the deepest night
Without consciousness of previous nights

On crowded passages and silent brooks
We share the blindness of the shattered lion
The far-off cry of the children in Chocó
The horror of our defeats, our decay

Life is far more valiant than the void
Standing before the fall and after
On the certainty of a quiet rest
That will unveil the mystery of the dead


Sybil

We were lost in eastern Rome
When a distant relative called us to a blooming house
This is the Sybil of Cumas, he said
Who sees through your secrets and your past
 
We waited in a narrow room of dried-up lilacs
Where a volume of Origenes was laid
On the raise and fall of angels in Caná
And it was written in the language of the dead
 
She read our lines, according to the orbs
Past lovers, enemies and cities
Came to her mind like flakes over the snow
And the secret promise of our home
 
But then her dark countenance was pale
You were sent back from the columns of the dead,
She said, to suffer betrayal and deceit
And you die to see that happy time to come


Bloodless Moon

This house was mine—I built it
With my own hands—in her garden
I fed squirrels, pheasants and foxes
Now see how it collapses by my fault

I seized the hands of other men
Remote—their clutch was so infirm
Other grieves had weakened them
Grieves more ferocious than tonight

I drop my breath over the stars
And a moon eclipse bleeds on the sky
A merciless fox slays a pheasant
I feel her agony—had they felt mine

Farewell that blears my eyes
From this empty garden a whisper will return
Rescue me from these, my weary thoughts
Bloodless Moon, another garden will be born




Aurora to Eternity

Life is a walk over a fenceless bridge
Where mist and vile desires glimpse
Narrower passages appear at every step
Tramps—we jostle, as stifled

Some days the sun irradiates over the slopes
The rainbow bruits harmony—dandelions
And poppies sprout—sap springs
Until greed or lust's clamour return

Words that swapped eroding ire with tears
Unforgiveness that stained a tranquil prairie
Nightly storms that became tenacious journeys
Despair vainly cured by humility and labour

Thoughts that go on—they patiently ache
Feeding on the dregs of lenience
Let me leap and cross from here to there
From this uncertanty to certainty

Hove us in your arms, untrotten Lord
Am I not prepared to leave this jaded flesh?
Your pain was cured with further pain
Unbeloved I fall in love with love




Life

Again our journey has no end
Our provisions are spent
Sleepless nights had sickened us
I feel the frost gangrening your hands

Yet you once believed in me
In the island I promised our sons
Now, before these furious waves
Only the reefs echo in our ears

We surmounted many abysms,
We endured collisions and a blaze
Dead marshes, the highest cliff
The earth looked so small beneath

Now, then, go take that cargo ship
It will convey you gently to your port
Leeward my canoe wades—behold
The end of my journey seems so close

This sea is merely an impetuous pond
Of whirls, titans and thunderstorms
I will arrive, my love, to call you back
Or if I die I'll gently wait for you


Books

Seeds of skies, unlock the beauty
That the rose merely insinuates
Modest air of newly-born sparrows
That nested in unclouded cliffs

On your pages nations and walls fade
Through road fences I advance
Levelling towers to the ground
All happy times with you return

Lonely solace that retrieves
Friends marooned in distant seas
Breeze that gently feeds my ceaseless thoughts
Furnace of sentiments bygone

Dawn and dusk, clamour and whisper
Yeast of cheerfulness and despair
Along a bureaucratic hallway
You make buoyant every wait

Heaven within voluptuously palpitates
You sustain every joy, every grief
Wallowing in lukewarm waters
The ablution of spikes lurking in my veins

I have cleansed your eyes with patience
Eyes the moonlight on a page reflects
Women and men of fervent heart
In a land where journeys are so scant


On the road

Every man and woman walk
If they speak they are confused,
If they cry they are off the road
Nobody dares to stare aside

They may pause over a puddle
Lured by a decaying mien
A bodiless reflection, so dim
That they drown in quicksand

A charring sun scalps them
Their entrails spawn disease
Yet they are togged up—they brag
Of gilded lipsticks and clay masks

Every man and woman walk
Nobody dares to stare aside
As a slave who fears the stars
I follow their pace—so far behind


Inmortality

Inmortality is a feeling
I can not prove, I can't deny,
So let me a feeling be,
Hope for this living clay that is no clay


The Wreck

Across the frozen arctic seas
A pitiless tempest agitated our ship
We fell in a ferocious island
Of wolfs, cats and human beings

Our communities rebuked us
As our bright prospects dimly sank
Flakes of snow cuddle your hair
As fairies, a gleaming halo over your head

Hymns tamed the coldness of the wind
We prayed rhapsodies of love
As nights passed so quietly away
Quenching restless hopes

Our solace a pot of blistered beans
The moon—white giant of the sky
Earth and time, stillness and desertion
Two souls learning to neglect each vice

Forced, solitary and missed in foreign land
We learnt to dwell—battered and dead
And yet our heart prolonged the world
Endless agony, the life we chose


Sunday evening

When I am taken by the glum
That frustrations distils upon my heart
On all my misery, vexation and regret
My mind, desperate to be healed
Seeks your tender face, my sweet companion

However, since I have you now,
Unending source of joy and honey
That deadens every fall and every pledge,
I see that sadness is a shadow from the past
Or of the nights I fear to spend away from you


Lot

As a child I used to hear,
Than unfair men cannot sleep at nigh
But being as sincere and prodigal
As only easy prays of wolves can be
I withstand the longest nights
After the murkiest days,
Accused of melancholy and sloth
Stung by bees, scorpions and disease
It is Friday, almost Saturday
And from my narrow window
I listen to the clamours of the drunk
While my heart whispers ceaselessly on my ears
Amongst psalms that seem so far away
For six years we lived in Sodom,
Pool of well-fed voracious sharks
Struggling to steal and to move on
With intrigue as their milk
Valley of serpents hidden in the rocks
Unable to accept a foreign voice
So haughty as to claim victory in defeat
Untainted by currents of uncertain red
Without oracles or death I hear them
Drawn in futile friendships
Claiming that their struggle is too hard
A punishment for the ill-fated and the unfit
And though I think that you too, Father
Has forsaken me on this baleful sod
I sense you in each silence by my side
Holy Spirit, Jesus, my refuge, my rock


To a suicide poet

That was his end after the end, my Lady
Unable to go on he jumped over the fence
From a conflagration to a distant shore
The horizon before him was so dark
And behind him, mistreat and desolation dregs
Had he drawn in that relentless sea
He and his agitated soul would have found peace
Anguish was his bread and his companion in a well-off land
Amongst compassionate verses and ruined temples
He sold his backbone and his limbs to Egyptian priests
Dragging his mouldy legs along the sod
Lifting sacks of sand over the air, sparing ridicule
For no other land had offered him refuge
Tender kittens had ripped off his back in 1939
Unwilling to libel his enemies, reluctant to revenge
He saw his words reduced to cinders by the mob
Today he feels that empty space beneath his feet
All his efforts have been shattered by the winds
Perseverance that turned foes into mourners
Would had he bear it for another year, another century perhaps