I SAW HER WANDERING
I saw her wandering
amid the trees that swayed
and fanned her pale beauty
as if emerged from a print.
Magically her tunic
seemed to dissolve through the air.
I directed toward her from the depths
of my memory beautiful and silent
words. The words crossed
time and tremulous
they arrived at her ears that listened
to my eulogies in the rumors of the past.
She kept a hermetic silence. An ambiguous
smile covered her impenetrable semblance.
+++
LIKE BLACK VEILS
Like black veils the clouds were
floating.
Below the hunched
man was clumsily walking.
A great silence weighed on his head.
He opened and closed his sunken eyes
and glanced upwards occasionally.
Distant lightning seemed to dazzle him.
Infinity spoke to him in a very low voice.
He was abandoning the outside world.
Elusive, overwhelmed by secrets,
he returned to his room
barely illuminated by a reddish light.
His mind was burning amid virtual fires.
+++
A PHANTASMAL VOICE
It was talking and
talking in a low voice
and without stopping
and sibilant
to the winds of the plateau.
Summer was arriving.
The storm was tearing apart
the trees of the forest.
It was talking and its voice was
a very dry murmur
amid the shadows.
It was emerging, no one knows,
from what unknown place.
It was something like that, hoarse,
as if flowing
from the limitless edges
of the earth.
It was something vain.
A voice that was heard
down below
from the depths of the dust.
A phantasmal voice.
With its nails, it was scratching
the walls. Our
ghosts, said Valle
Inclán, are the noises
that are produced inside
ourselves by
our own remorse.
+++
I NOW LEAVE MY BALANCE
Francisco they call me.
My soul has been forged
in the great vigils
and the dark days. And
I am from these places.
Likewise in these mountains
my ancestors
lived and died. I am
from here and this is my seal.
Now and from day to day I combat
my shadow. The enigmas
that presented themselves
at each instant
and ever to Oedipus,
torment me
constantly. I am not
immune to anything. I have
never emerged unscathed.
The infallible formulas
of love have rushed
to the precipice and torture me
without end. Blind harpies,
willing to immolate me,
become more and more enraged
with my life. In the distance
is heard, time and again,
the tolling of the dead.
In the neighboring cemetery,
lie my elders.
I never say a word.
And imagination
survives us with no need
to invent any fable.
I invent absolutely
nothing, much less
in this unfathomable void.
All the beings from these
districts know me
and call me Francisco.
I am from these hills
and belong to these sullen
mountains. I am from here
and in these very same places
I now leave my balance.
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