On the Earth

 

I sleep in you, upon her corpse, earth;
Upon your life I place my own, eyes pressed
as if I were dead.

The world weighs on me,
as does time
and at moments the assured beauty
of the human heart.

But I also look at the tree:
that branch, so tender,
pressed by the sky; in its lap
leaf jabs leaf,
its fine stem plunges
against the blue flesh
of the wind that rocks it,
but not with her steady rhythm
sometimes more incautious in its way-,
eagerness similar to that with which
it pursues, snatches and devours an animal,
in the end, its prey won.

So that, today, I feel your summer in me,
like a sorrow or an absence
and I sleep in you
on her dead body, earth.

I think into my body and see,
a single eye of dark shadow, and, within,
your very death;
a similar dream, so fertile and so pure.
like the depth born
from water, in your veins,
unnoticed, that crosses
to refresh the burning pulp
like a shadow
-half dead -, that surrounds
the incandescent bone
-captured light, possibly soul-
life of your apple.

All the dead, in you are able to give life:
the wheat, the blue water,
the pale body of man, fire ...

All can be born
and turn dead
in the same moment,
fleeting, in what is called
human freedom,
names the fire,
light the reflection,
the spike of wheat,
the spring of transparent water.

Next may they also
live eternally joined
or be eternally dead, together.

But the death in me searches its life.
I know it, because I am a man
and today I fear, in this summer,
earth, the sorrow.

And so I seek
and sleep in you, earth, like a son,
the smallest, the last
but also the most like you
in your presence, mother:
in the true august
held in your lap.

 

 

back to issue two

 

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