And lets blue feathers slowly leaffall
Shaken from the cypress where the bluebird nests
A Madonna picks the sweetbriar at dawn
She’ll come tomorrow to gather carnations
To place in the nests of the doves she destines
For the pigeon who this evening resembled the Paraclete
In the small lemon groves there fell in love
With the love that we love the last arrivals
Distant villages are like their eyelids
And amongst the lemons their hearts are dangling
*
My friends have finally declared their scorn
I drank tall glasses full of stars
An angel while I was sleeping exterminated
The lambs the shepherds forlorn sheepfolds
False centurions carried off the vinegar
And tramps wounded by spurge were dancing
I don’t know of any arousing stars
Lamp-posts piss their flame in the moonlight
Undertakers clink beer glasses
There fell in the candles’ bright light for whatever it’s worth
False collars onto floods of wrinkled dresses
Masked childbearing women celebrate their churching
The town that night seemed like an archipelago
Women demanded love and fealty
And gloomy gloomy river I recall
The shadows that passed by were never pretty
*
I don’t even pity myself anymore
And can’t explain my silent torment
Every word I have to say is changed to a star
An Icarus attempts to rise into each of my eyes
And bearer of suns I burn at the center of two nebulas
What have I made of intellect’s theological beasts
Once the dead returned to adore me
And I longed for the end of the world
But mine came whistling like a hurricane
*
I’ve had the courage to look backwards
The corpses of my days
Mark my way and I weep for them
Some rot in Italian churches
Or rather in small lemon groves
That blossom and bear fruit
All at once and in all seasons
Other days wept before they died in taverns
Where ardent bouquets break
At the eyes of a mulatto woman who invented poetry
And electricity’s roses still open
In my memory’s garden
*
The Betrothal, 2