LIGHTHOUSE KEEPER
When you climb the round interior stairway
with the long and narrow windows that look
first at the sea then at the sky, you feel dizzy,
you think that this stairway has no end, as if
you climb in your dark viscera, as if you wrap
yourself around yourself, as if you alone twine
yourself in the unknown and slowly you escape
gravity; you get dizzy.
This stairway is a gimlet made of stone; it endlessly
drills opening a hole in the void and when you reach
up to the balcony the power of gravity equals the height
you have climbed. Then
you can’t look neither down nor up but only straight
ahead following the beam of your eyes which are like
two wide open wings that keep you between earth and
sky in a motionless, heavy, trembling balance.
Such afternoons are beautiful, at that exact point
where motionlessness meets motion, heaviness meets
lightness, the gulls often succeed in this, you noticed?
And then the seagull is a palm that covers the void
or a small floating statuette for a pointless and
incomprehensible victory that concentrates in
its whiteness all the light of the approaching night
and the light of the day that fades away.
Libros Libertad 