Persephone (excerpt)
The conflagration of the day fluttered like a flag over
my back; it burned my hair; thousands of tender stars
flickered, one in each of my hairs with five rayed colours.
I saw them in the fresh water or in that narcissus, I don’t
know, they sparkled around my face, as if I had caught
fire, as if I wanted to fall in my watery idol to put it out.
And suddenly
I saw in front of my eyes his two jet black horses
as if blinded by the light, I saw them in the water too.
I yelled not from fear but from the dazzle, as if that
flower swallowed me, as if I fell in the water well,
as if I descended the ladder with one jump down
to the servants’ rooms and I felt the exquisite slip
of the lower semicircle on my bare soles; I just saw
how your baskets with the flowers, the garden fountain,
the stone lion, the bronze turtle, fell in the earth schism.
Libros Libertad 