XV
Quid πλατανών opacissimus?*
Sleep wrapped you, like a tree with green leaves
you breathed like a tree in the serene light
in the diaphanous spring I looked at your face
closed eyelids, eyelashes touching the water.
My fingers found yours in the soft grass
I kept your pulse for a moment
and I felt the pain of your heart elsewhere.
Under the plane tree, by the water, amid the laurels
sleep moved you and scattered you
around me, close to me, and I couldn’t touch
the whole of you
as you were joined with your silence
seeing your shadow grow and diminish
vanish among the other shadows, in the other
world that let you free and held you back.
The life that they gave us to live, we lived.
Feel sorry for those who wait with such patience
lost amid the black laurels under the heavy
plane trees
and those who alone speak to the cisterns and the wells
and drown in the circles of voice.
Feel sorry for the comrade who shared our deprivation
and our sweat
and sunk inside the sun like a crow beyond the statues
without hope of enjoying our reward.
Give us, beyond the sleep, serenity.
- what happened to the deep shadowed plane tree forest?
Libros Libertad 