ORESTES
A few fiery fingers pass over our chests successively
marking detectable circles around the nipples
and, circle after circle, we get excited, around a vague,
unknown, yet defined center — endless circles around
a deaf scream, around a knife wound; and the knife
is driven deep in our hearts, making a center of it, like
the post in the middle of the threshing floor, up
on the hill,
and all around it, horses, wheat ears, winnowers,
workers; next to the haystacks women winnowers,
with the head of the moon on their shoulders, listening to
the horse neighing to the faraway end of their sleep,
listening to the urinating bulls among the osiers and
blackberry bushes, the thousand feet of the centipede
on the water pitcher, the crawl of the tamed snake
in the olive grove and the creak of the warm stone
that tightens when it gets cold.
An erotic word always remains shut, unsaid in
our mouth, like a pebble or a nail in our sandal;
you are too lazy to stop and take it out, to undo
your straps, to delay — the secret rhythm of
the walk has overtaken you, more than the pain
of the pebble, even more so than the persistent
reminder of your tiredness and procrastination;
and more so that little, thorny relief and
recollection that this pebble you carry from your
beloved seashore, from your sauntering there and
your pleasant contemplation with watery images
when the songs of seamen were heard from
the seashore tavernas along with the song
of the sea far away, far away song, near us,
lost song, foreign, ours.
Libros Libertad 