The word outloud
(La palabra dicha)

The word arises
written from the page.
The word,
stalactite formed,
on a column engraved
letter by letter one by one.
Its echo icing over
the stony sheet.

Essence,
white like the page,
the word arises.
It walks
the high-wire
from silence to shout
on the edge
of strictly saying.
Hearing: sound's nest,
its labyrinth.

What it says it says not
what it says: how to say
what it says not?
                        Say
perhaps the virgin is urgent.

A cry
in a dead crater
in another galaxy
how does one say ataraxy?

What is said is said
straight and backwards
the mind demined
of mine off-line
cemetery, some tarry
seamen's no semen.

Ear's labyrinth
what you say is un-said
from silence to shout
unheard.

Innocence in no sense:
Shut up to speak.

Hear the rain
(Como quien oye llover)

Hear me as you hear the rain,
in the back of your mind,
pitter-patter, drizzling,
water that is air, air that is time,
the day's not yet gone,
evening's yet to come,
figures in the mist,
just 'round the corner,
figures of time,
at the bend in this moment,
hear me as you hear the rain,
without hearing, but hearing what I say,
with eyes open to what's within,
asleep with the senses awake,
it's raining, pitter-patter, a murmur of syllables,
air and water, weightless words:
of what we were and are,
the days and years, this moment,
time without weight, enormous burden,
hear me as you hear the rain,
the wet tarmac shining,
the mist rises and walks,
the night opens and watches me,
it's you wrapped in mist,
you and your face of night,
you and your skin, faintly flashing,
crossing the street, entering by my temples,
watery paces on my eyelids
hear me as you hear the rain,
the tarmac glistens, you cross the street,
it's the wandering fog in the night,
it's the night asleep in your bed,
it's the ocean swell of your breathing,
your watery fingers wet my brow,
your fiery fingers burn my eyes,
your airy fingers open the eyelids of time,
gushing forth apparitions and resurrections,
hear me as you hear the rain,
the years pass, the moments return,
can you hear your steps next door?
neither here nor there: you hear them
in another time that is right now,
hear the steps of time,
creator of places without mass or location,
hear the rain running down the terrace,
the night is already darker in the copse,
the rays have bedded down among the leaves,
a rambling garden adrift
-- come, your shadow covers this page.

Dawn
(Madrugada)

Cold quick hands
one by one pull back
the bands of darkness
I open my eyes
    I remain
alive
    in the middle
of a wound still fresh.

Brotherhood
(Hermandad: homenaje a Claudio Ptolomeo)

I am man; how little I last
and the night stretches on.
But I look toward the sky:
the stars are writing.
Without comprehending, I understand:
I am also written,
and at this very moment
someone is noting me down.

Between going and staying
(Entre irse y quedarse)

Between going and staying, the day is stuck,
a block of frozen transparency.

Everything is seen yet all is elusive:
the horizon untouchably near.

Papers on the table, a book, a vase:
all rest in the shadow of their names.

Blood ascends more slowly through my veins
a single syllable beating stubbornly in my temples.

The indifferent light transforms
opaque walls, time without history.

The afternoon has spread out: now it's a bay
rocking the world with its gentle swaying.

We are neither asleep nor awake:
We are, we just are.

The moment lets itself go:
we pull ourselves away; pauses in transit.

A tree within
(Arbol adentro)

A tree's grown inwards
from my temples.
Veins are its roots
nerves its branches
and thoughts its tangle of leaves.
Your glances ignite it
and its shaded fruits
are blood oranges
and pomegranates of flame.

Day breaks
in the body's night.
There, inside my head
the tree speaks.

Come closer: can you hear it?

Proem
(Proema)

At times poetry is the vertigo of bodies and the vertigo of speech and the vertigo of death;
walking, eyes closed, along the edge of the precipice and the verbena of underwater gardens;
the laugh that sets fire to rules and holy commandments;
the parachute descent of words onto the beaches of the page;
the despair that embarks on a paper boat and crosses,
for forty nights and forty days, the sea of nocturnal anguish
and the rock-strewn terrain of daytime anguish;
the idolatry of "I" and the dissipation of "I";
the beheading of epithets, the burying of mirrors;
the recollection of freshly cut pronouns in the gardens of Epicurus and Nezahualcoyotl;
the flute solo on the terrace of memory and the dance of flames in the caverns of thought;
the migrations of flocks of verbs, wings and claws, seeds and hands;
the bony and root-laden nouns planted in the undulations of language;
love unseen and love unheard and love unspoken:
love to love.