THE DESPERATE SONG

THE DESPERATE SONG

Emerge your memory of the night I am.

The river knots its stubborn lament to the sea.

Abandoned like the wharves at dawn.

It's time to go, oh abandoned!

Cold corollas wash over my heart.

Oh pit of debris, fierce cave of castaways!

In you, wars and flights have accumulated.

The singing birds lifted their wings from you.

You swallowed everything, like distance.

Like the sea, like time. Everything in you was

           shipwreck!

It was the happy hour of assault and the kiss.

The hour of stupor that burned like a beacon.

Pilot anxiety, blind diver's fury,

murky drunkenness of love, everything in you was shipwreck!

In the foggy childhood my soul winged and wounded.

Discoverer lost, everything in you was shipwreck!

You gird yourself with pain, you clung to desire.

The sadness knocked you down, everything in you was shipwrecked!

I pushed back the shadow wall,

I went beyond desire and act.

Oh flesh, my flesh, woman that I loved and lost,

to you in this humid hour, I evoke and make song.

Like a glass, you held the infinite tenderness,

and the infinite forgetfulness shattered you like a glass.

It was the black, black solitude of the islands,

and there, woman of love, your arms welcomed me.

It was thirst and hunger, and you were the fruit.

It was the duel and the ruins, and you were the miracle.

Oh woman, I do not know how you could restrain me

in the land of your soul, and in the cross of your arms!

My wish for you was the most terrible and short,

the most upset and drunk, the tightest and most avid.

Kissing cemetery, there is still fire in your graves,

even the clusters burn pecked of birds.

Oh the bitten mouth, oh the kissed limbs,

oh the hungry teeth, oh the braided bodies.

Oh the crazy copulation of hope and effort

in which we knot and despair.

And the tenderness, light as water and flour.

And the word barely started on the lips.

That was my destiny and in it my longing traveled,

and in him my longing fell, everything in you was shipwreck!

Oh bilge of rubble, in you everything fell,

what pain you did not squeeze, what waves did not drown you.

From billow to billow you still called and sang

Standing like a sailor in the bow of a ship.

You still flourished in songs, you still broke in currents.

Oh bilge of rubble, well open and bitter.

Pale blind diver, hapless slinger,

Discoverer lost, everything in you was shipwreck!

It's time to leave, the hard and cold hour

that the night is subject to all schedules.

The rustling belt of the sea girdles the shore.

Cold stars emerge, black birds migrate.

Abandoned like the wharves at dawn.

Only tremulous shadow twists in my hands.

Oh beyond all. Oh beyond all.

It's time to go. Oh abandoned!