FAR OVER YONDER

Wound me, O Death!
Gather the open flower
of my years. Let it not
age. Come soon.
Break the crimson coil
of my ambitious heart in full
flight over the curved horizons.
Paralyze my arms
that dip the oar in the golden waters
of time. And bind my feet
stained with the blood of the carnal
grape-cluster. Quench the rhythm
of my arteries whose beat wounds,
in the sleepless night, my cars
with a rumour of underground water.
Bandage me
like a child, and deliver me to the arms
of the dark wet-nurse who suckles
the hungry roots of the trees.
Not to see the light, the creative light
that draws from its inexhaustible depths
the infinite forms of life.
Not to stare into space
potable to the gaze
like a blue cup full of foam.
Never to see a human face,
never to hear a word.
Wound me, O Death.

Neither the gentle sea, wrecker of many
riches, keeping beneath, its waters
fabulous cities
drowned, like funeral vessels
with their cups of gold
and their couches laden with women.
Nor the same sky forever that sustains
clouds' mobile architecture,
tracing the distant measure
of mysterious constellations,
Nor the adolescent body
of a young girl, just shaded
along its hidden creases
by a soft velvet down.
Nothing can bind me to this shore
of earth.

                 Come, O Death!

I would descend the dank stairs,
carpeted with moss, of the narrow
gallery that leads to your crypt
where the drowsy sphynic is waiting
crowned with immortal roses.
There, in the glimmer of the fading lamps
that filter a shadowy dawn
through the grey alabaster?
I will review the multiple scene
of my life, the faces known,
the golden image of certain fields
still blooming, under other skies,
lost in time and memory.