1

Here I am you alone
In this mad, gaping
Hell
Here I am you alone and death altogether
With its predators and its seers and the informers
Perhaps I am arriving at
The limit of my possibilities
For you to arrive at the last
Dream

Flare up until you see me and
Become complete until I see you
My rose between two fires
Inflaming me
Hopefully I am inciting wisdom
In this ruin
I have tried
To the end of the flower and the fire,
Then, how have they isolated my voice
And your silence?!
Have you leaned on a belated
Sword?!
Or have I been exchanged–one absence for another?!

2

Here I am you alone–while you are but I
I was not before me but you were after you
The shadow has shed the blood of the sun
On the horizon and the night has hissed
The night has hissed
How you have been delayed . . . changed . . .
And you would not be laid bare–Take no offense from me
You have your shrouds

3

With thorns the guard caresses
Your sparrows
And the state bestows upon you
A precautionary death,
And enough of the darkness
For you to go -so go
You are aware of the insanity of death,
Thus the music breaks out,
And your myths are shaken
This other body is in the arena,
Are you asking me
Who has splattered a name . . .
And the throne with blood . . . ?
No time . . .
This other body
Who has taken it from me
And who has taken me from it?
And who testifies that death
Has grown weary?
The obscure caresses its vacancies
with wires and blasphemy
I have tried often. . . .
As the constellation has mourned the horizon of a poem
I said I have tried often
And with lilac, I have caressed
your night

4

The river has been choked with the tears of a woman
Whose son was
More pure than she had hoped for
But her dreams were fractured in the night . . .
God was in a seventh slumber,
As was her son
For who would disturb him
Before the dawn call to prayer?!!
And who, Sister. . . .
Now bestows upon you
A palm of his stature
A cloud of his laughter
A breadth of his hands?!!
The river has been choked with the tears of a woman
She resembles my mother,
Just as You resemble me,
And you are now alone

5

Extinction has escaped you . . .
How the night has shed light on you
And the blossoms are darker.
And the wind has enfolded you
How the wilderness prays for you
And forgetfulness has been hailed
To where
Shall I proceed with your pledges?
I am not asking about places,
My prison is a place,
Except that the times
Have been divested of their right
For a free journey and of
Their right of place
Having dried up in my coat
Are seven clouds and your memory . . .
Are you mourning
The salt of your tears and the poet
In the reach of his poem
He writes it
Or let me say: it writes him
Or both write:
Perhaps you are bringing me flowers
But
You will not find after you
One who brings yours
Our night brings to the surface its elegy
On the long verse
I see my course on the waves
Or is this your face?
The salt of your tears,
So permit me to
Close my eyes a little
And a little . . .
And a little.

6

I have not yet handed over my directions
To the judgment of the sand . . .
Behind me a time
Ashamed of the deceits of geography . . .
Thanks to the sparrow
That built a nest on the other
Window and flew.
Breaker of my back
Your shadow is now a spent tomorrow
Upon which I disperse my thoughts
And I call to you with what is in the spirit
From the groan of the horse . . . Do you hear me . . . ?
I am calling
I am not searching for a collective grave
Rather . . . for my country

February 1993