One day the Great Theme will arrive,

opening the windows,

it will sit down at our table,

will drink the intact wine,

will shake us to the core.

The most beautiful Mediterranean civilization

will have by then long flung itself in the sea;

while the thirteen months of the Ethiopian calendar

will have long set on fire our Flemish obscurity.

One day the Great Theme will arrive

the very image of a child in its mother-of-pearl-like

placenta

while we will take to the swamps,

will rejoice over the vision of a horizontal (universal)

ooze

swallowing the surrealist slumber that still protects us.

And the reason's insomnia gives birth to monsters,

-the ooze will whisper.

And the redeeming hour in which the poem writhes;

and the young desert in the still glowing cinders;

and the euphoria of these open arteries

where I, the ooze will whisper . . .

One day the Great Theme will arrive.

It will perhaps find us reciting a few passages

from Gabriela Mistral.

Behind it the wind

will continue

to quake

your white shirt

my fingernails,

glowing like red roses