Note: This poem was originally written in Zapoteco.

To travel the seas of silence
becoming nothing in the foam
as if the body could have no meaning.
The eyes attached to a ship,
and the fate in the balance
meets itself like a pendulum
at the extremes.
To lose one’s self in a painting by Matisse
that the blind man showed us by the shape of the paper.
To make this journey
like one who remains in a drawing
and never returns.

Originally published in La Palabra Florida, Year l, No.2, p. 16, México, Spring l997.