Agua
By Pura López-Colomé
Translation by Richard E. McDorman
© 2011
Water
1
It’s begun to snow.
Snowflakes,
suddenly-wounding
water.
They land white-hot
upon my fears.
They do not slide away.
They’ve stuck like thorns
of a golden crown …
like roots.
2
So many feet have passed
through here
without trampling
joy and contemplation
all at once:
Uphill,
I could see the remains
of the narcissus.
Everything was blue from then
until the end.
I held onto a desire:
not progress,
nor the frozen mountaintop,
nor the warmth of the sky.
Just the waves
without bondage or freedom,
just the waves.
3
Your people of fire
saw me return,
their beings in constant motion,
their message.
Everything felt dissolved
in a dense layer,
that yonder sea.
I saw it start to ebb.
I extended my arm,
my fingers straining, longing to get wet,
like in an ancient baptismal font …
4 / Open sea
The sea turned me into
a sacred mother-of-pearl,
a vessel full of something
that goes away
or simply evaporates
at its own pace.
Aquamarine flower,
fragrant of salt
and moist embraces
between one life and the other,
without shores.
5 / Out to sea
I saw you in the distance, from afar
but you weren’t aboard the boat,
the horizon.
You were walking, concealing
some destination.
Your expression
was unmistakable to me.
Your saffron cloak,
a living urn.
I thought you were calling me.
I ran my fingers across your skin,
longing to store it in
my heart’s memory.
Amidst the fog your
eyelids trembled
at my touch,
as did I.
The rose of the worlds spun
until it withered. It became light,
without a single tear among its folds.
In its cool center,
your terrifying eye
filled with an uncontainable tenderness
for the first time.
You had just died,
dawn,
in the night
of my body.
