And never, never again?
Not on nights packed with a few stars,
or in mornings’ first slender sun
or afternoons sacrificed to afternoons?
Or at the edge of a pale road
that surrounds the farm fields,
or a rim of a trembling fountain,
whitened by a moon?
Or beneath the forest’s lush poplars
where, yelling at him,
I was overtaken by the night?
Not in the grotto that returns
the echo of my words?
No. To see him again—
it does not matter where—
in heaven’s dead water
or inside the boiling hole
or still moon or in bloodless fright!
To be with him.
To be every springtime and winter,
united in one painted knot
around his bloody neck!
Translated by Mariela Griffor