The Captain's Verses

  duerme en mi nombre como te has dormido

  sobre mi corazón, y así mañana

  el hueco de tu forma

  guardarán mis palabras

  y el que las oiga un día recibirá una ráfaga

  de trigo y amapolas:

  estará todavía respirando

  el cuerpo del amor sobre la tierra!

  5

  Hilo de trigo y agua,

  de cristal o de fuego,

  la palabra y la noche,

  el trabajo y la ira,

  la sombra y la ternura,

  todo lo has ido poco a poco cosiendo

  a mis bolsillos rotos,

  y no sólo en la zona trepidante

  en que amor y martirio son gemelos

  como dos campanas de incendio,

  me esperaste, amor mío,

  sino en las más pequeñas

  obligaciones dulces.

  El aceite dorado de Italia hizo tu nimbo,

  santa de la cocina y la costura,

  y tu coquetería pequeñuela,

  que tanto se tardaba en el espejo,

  con tus manos que tienen

  pétalos que el jazmín envidiaría,

  lavó los utensilios y mi ropa,

  desinfecó las llagas.

  Amor mío, a mi vida

  llegaste preparada

  como amapola y como guerrillera:

  de seda el esplendor que yo recorro

  con el hambre y la sed

  que sólo para ti traje a este mundo,

  y detrás de la seda

  la muchacha de hierro

  que luchará a mi lado.

  Amor, amor, aquí nos encontramos.

  Seda y metal, acércate a mi boca.

  6

  Y porque Amor combate

  no sólo en su quemante agricultura

  sino en la boca de hombres y mujeres,

  terminaré saliéndoles al camino

  a los que entre mi pecho y tu fragancia

  quieren interponer su planta oscura.

  De mi nada más malo

  te dirán, amor mío,

  de lo que yo te dije.

  Yo viví en las praderas

  antes de conocerte

  y no esperé al amor sino que estuve

  acechando y salté sobre la rosa.

  Qué más pueden decirte?

  No soy bueno ni malo sino un hombre,

  y agregarán entonces el peligro

  de mi vida, que conoces

  y que con tu pasión has compartido.

  Y bien, este peligro

  es peligro de amor, de amor completo

  hacia toda la vida,

  hacia todas las vidas,

  y si este amor nos trae

  la muerte o las prisiones,

  yo estoy seguro que tus grandes ojos,

  como cuando los beso,

  se cerrarán entonces con orgullo,

  con doble orgullo, amor,

  con tu orgullo y el mío.

  Pero hacia mis orejas vendrán antes

  a socavar la torre

  del amor dulce y duro que nos liga,

  y me dirán:—Aquélla

  que tú amas

  no es mujer para ti,

  por qué la quieres? Creo

  que podrías hallar una más bella,

  más seria, más profunda,

  más otra, tú me entiendes, mírala qué ligera,

  y qué cabeza tiene,

  y mírala cómo se viste

  y etcétera y etcétera.

  Y yo en estas líneas digo:

  así te quiero, amor,

  amor, así te amo,

  así como te vistes

  y como se levanta

  tu cabellera y como

  tu boca se sonríe,

  ligera como el agua

  del manantial sobre las piedras puras,

  así te quiero, amada.

  Al pan yo no le pido que me enseñe

  sino que no me falte

  durante cada día de la vida.

  Yo no sé nada de la luz, de dónde

  viene ni dónde va,

  yo sólo quiero que la luz alumbre,

  yo no pido a la noche

  explicaciones,

  yo la espero y me envuelve,

  y así tú, pan y luz

  y sombra eres.

  Has venido a mi vida

  con lo que tú traías,

  hecha

  de luz y pan y sombra te esperaba,

  y así te necesito,

  así te amo,

  y a cuantos quieran escuchar mañana

  lo que no les diré, que aquí lo lean,

  y retrocedan hoy porque es temprano

  para estos argumentos.

  Mañana sólo les daremos

  una hoja del árbol de nuestro amor, una hoja

  que caerá sobre la tierra

  como si la hubieran hecho nuestros labios,

  como un beso que cae

  desde nuestras alturas invencibles

  para mostrar el fuego y la ternura

  de un amor verdadero.

  ODE AND BURGEONINGS

  1

  The taste of your mouth and the color of your skin,

  skin, mouth, fruit of these swift days,

  tell me, were they always beside you

  through years and journeys and moons and suns

  and earth and weeping and rain and joy

  or is it only now that

  they come from your roots,

  only as water brings to the dry earth

  burgeonings that it did not know,

  or as to the lips of the forgotten jug

  the taste of the earth rises in the water?

  I don’t know, don’t tell me, you don’t know.

  Nobody knows these things.

  But bringing all my senses close

  to the light of your skin, you disappear,

  you melt like the acid

  aroma of a fruit

  and the heat of a road,

  and the smell of corn being stripped,

  the honeysuckle of the pure afternoon,

  the names of the dusty earth,

  the infinite perfume of our country:

  magnolia and thicket, blood and flour,

  the gallop of horses,

  the village’s dusty moon,

  newborn bread:

  ah from your skin everything comes back to my mouth,

  comes back to my heart, comes back to my body,

  and with you I become again

  the earth that you are:

  you are deep spring in me:

  in you I know again how I am born.

  2

  Years of yours that I should have felt

  growing near me like clusters

  until you had seen how the sun and the earth

  had destined you for my hands of stone,

  until grape by grape you had made

  the wine sing in my veins.

  The wind or the horse

  swerving were able

  to make me pass through your childhood,

  you have seen the same sky each day,

  the same dark winter mud,

  the endless branching of the plum trees

  and their dark-purple sweetness.

  Only a few miles of night,

  the drenched distances

  of the country dawn,

  a handful of earth separated us, the transparent

  walls

  that we did not cross, so that life,

  afterward, could put all

  the seas and the earth

  between us, and we could come together

  in spite of space,

  step by step seeking each other,

  from one ocean to another,

  until I saw that the sky was aflame

  and your hair was flying in the light

  and you came to my kisses with the fire

  of an unchained meteor

  and as you melted in
my blood, the sweetness

  of the wild plum

  of our childhood I received in my mouth,

  and I clutched you to my breast as

  if I were regaining earth and life.

  3

  My wild girl, we have had

  to regain time

  and march backward, in the distance

  of our lives, kiss after kiss,

  gathering from one place what we gave

  without joy, discovering in another

  the secret road

  that gradually brought your feet close to mine,

  and so beneath my mouth

  you see again the unfulfilled plant

  of your life putting out its roots

  toward my heart that was waiting for you.

  And one by one the nights

  between our separated cities

  are joined to the night that unites us.

  The light of each day,

  its flame or its repose,

  they deliver to us, taking them from time,

  and so our treasure

  is disinterred in shadow or light,

  and so our kisses kiss life:

  all love is enclosed in our love:

  all thirst ends in our embrace.

  Here we are at last face to face,

  we have met,

  we have lost nothing.

  We have felt each other lip to lip,

  we have changed a thousand times

  between us death and life,

  all that we were bringing

  like dead medals

  we threw to the bottom of the sea,

  all that we learned

  was of no use to us:

  we begin again,

  we end again

  death and life.

  And here we survive,

  pure, with the purity that we created,

  broader than the earth that could not lead us astray,

  eternal as the fire that will burn

  as long as life endures.

  4

  When I reached here my hand stops.

  Someone asks: “Tell me, why, like waves

  on a single coast, do your words

  endlessly go and return to her body?

  Is she the only form that you love?”

  And I answer: “My hands never tire

  of her, my kisses do not rest,

  why should I withdraw the words

  that repeat the trace of her beloved contact,

  words that close, uselessly

  holding like water in a net

  the surface and the temperature

  of the purest wave of life?”

  And, love, your body is not only the rose

  that in shadow or moonlight rises,

  it is not only movement or burning,

  act of blood or petal of fire,

  but to me you have brought

  my territory, the clay of my childhood,

  the waves of oats,

  the round skin of the dark fruit

  that I tore from the forest,

  aroma of wood and apples,

  color of hidden water where secret

  fruits and deep leaves fall.

  Oh love, your body rises

  like the pure line of a goblet

  from the earth that knows me

  and when my senses found you

  you throbbed as though within you

  rain and seeds were falling.

  Ah let them tell me how

  I could abolish you

  and let my hands without your form

  tear the fire from my words.

  My gentle one, rest

  your body in these lines that owe you

  more than you give me through your touch,

  live in these words and repeat

  in them the sweetness and the fire,

  tremble amid their syllables,

  sleep in my name as you have slept

  upon my heart, and so tomorrow

  my words will keep

  the hollow of your form

  and he who hears them one day will receive a gust

  of wheat and poppies;

  the body of love will still

  be breathing upon earth!

  5

  Thread of wheat and water,

  of crystal or of fire,

  word and night,

  work and anger,

  shadow and tenderness,

  little by little you have sewn it all

  into my threadbare pockets,

  and not only in the tremorous zone

  in which love and martyrdom are twins

  like two fire bells,

  did you wait for me, my love,

  but in the tiniest

  sweet duties.

  The golden oil of Italy made your nimbus,

  saint of kitchen and sewing,

  and your tiny coquetry,

  that tarried so long at the mirror,

  with your hands that have

  petals that jasmine would envy,

  washed the dishes and my clothes,

  disinfected wounds.

  My love, to my life

  you came prepared

  as a poppy and as a guerrilla fighter:

  silken is the splendor that I stroke

  with the hunger and thirst

  that I brought to this world only for you,

  and behind the silk

  the girl of iron

  who will fight at my side.

  Love, love, here we are.

  Silk and metal, come close to my mouth.

  6

  And because Love fights

  not only in its burning agriculture

  but in the mouths of men and women,

  I shall end up by attacking

  those who between my breast and your fragrance

  try to interpose their dark foot.

  They will tell you nothing

  worse about me, my love,

  than what I told you.

  I lived in the meadows

  before I knew you

  and I did not wait for love but lay

  in ambush and jumped upon the rose.

  What more can they tell you?

  I am not good or bad, just a man,

  and they will then add the danger

  of my life, which you know

  and which with your passion you have shared.

  Well, this danger

  is danger of love, of complete love

  toward all of life,

  toward all lives,

  and if this love brings

  death or prison,

  I am sure that your big eyes,

  as when I kiss them,

  will then close with pride,

  with double pride, my love,

  with your pride and mine.

  But toward my ears they will first come

  to undermine the tower

  of the sweet and harsh love that binds us,

  and they will say: “That one

  that you love

  is no woman for you,

  why do you love her? I think

  you could find one more beautiful,

  more serious, more profound,

  more other, you understand, look at her how flighty,

  and what a head she has,

  and look at her how she dresses

  and so on and on.”

  And I in these lines say:

  thus I love you, love,

  love, thus I love you,

  thus as you dress

  and as your hair

  lifts up and as

  your mouth smiles,

  light as the water

  from the spring upon the pure stones,

  thus I love you, beloved.

  Of bread I do not ask that it teach me

  but that it not fail me

  during each day of life.

  I know nothing of light, where

  it comes from or where it goes,

&
nbsp; I only want light to light,

  I do not ask explanations

  of the night,

  I wait for it and it envelops me,

  and thus you are, bread

  and light and shadow.

  You came into my life

  with what you brought,

  I waited for you,

  made of light and bread and shadow,

  and thus I need you,

  thus I love you,

  and all those who want to hear tomorrow

  what I shall not tell them, let them read it here,

  and let them retreat today because it’s too early

  for these arguments.

  Tomorrow we shall give them only

  a leaf from the tree of our love, a leaf

  that will fall upon the earth

  as if our lips had made it,

  like a kiss that falls

  from our invincible heights

  to show the fire and the tenderness

  of a true love.

  EPITALAMIO

  Recuerdas cuando

  en invierno

  llegamos a la isla?

  El mar hacia nosotros levantaba

  una copa de frío.

  En las paredes las enredaderas

  susurraban dejando

  caer hojas oscuras

  a nuestro paso.

  Tú eras también una pequeña hoja

  que temblaba en mi pecho.

  El viento de la vida allí te puso.

  En un principio no te vi: no supe

  que ibas andando conmigo,

  hasta que tus raíces

  horadaron mi pecho,

  se unieron a los hilos de mi sangre,

  hablaron por mi boca,

  florecieron conmigo.

  Así fue tu presencia inadvertida,

  hoja o rama invisible,

  y se pobló de pronto

  mi corazón de frutos y sonidos.

  Habitaste la casa

  que te esperaba oscura

  y encendiste las lámparas entonces.

  Recuerdas, amor mío,

  nuestros primeros pasos en la isla?

  Las piedras grises nos reconocieron,

  las rachas de la lluvia,

  los gritos del viento en la sombra.

  Pero fue el fuego

  nuestro único amigo,

  junto a él apretamos

  el dulce amor de invierno

  a cuatro brazos.

  El fuego vio crecer nuestro beso desnudo

  hasta tocar estrellas escondidas,

  y vio nacer y morir el dolor

  como una espada rota

  contra el amor invencible.

  Recuerdas,

  oh dormida en mi sombra,

  cómo en ti crecía

  el sueño,

  de tu pecho desnudo

  abierto con sus cúpulas gemelas

  hacia el mar, hacia el viento de la isla,

  y cómo yo en tu sueño navegaba

  libre, en el mar y en el viento