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Sport 38: Winter 2010

Windblown fragments

page 112

Windblown fragments

Yes, yes, that's it
that's it she shouted
seeming to light up
with whatever it was
she looked in the face.

*

Remember this:
if the lightning can strike slowly
drawn out as it dies
irradiating the whole body—
that is what death will rob you of.

That is the other storm—
the one with the gentle bite.

*

New Year
isn't that my father at the front door
ringing the snow-covered bell?

The big house shines
full of presents and fine clothes.

By the French windows
where, filtered through leaves,
daylight usually enters

who is it comes to you in the winter night?

*

page 113

Today the skies
crackle with thunder.

In the ancient world
every storm
had its naked nymph
and its tranquil shepherd.

She would say
between two cries
between two crises of tears
'I've found a shelter of leaves
and a comrade sleeping.'

And he:
'Good news, before the world's end.
It's still the milk of the stars
that fills your breasts.'

*

The trunk, wrinkled, bruised
which time's ivy will certainly smother
at the touch of a rose puts out new leaf.

Sooner the rain than the ruin.
Or better: for every ruin, a river in flood.

*

Order to absent shepherds:

That they capture all escaped darlings
badly advised by the clouds,
that they unbind one by one the braids of the brooks,
that they graze sparingly the valley's rarest grasses,

page 114

and that they let the clatter of white stone be heard
in the hills where each tree twists itself into a lyre.

*

(Poet's tomb)

Don't be fooled,
these lines were not written by me
but, one day by a heron or a shower of rain,
another by an aspen.
A hint of love was enough
to set them alight.

Nobody home here—
no one—near or far.

*

In this night
in this moment of this night
I know that even if the gods
should burn the world
an ember would remain
to flare again in the unknown.

Not this thought nor the saying of it were mine.
They belonged to this winter night already gone.