IX

Maybe all we are lacking
is to be a little less young, to experience life
in another, more distant tone
                without abuses
of our inevitable humanity.

Paradise again.
Again the good fortune of a house
not too big, under a Friday sun,
a sincere refuge on a hill
from which to watch the earth tenderly,
as March leaves and April lifts
the face of the inherited fields
two hours away.

Against the injured glass of the door,
I like to watch the roots wanting you,
to know their desire is mine as they cling
with wild fingers to your body,
to your enormous days of small breasts,
like shadows of the olive tree.
Just as a dream would have it, you begin the descent
to sleep with me,
igniting
the hidden kingdom of retired light,
which neither silences arguments of the flesh
nor brings distance
to the mundane noise of its vocabulary,
inherited too with these stones.

Although the smoke of firewood is whiter
and floats on the sound of peace
over the aged silence of these mountains,
although the hymns of the dawn
weaken their voices, drawing nearer,
I know not the path that separates me
from a body from whom I beg dignity,
a body not invited to its anniversaries, that liturgical heat
of its ancestors
and of ancient dances
of naked shoulders
that look like the sea.

It is impossible to retire from time.

It is impossible,
yet I venture to surprise us,
to tell you, to know you,
to have the privilege.
And they are useless, these hours
that are not of your age nor of mine.