A bull cannot be defeated on bare earth.
Only when he has been kept in the dark
and swarmed by the ornate knives of cowards
does he fall to the ground.
He writhes, nauseated by the eyes that fear him.
The bull, disdainful of his own strength, accepts the torture
and delves into an invisible sleep.
The armed ones rejoice,
declare their victory.
The bull is always reluctant to belie this victory.
A bull’s heart will not deign to win
if it means hearing once more the fearful cries of sinister cowards.

The bull frolicked like a lamb. He rushed toward the grass,
his thick skin rolling from the impact.
He ran to forget—
to forget even where he hid his strength inside his flesh.

I climbed down the tree. The rain suddenly stopped.

Squirrel

Truthfully, I ruminated when I came down from the tree.
Had sorrow made me say all these things?
Had someone been with me, they would say at once
that I was ‘deeply wounded.’
I would like to show them
the squirrel that flickers in and out of sight, small as a crumb
but still able to animate the dark forest.

Her soul is surely the picture
of this tranquil elation that quivers and rests inside me.
The squirrel was drawing my path toward the forest.

Her legs are clearly too small for her elation. Her skin
seems about to rip when her body tries—even a little—
to join the movement of her heart. Elation forms her flesh;
an inexhaustible joy lies hidden
in an invisible piece of her palm-sized flesh.

That is why she doesn’t stay exposed for long, but finds
in the tree a warm hole to hide in.
Her elation can make the forest’s residents suspicious.
They want to catch and examine her,
to find and take her mysterious heart, source of her elation.
Whereas they don’t know:
No hand can find those wise depths of her flesh.

No one can uproot or loot a joy that has soaked into flesh.
As blood circulates, elation breathes.
Joy is among the things
that propel the squirrel.

This is how squirrels, how those with elation in their flesh, surpass the
world.
For, such creatures can surpass it.
Elation that comes from being cannot be extinguished and devoured,
no matter how cruel the forest’s villains, the gravity
of their ugly, death-ridden faces.

When it comes to being, the squirrel’s elation lives.
The mystery of joy comes from living.
When joy pauses, she doesn’t blame unhappiness.
For, joy sleeps, too.
Withdraws, shrinks into itself, dives into a watery sleep
in the heart of the squirrel.

If we leave the squirrel alone, untouched in her warm hole,
she could maintain this elation till death.
But crows caw at the threshold of her home.
They bring a proposition from all creatures:
Lions offer a kingdom,
bulls, a dull peace of mind,
snakes, eternity...
The chorus of unlucky villains begs for the mystery of joy.