huge sounds

Poet

I’m standing there

behind your grandparents, proud,

saying goodbye:

you with your three dresses,

your prettiness,

going up to the city—and beside you

the devoted, tall shadowy monk.

(Two were seen leaving.)

(Two were seen leaving.)

And inside them            deep space

And deepspace loves them

moving slowly its thumb

across to the speck of gold there

there on her lip

but not hunger

or hunger not granted

The treeless hill

The treeless hill that gave holes

in its dirt cliff to the swallows

in the long wet light of June, the open

cliff by the road that gave

them nests, your cold wet sweater,

sweater you were born in, softer then,

like any swallow

The just-born rabbits

The just-born rabbits in the garden

huddled blind, translucent, hardly here

I called John (a farmer),

and asked him what to do:

Put your boot on them. Now you’ve been there,

the mother will never come back.

—life from whom

death also springeth green

—thy leave to sleep

The valley

The valley

edge by edge

bare field by field

I walked through it through you

rain by rain

cold by cold

root absence

and the purposeful cold

Eye opened

slow

but what is slow

On the bus

the ghost-bus travels along beside us

and the reading-light,

a straight-faced little moon

And you cloud, ragged, legless rabbit

with your long nose

and your enormous eye

Tell me

What is the name for a non-endstopped line?

Who was it M. looked like?

Was it Kafka?          Kafka,

is that your enormous eye?

Ecstatic eye,

still see us              your same clay

The branches

The branches looked first like tepees,

but there was no emptiness.

Like piles of leaves waiting for fire:

at the foot of the wisewoman trees,

at the foot of the broken General.

Next to the tree of the veteran

girl who died this summer     slow red

cloth

Red cloth

Red cloth

I lie on the ground

otherwise nothing could hold

I put my hand on the ground

the membrane is gone

and nothing does hold

your place in the ground

is all of it

and it is breathing

III

III

Don’t silence yourself, No te calles

He took some words from the bowl

and placed them on the table

No te calles

I took some too

placed them near to his words

Martín Ramírez

After,      slowly, slowly

from childhood

towards him       followed my footsteps

circling sometimes

sometimes falling     in a quite practical way

to sleep           to speak

Eurydice who guides

Eurydice who guides              Orpheus who guides

who first has to return to death

the one who sings

the one who opens first

of all the animals his

mouth to her song

her thirst his thirst

the ones who nurse each other

Don’t be afraid the blackened saucepan said

I met them in the country by a well

and once I drank from them

I never thirst