May 11
URGENCY

arborescences

so the profile of a cloud
stretching itself out until
it disengages from
its own substance

its gray
its light
its cottony knowing

it’s not day a day like this

it’s a reddened beating
of wings

wings below
a river
or a forest

something that
plunges:
a change of status a
breakdown an
accelerating
falling
over a cliff
that which

we never were

never

never will be

ahhh but today…

wasn’t there a color
that got enchanted
in that cavern of cobalt blue
iridescent and stone? 

June 19
EKPHRASIS

I.

it’s not enough to look

submersion is only a beginning

then forgetting     then

being reborn inside standing up then

returning to being       looking

around

leaving

looking

maybe

maybe then

II.

it’s the same with music

maybe

or maybe not

there is no looking here
there is a fracturing

there is       seeing

with the soul’s eyes
with the wind’s

the music goes on dictating what
is (not) seen

what is rather drawn     what
appears and fades
away before

being

being-perceived

October 25
MIRAGES

Hermes hears
“the voice of light”

where the voice is a hole
indigo
vibrant
and the light, typhoon
quagmire
a deluge
a halo
a thread

astral

imponderable

November 11
WATER FLOWS

it would be said that the sea has passed
through these riverbeds

first the shores
then the banks
then
then the waters

or 

it would be said that first
the surface passes
after, some form of outline

then the flow

and then

the silence that roars

December 27
RECONCILIATION or
Celebration of Beauty

writings
like fertile seas

there is no border
there is no
term that separates
reflection and emotion
discernment and divination

intuition penetrates the wellsprings
of enigmas that enclose us
as the path defines
the direction and destiny of the living
and penury the use
of what is yet to be

weft and warp
life is
that unforeseen      that
fatigue
always
on edge
that wounded field
overcome

that fissure

didn’t you see
how night becomes
the end of the phrase
spun in wakefulness?

how day becomes
the slip-up that betrays
the always suffocated
dream?

silence and rhythm
are they the same?

nakedness and memory
the infinite and the wind
and the voices
and the echoes
the rumbling of the Big Bang
–or its retreat–
vibrating still
in each
illuminated artifice

are they the same thing?
the same gift?
the same good-
luck
spell?

Translated by Lucina Schell
Poems from Diario ínfimo (Sevilla, La isla de Siltolá, 2016)

Photo: Argentine poet Mercedes Roffé.