A stone
I look at the stone:
My gaze makes an incision
in its clean mineral crust.
I open it with other hands
like a fruit.
Inside:
familiar landscapes,
remote, familiar worlds,
hidden kinships.
There are ancestors here:
and I don’t see them:
I sense them.
Elements of Love are within this stone.
I close it
cicatrizing it with another gaze.
This has occurred:
a blink of an eye:
just a fleeting bridge of gazes.
I look at the stone again.
Feel its weight.
I hurl it among the rocks in the garden.
It dazzles the lofty day.
Colloquy with the Great Mother
I trace an inscription with burnt lime over the earth
and I ask her things
Mother, I tell her, now that no one can hear us
listen to me and answer me
I’m alone and inside my mouth I caress
these questions smooth like river stones
I utter them aloud as if they were more than doubts
as if they were diamonds or sapphires or enormous rubies
or magnificent emeralds sparkling in sunlight
What am I?
What is my origin?
Why if I grew in your womb did you toss me into Nothingness?
What is my destiny?
And you look at me and teach me lessons:
in stones in trees in mollusks and in fish
in seashells and the petrified bones
of glyptodonts and mammoths
in the prints of birds and mammals
that rocks preserved
in niches within your womb for all eternity.
And I smell you touch you watch you respond savor you
and hear your voice that no one can hear
except the ear of the soul:
You come from me
I birthed you with help from the Ages
You are a part of me
And you’ll return to me
: I am your destiny
Learn
meanwhile:
Mine is the mystery: yours the knowledge
Mine is eternity and yours time
Mine the slow changes in the landscape
but tombs and catastrophes too
Mine cataclysms and disasters
The kiss of water the air’s caress
and wind’s violent embrace and its abrasion
The rivers’ transparent veins
moss and desert
chasm and mountain
geyser and volcano
cavern and crystal
amber and mine
and the slope of jungle covering me
and the rock that alters time’s patience
making eternity laugh
Yours the sudden changes
The questions
And the risk
And my soul knows:
generations come generations go
and our Holy Mother is never the same
because each generation’s eyes have never been the same
although one generation and another generation and another
are nothing
but invisible layers of fallen human leaves
beautifully scorched: neatly extinguished: fiercely pressed
between hard layers of earth
And I venture to say
in a voice softer than silence:
I am your loftiest creation
Born in your bosom
In your fertile womb that cradles the sea
where the lesser womb of the seed throbs
I eat the brilliant verdure of the ages
Devour my siblings
Feed on flesh and wonder
But
I always knew
once and again and again
I must turn to original dust
to be born again in the face of the sun
until the sun grows cold
and another question mark
of tremulous stars
lights up the sky.
Abysses
Look at the stone: Earth will speak to you.
The stone’s the mirror enclosing, out of view,
human history: what was and has passed on,
what must come to be, what is gone.
You’ll see convulsions, gashes, seisms,
a lake of sweet waters and landscapes,
the slow distancing and outrages
that produced insidious cataclysms.
Look at craters, plains and crevices.
Look at the sea, the mountain, the illusion
drawn by time and space.
You’ll hear your heart race.
And you’ll see the face of the Abyss.
And you’ll fall silent, in slow descension
into yourself, your own precipice.
Translated by Sarah Pollack
Author’s Note: These poems are featured prominently at the Museum of Geology of the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México.
