Poetry

Or else a room, and in the room five voices speaking at once and what delicious babble “sherbet” and “velvet” and “purple” and “fragrant” and “loud”—

Cuando todos los siglos vuelven,
anocheciendo, a su belleza,
sube al ambito universal
la unidad honda de la tierra.

Like two wrestlers etched
around some ancient urn,

we’d lace our hands, then wrench
each other’s wrists back

As if you were a child again; you smooth
a little space of sand, with careful fingers
pick out a twig, a stone, a scrap of paper,