Children often lose their way in the thatch of your hair
The first spring torrent is concealed behind the desolate pupils     of your eyes
A part of time calls out. The body launches the night’s     festivities
By the poisonous light of the moon, on a delta of blood
Souls rise up like serpents and strike at that haggard forehead
Suspended on the cross.

This is absurd - in Spain
No one will give him even a crumb from the crummiest wedding
    cake!

And we mourn everything. We spend all morning just to touch
    the hem of his gown.
Later his name is written on the wind, on a flag.
Later he tosses the leftovers of his life
To us.

Go look, go play at being sad, go smell the decay of time
We are too lazy ever to know ourselves.
Work, stroll, salute the crooks, smile and become immortal.
How they cling to maxims!
This is the face of day; open sores moan; skirts conceal a     myriad germs
The metropolis, Libra’s scales, a paper moon, telephone pole
    language
(Today’s official notices are pasted over yesterday’s)
The cold-blooded sun shivers constantly
In the pale abyss wedged
Between two nights.

Time, cat-faced time,
Time, stuck fast to the wrist, time that sends flag signals.
On a night when rats weep, those who were murdered are murdered
    again.
They knot grass from graves into ties, they chew the Lord’s
    Prayer stuck between their teeth
No skull can really ascend to a place among the stars
To bathe his crown of thorns in resplendent blood
In the thirteenth month, the fifth season of the year, when
    Heaven appears below
And we erect a monument to the moths attracted to last year’s
    lamps. We live.
We cook wheat in wire mesh. We live.
Through the sad rhymes of the billboards, through the filthy
    shadows of concrete
Through the soul released from the ribcage
Hallelujah! We live. Walk, cough, argue
Shamelessly take up space on the earth.
Nothing is dying at the moment
Today’s clouds are plagiarizing yesterday’s.

In March I hear the cherries shout.
Countless wagging tongues bring about the fall of spring. And
    green flies nibble her face
Her calves flash from the chi-p’ao slits, which are longing for
    some people to read her,
To enter her to labor inside her body. Nothing is certain
Other than this and death. Existence is the wind, the noise on
    the threshing ground
Existence is the outpouring of a whole summer’s desire for
    ladies
Who love to be tickled.

Beds are sinking everywhere in the night. A feverish light
Sounds like footfalls on broken glass. A kind of farm implement
    forced to till blindly.
A translation of peach-colored flesh, a frightful language     composed of
Kisses; the first meeting of blood and blood, a flame, a kind of
    fatigue!
A vigorous shove that shunts her aside
At night, beds are sinking everywhere in Naples.

A woman sits at the end of my shadow. She weeps
As an infant is buried amid mock strawberries and saxifrage....
The following day we again go to watch the clouds, laugh, and
    sip plum juice
On the dance floor, we dance away what little dignity remains.
Hallelujah! I’m still alive. My shoulders still carry my head
Carry existence and nonexistence
Carry a face that wears trousers.

No one knows who is next; perhaps the church mouse, perhaps
    the color of the sky.
We said goodbye ages ago to that long-hated umbilical cord.
Kisses hang suspended on the lips, religion is imprinted on the
    face,
We saunter, each with his own coffin lid on his back!
And you are the wind, a bird, the color of the sky, a river with     no mouth.
You are the standing ashes of the dead, unburied Death.

No one has plucked us from off the earth. Look at life with both
    eyes shut.
Jesus, don’t you hear the dark wood murmuring in his brain?
Some are knocking under the sugar beet field, others under the
    myrtle....
When faces change color like chameleons, how can the torrent
Capture the reflections? When their eyes are glued to the
Darkest pages of history!

And you are nothing;
You aren’t the type who would break their canes over the face of
    the age
Or dance with the morning light tangled around their heads
In this city without shoulders, your book will be pulped for
    paper on the third day.
You wash you face with night, and duel with shadows
You consume your inheritance, the bride’s trousseau, the weak
    shouts of the dead
You come out of your room and go back in again, rubbing your
    hands
You are nothing.

How can you strengthen the legs of a flea?
Inject music into the throat, force the blind to drink up all     the rays of light!
Sow seeds in the palm of a hand, squeeze moonlight from
    between the breasts
-you are part of the nights that are stacked against you and     spinninground you
Beautiful and alluring, the lovely women are yours.
A flower, a jug of wine, a bed of teases, and a date.

This is the abyss----between the pillows and the bedding----pale     as a funeral couplet
These are girls with young faces, this is a window, this is a     mirror, this is a small compact.
This is a smile, this is blood, these are silk ribbons waiting     to be disentangled
That night, Mary’s image on the wall vacated the frame, she had
    fled

In search of the River Lethe to wash the shameful things she had
    heard from her ears
But this is an old tale, like a rotating shadow lantern; senses,
    senses, senses!
In the morning I hawk the sins in my basket on the streets
The sun jams its awns into my eyes.
Hallelujah! I’m still alive.

Work, stroll, salute the crooks, smile and become immortal.
Exist for the sake of existence, watch the clouds for the sake     of watching them
Shamelessly take up space on the earth.
A sleigh stops on the banks of the Congo
No one knows how it managed to slide so far
A sleigh no one knows stops there.