Andante Cantabile

The morning that appears in your face vanishes
with the rising of the sun. Dawn that shone in your eyes turns yellow.
Overnight the tree by the gate grows taller than the house.
A thousand miles away a river deepens and inundates sails and ships’ songs.

By morning unseen growth rings resound in the core of the trees
like phonograph records. An eagle bearing a human bone in its beak
ascends towards the sun for cremation. A crow’s nest in a tree crotch
catches fire. Waves splash aloud
from a conch specimen in the room.

It’s high tide.
My fingers grow moist with the fragrance of your life
and my night sinks between your hills.
Birdsong warps the mountain’s spine, makes you whisper,
and withers the grasslands that have thrived for two seasons.

Darkness burns on my guilty fingertips.
In the rising flames ten thousand pasts become a thousand bouquets
that droop and die in your right eye.

Essentially life is a succulent shoot
that can shoot up through the sky. Water pours from the heavens
and drowns the trees. Beset by the flood
I am saved by a single tree leaf that you casually plucked.
Riding on that leaf
I wait for the water to recede.

And so a river bank was born
as soft as a baby’s skin.
Grass sinks roots into the sand under the mud of the bank,
thus rendering fruitful the secrets of the sea and the river.

Both you and I are buds on the bank about to open.
Blown away by the wind and picked up by birds
we grow on land far removed from water deep in the mountains,
and are carried away to floating islands to cohabit again.

Who on earth is that
covering his face in darkness,
breeding germs beneath his nails,
laying eggs like fleas and lice between our skin and clothes,
making my skin sag and withering your breasts?

At your dawn I fondly recollect the night.
Like dew drops and filmy mist picked up by sunlight and cast into twilight,
so you who are night eagerly await my arrival at daybreak,
just as stars and fishing lights try to obliterate the darkness.

Whose forefinger softly pressed my lips?
Who with his thin fingers peeled you
layer by layer like an onion?
Your bared white teeth emit mature light
and I am masticated by your lyricism that approaches madness,

so that my room burns and turns into a brown cloud.
Running before the wind, hiding within your billowing skirt,
I make myself even smaller. How I wish I could turn into a drop of liquid life
and keep swimming in your warm womb.

Dreams are black.
Youth is black.
The future and history are black.
Death, too, is black.

ANDANTE CANTABILE