HOW MANY TIMES DO WE WANT TO GO HOME

How many times during the voyage
do we want to go home?
Slowly the gates of night open
the gate of the sleeping animals that gallop in their dream
and the gate of the mirror where the eye sees the back
and the mouth turns to stone.

Slowly a ship goes out into the night
strewn with light and pearls through
our manifest lives of profit and loss it carries
some sad splendor of a promise impossible to keep.

Were we to gaze fearlessly at the radiant eye
were we to kiss without betraying the longing mouth
perhaps we could rest like a leaf in its green border
Something mighty that has no place or time

has broken off from within us and hovers now
in a mirage of light that turns to pearl
and motion
everything we offered that was not taken
and what was offered that we flinched from touching
is held in the ship that glides
on the web where sky meets sea.

How many times during the voyage do we want to go home!
To reinhabit the reflection we left in the armchair
to give it the pearl that turns into light
and the passion that neither seeks repose nor draws
from the black blood proofs of loneliness, but leaves it to flow
like the gold, that once gushed free of greed, in the rivers.

HOW MANY TIMES DO WE WANT TO GO HOME