NOT TO THE END OF MY STRENGTH

1.
My body slowly sifts its signs.
So strong is the will to adopt water qualities, though the clearest among them
Conceals a shiver.
For thirty-nine years I measured the plains
As a deer, begrudged
Desires as a handful of sand, ordered the darkness to hurl
Its boundless troops at me.
Now, a breath away from chaos, I lay my life
On a portion of heaven, wide as a palm.
Blood pools into lakes
Inside me, the heart of each lake
A wound.

2.
Records of seasons are written in quiet: burrows of fire
Entwining with veins, periods of blossoming, books of the born
And the dead.
And already time’s breath – transparent, lucid - spreads its shelter
over the world.
Within a resonance devoid of meaning
Where the everyday merges with the Void
Threads split.
Shadow over shadow,
Break the crust of light as spring blades
desert’s exposed momentum.
My residence is here, between hovering water and silence.
The one tearing my inside, as a naked bough does
Wind’s gallop, knows:
A tear is the subtlest of echoes.

3.
Loneliness hits at the walls of the body like a moth captured
Inside a lit room, its fluttering colors motes
Of dust in the damp darkness of
Empty corridors,
Within the frailty of a hand touching at random
And forgetting.

Not to the end of my strength. Not to words’ exhaustion.
Not to body’s ruin, memory’s torment, not at the thin
Barrier of oblivion separating
Day’s breath from night’s. Not in the quiver of dream.
Do not leave me.

NOT TO THE END OF MY STRENGTH