THE BEAR AND THE DOE
To love and die
Where are you, love?
Oh, care for each other, care!
Go to love, I,
to the sea and die...
I reach for your hand a thousand times,
in the year of the noon,
I return from the thunder
to the tenebrous cloister
with my “tenth” of light.
The wizards of history
around your drums,
even electricity bristles
at your deadly sight.
Oh, care for each other, care!
Where are you, love?
Go to love, I,
to the sea and die...
Unabashed, I beg forgiveness
for the harm I cause you
by breathing and lighting.
Fish-word, sword-eyes, dagger
columns of ice sink
my hall of disarray,
I flee from septicemia
toward the equator
of an unreachable land,
seeking the greatest circle
of a lap that shelters us,
gentle host, ghost planet.
I carry sand and rocks
from space to your lungs,
you regurgitate islands
you, sea of asphyxiation...
I swallow the Hebrides
fetch you my hands, my hands!
those that serve you cork and bread,
and cover your soul with airplanes and ships
and suicide your bed.
And you don’t pronounce the kiss,
the sad fish on the shore,
nor do you erase the trace
of the hungry shark.
Instead you nail a starfish
to my eyes, signaling that
the aerial effort
of changing mediums
and reaching blind stars
in the unknown skies
is not worth it.
Beyond the dreamlike cave,
two adrift turn,
full of scratches,
they spill no blood,
nor enlarge the ocean,
nor alert the predator.
Already at the shore, they lick each other in silence...
And in silence they arrive,
silent the forest,
silent my obstinacy
to love and die.
© Maria Luisa Arenzana Magaña
