Magic

Beside the lower chapel

the ghosts’ smiles

turn into lilacs.

It’s the ninth hour

but nobody’s calling people in.

A few yellow chickens burble in the backyard.

The village shoemaker is already drunk,

and sings, among children’s laughter.

A window lights over there

and a girl reads behind it.

The runaway formulas from the book of magic

turn into fireflies

who search for deep passages.

The wind steals secrets from the river and the cemetery

to tell them to the abandoned chapel,

and we need to uncover these secrets, and soon.

Girl

From the tree of the evening, you’re a cherry or an apple.

Your checkered apron vibrates blue in the garden.

Sad sleeping beauty, guarded by roses,

How lonely the house gets when you close your eyes!

Your head of hair falls rumorous of rain

Was it given you by some luminous autumn?

As a gift, the trains of childhood left you

a basket of smoke from ancient springtimes.

You’re so little that the wind makes himself a child

to play with you, like he does with the oatfields.

To dream you I look at a glass of fresh water

and I see you so close that I almost forget to look.

The light makes herself your hand and opens the windows

and the night goes in search of her daytime clothing.

Spells

Those who fear the sorcerer neighbors

throw fistfuls of salt into the fire

when ominous birds pass by.

My graverobbing friends

find golden coins in dreams.

They wake to the lightning’s horseman

falling among them and turning to flame.

Midnight, Saint John’s Eve. The fig trees

dress for the party.

Echoes of animal cries

sunken for millennia in the marsh.

The chimalens gather the sheep

who’ve fled from their pen.

Dogs howl in the house of the miser

who wants to make a pact with the Devil.

I no longer recognize my house.

Inside the lights of ruined stars fall

like fistfuls of earth into a pit.

My friend keeps vigil in the mirror:

she’s waiting for the arrival of a stranger

announced by the longest shadows of the year.

At daybreak, barn owls nest in the mourning fig trees.

Sorcerers’ handprints dawn in the embers.

I wake with herbs and earth in my hands

from a place I’ve never been.

When Everyone Leaves

When everyone leaves for other planets

I’ll stay in the abandoned city

drinking a last cup of beer

and then I’ll go back to the town I always go back to

like the drunk to the tavern

and the boy to go riding

on the broken seesaw.

And in town I won’t have anything to do,

other than to put fireflies in my pockets

or walk along the rusted edges of rails

or sit at the weathered shop counter

and chat with old classmates.

Like a spider who traverses

the threads of her own web

I will walk without hurry along the streets

invaded by weeds

looking at the collapsing dovecotes

until I get to my house

where I’ll shut myself in to listen

to records of a singer from 1930

without ever caring to look

at the infinite paths

traced by rockets in space.

A Stranger Whistles in the Woods

A stranger whistles in the woods.

The backyards fill with fog.

The father reads a fairytale

and the dead brother listens behind the door.

The bulb that lit the way for us

goes out in the window.

We couldn’t wait for when it was time to go home

but we pause without knowing where to go

when a stranger whistles in the woods.

Winter lands behind our eyelids

bringing a snow that isn’t from this world

and that erases our prints and the prints of the sun

when a stranger whistles in the woods.

We should have told them to wait for us,

but we have changed our language

and nobody will understand those who listened

to a stranger whistling in the woods.

After Everything 

After everything 

we will meet again. 

The summer will spread its tablecloths on the ground 

so we can set out our provisions 

and you’ll still be beautiful 

like the song “Midday Wine” 

that the fool played in the woodstove. 

After all 

there are many, many lands. 

I’m not impatient. 

We have all the years in the world to traverse them 

until we are together again 

and you’ll tell me 

that you met me once 

on a little planet I don’t remember 

a planet called Earth 

and you’ll speak to me 

of houses visited by the moon 

bills bet at the horseraces 

our initials drawn with white chalk 

on a wall in demolition. 

Let’s make all the mistakes we want. 

The land of unlove doesn’t exist 

before that gesture of yours of pointing out 

a neighborhood plaza’s magnolias, 

your head on my shoulder, 

the clear nocturnal music of your body. 

A gesture remakes everything: 

when the house catches fire 

its life continues whole 

in the scorched page of a notebook, 

the surviving bishop on the chessboard. 

In another place, far from this land and its time 

I wait for your face 

where all the faces I have loved will gather, 

and we will begin again as the strangers 

that years ago gazed and gazed at each other 

without daring to say they would fall in love. 

When I Wasn’t a Poet 

When I wasn’t a poet 

I joked that I was a poet 

although I hadn’t written a single verse 

but I admired the town poet’s wide-brimmed hat. 

One morning I encountered my neighbor in the street. 

She asked me if I was a poet. 

She was fourteen years old. 

The first time I spoke with her 

she carried a bouquet of baby’s breath. 

The second time an anemone in her hair. 

The third time a gladiolus between her lips. 

The fourth time she didn’t bring a single flower 

and I asked the flowers in the plaza what this meant 

and they didn’t know what to say 

and neither did my botany teacher. 

She had translated poems by Christian Morgenstern for me. 

It didn’t occur to me to give her anything in exchange. 

Life was very hard for me. 

I didn’t want to give up a single page of my notebook. 

Her eyes shot caliber-44 bullets of love. 

This gave me insomnia. 

I shut myself in my room for a long time. 

When I left I encountered her in the plaza and she didn’t say hi. 

I went back to my house and wrote my first poem. 

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