From “Only the Eye Sees Blue”
Translated by Michael Martin Shea
[seed in the landscape]
Seed in the landscape—
not even the cruel cracks the geometric mirror.
Slowly we watch the forms, figures there appearing,
and the sun rises and sets—
but passivity, lunar glass,
only separates the horizontal from the sky.
Ambiguous light lurks in green fish,
in green waters,
which sign will stir?
In the depths of my throat
I feel myself separate from the world
because air is the open marrow.
Frozen rivers flow and tremble
while light lurks in the green fish,
in the green waters
like leaves from the trees of dreams.
[to pierce the summer body]
to pierce the summer body
—each form brimming and each sense
absorbing that ripe, extensive splendor
there that air in the stillness of morning
burning to ashes
a red or golden part—the color caught
in the sequence of the visible
in the stillness of morning
memory makes the animal audible
—the stone broken above the open earth
and the foliage barely bluish
not like adornment, not like a mask
another wing searches again for the heavenly
around the summer body,
tells the ecstasy of the fall
—to avoid the metaphor shaped in the watchtower
to abandon the notion as time abandons
Translated from the Spanish
Notes:
Read the Spanish-language original by Liliana Ponce, from “Sólo el ojo ve el azul.”
Source:
Poetry
(November 2022)