Little
rose,
roselet,
at times,
tiny and naked,
it seems
as though you would fit
in one of my hands,
as though I’ll clasp you like this
and carry you to my mouth,
but
suddenly
my feet touch your feet and my mouth your lips:
you have grown,
your shoulders rise like two hills,
your breasts wander over my breast,
my arm scarcely manages to encircle the thin
new-moon line of your waist:
in love you loosened yourself like sea water:
I can scarcely measure the sky’s most spacious eyes
and I lean down to your mouth to kiss the earth.

Every morning you wait,
clothes, over a chair,
to fill yourself with
my vanity, my love,
my hope, my body.
Barely risen from sleep,
I relinquish the water,
enter your sleeves,
my legs look for the hollows of your legs.

Her eyes were the color of faraway love.

I want you to know
one thing.

You know how this is:
if I look
at the crystal moon, at the red branch
of the slow autumn at my window,
if I touch
near the fire
the impalpable ash
or the wrinkled body of the log,
everything carries me to you,
as if everything that exists,
aromas, light, metals,
were little boats
that sail
toward those isles of yours that wait for me.

Well, now,
if little by little you stop loving me
I shall stop loving you little by little.

If suddenly
you forget me
do not look for me,
for I shall already have forgotten you.

If you think it long and mad,
the wind of banners
that passes through my life,
and you decide
to leave me at the shore
of the heart where I have roots,
remember
that on that day,
at that hour,
I shall lift my arms
and my roots will set off
to seek another land.

But
if each day,
each hour,
you feel that you are destined for me
with implacable sweetness,
if each day a flower
climbs up to your lips to seek me,
ah my love, ah my own,
in me all that fire is repeated,
in me nothing is extinguished or forgotten,
my love feeds on your love, beloved,
and as long as you live it will be in your arms
without leaving mine.

I love things with a wild passion, extravagantly. I cherish tongs, and scissors; I adore cups, hoops, soup turrents, not to mention of course- the hat. I love all things, not only the grand, but also the infinitely small: the thimble, spurs, dishes, vases. Oh, my soul, the planet is radiant, teeming with pipes in hand, conductors of smoke; with keys, saltshakers, and well, things crafted by the human hand, everything- the curve of a shoe, fabric, the new bloodless birth of gold, the eyeglasses, nails, brooms, watches, compasses, coins, the silken plushness of chairs. Oh humans have constructed a multitude of pure things: objects of wood, crystal, cord, wondrous tables, ships, staircases. I love all things, not because they might be warm or fragrant, but rather because- I don’t know why, because this ocean is yours, and mine: the buttons, the wheels, the little forgotten treasures, the fans of feathery love spreading orange blossoms, the cups, the knives, the shears, everything rests in the handle, the contour, the traces of fingers, of a remote hand lost in the most forgotten regions of the ordinary obscured. I pass through houses, streets, elevators, touching things; I glimpse objects and secretly desire something because it chimes, and something else because, because it is as yielding as gentle hips, something else I adore for its deepwater hue, something else for its velvety depths. Oh irrevocable river of things. People will not say that I only loved fish or plants of the rain forest or meadow, that I only loved things that leap, rise, sigh, and survive. It is not true: many things gave me completeness. They did not only touch me. My hand did not merely touch them, but rather, they befriended my existence in such a way that with me, they indeed existed, and they were for me so full of life, and they lived with me half-alive, and they will die with me half-dead.

I want to do with you what spring does with the cherry trees.

I crave your mouth, your voice, your hair. / Silent and starving, I prowl through the streets. / Bread does not nourish me, dawn disrupts me, all day / I hunt for the liquid measure of your steps. / I hunger for your sleek laugh, / Your hands the color of a savage harvest, / Hunger for the pale stones of your fingernails. / I want to eat your skin like a whole almond. / I want to eat the sunbeam flaring in your lovely body, / The sovereign nose of your arrogant face, / I want to eat the fleeting shade of your lashes, / And I pace around hungry, sniffing the twilight, / Hunting for you, for your hot heart, / Like a puma in the barrens of Quitratue.