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I hold your love up as a lantern. The blackness of night
hurts my eyes. The windows of the tower are locked
against my heart.
The lovers’ caravans are leaving. My black tents
remain, though the well’s dry, the valleys
never turn green this year,
and the desert was not a witness of our wedding.
At dawn, the cooing of pigeons is a torment,
the face of wind dusty,
talking me by surprise, and snatching away
a memory that began to wake.
I carry her, my beloved, in my heart
where she moans, wounded . . .
And the clover flower complains . . . Nobody
will bandage its cheeks in the meadow;
the lookout men were watching open-eyed
from behind the fence of thorns
and nobody’s left –
only seven slaughtered years and
the flash of a star.
my hands grope on the rocks, which out of the sea water
they rise,
the waves gasp. On the tower top
a lookout coughs and leans
gazing out placidly at the far-off rim.
Because the sea has no
key to the iron coffins
and the rocks are fixed to the sea bed, and the poor
the clover flower is calling, breathing fragrance
out from inside the walls.
The hunting hawk unties his leather mask,
terrifying his master,
and soars off beating at distances,
daring the wilderness. The season
of the hunter has not come.
Instead all creatures are as marks for lightning;
in the crane a forgotten promise stirs again.
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