We Couldn’t Be
We couldn’t be. The earth
couldn’t bear so much. We are not
what the sun had hoped for
in a moving angel.
One foot reaches toward clarity.
The other insists in darkness.
Because love is not eternal
for anyone, not even in me.
Hatred guards its moment
deep within the blackest carbon.
Hatred is red and healthy.
Love, pale and lonesome.
Tired of hating you, I love you.
Tired of loving you, I hate you.
Time drizzles, time drizzles.
And one day, sad among all others,
sad across all the earth,
so sad that from me to the wolf,
we sleep and wake
with a tiger in our eyes.
Stones, people like stones,
hard and full of fury
crack in the air, where stones
suddenly collide.
Loneliness, once refused
by those who shared their faces.
Loneliness, that in kisses
hides a muted noise.
Eternal loneliness.
Loneliness with no wings to lean on.
Bodies like an insatiable river,
entwined, furious.
Clung together in loneliness,
from love, from hatred.
From the veins, people flow,
they cross cities, savage.
In the heart,
everything stands alone.
Marks remain companionless
like in water, in the depths.
Only one voice, from afar,
always from afar I hear it,
it walks with me, makes me flee,
just like a neck between shoulders.
Only one voice steals me
from this barbed armor
of a returned veil,
a thorned one placed
The dry winds cannot
dry out the juicy rivers.
And the heart remains
fresh in its August prison
because that voice is the softest
weapon of the brave:
“Migel: I remember you after the sun and dust,
even before the moon itself,
grave of a love-dream.”
Love: remove my being
from the first wreckage,
and by changing me, dictate
a truth, like breath.
After love, the earth.
After the earth—everything.
