Swift and the Tulip
The knife is sharp
and swollen with the squid’s blue-black ink,
Tucked against his side, on that horse,
riding along paths strewn with traps laid for wolves.
The jester mockingly makes his way
to the duchess, foiled fool in brimstone-coloured drapes,
And jocularly hands her that cup
her ready pout so eagerly sips dry.
And there go the fir trees
shedding bark like snake its skin,
While that horse with its rough hooves
goes on pushing mulch over the dead groom.
Hippolyte
The word sun is the sun.
And as the sun rises
in the early morning sky,
so does the same sun rise inside the eye,
sweeping, with its tender fibrils,
the dusty darkness out of the hollows of the mind.
The very same sun that is said to go to rest at night,
now sets placidly in the hollow of my breast,
and as I cradle this gentle corpuscle,
I fancy what it would be like
to err more and know less…
For when I err, my son is there,
just like that sun,
that rising in the early morning sky
chases musty shadows,
like clouds, out of their hide,
and then comes to rest
on the hallowed breasts of that infinitely stupid blue sky,
that not knowing whence or whither, holds it aloft,
just like that mother who, it is said,
once held her child in her arms.