Your hands are my caress, my daily chords. I love you because your hands work for justice. If I love you, it is because you are my love, my accomplice, and everything, and in the street, side by side, we are much more than just two. Your eyes are my spell against the bad day; I love you for your gaze that looks out and sows the future. Your mouth, which is yours and mine, your mouth makes no mistakes; I love you because your mouth knows how to shout rebellion. And because of your sincere face, your vagabond step, and your weeping for the world, because you are people, I love you. Because love is no halo nor candid moral, but because we are a couple who know we are not alone. I love you in my paradise—meaning, that in my country people live happily, even without permission.
2. The Stolen Crown
Why are you crying? I understand it all, it is finished, but I do not want to see you cry, my soul. Our love, always, our wedding, never. Who is that bandit who came to steal your flowering crown and your bridal veil? No, no, do not tell me, I do not want to hear it. Your name is innocence, and his is Satan. An abyss at your feet, a procacious hand that pushes you to your wheels, while your guardian angel goes off to cry, sad and lonely. But why are you shedding so many tears? Ah yes, I understand everything, no, do not tell me anymore.
3. Weaving Roots
We did not find each other, we did not look for one another in orchards with an apple amid the murmurs of silk in church naves. We were always one inside the other, within the two-faced body of God, in medieval paintings from museum basements, and in the photos of our innocent parents like paper.
We, masters of crossing paths, simply remained facing one another, and in the mirrors of the skin we reflected each other whole. The world moved away in silence and with a finger to its lips; the forests took root in the ground, cities guided by scent found places where men built them infinitely. Rivers entered the seas like trains into stations; unreachable mountains curdled in caves. If I am a mountain, you are a cave within me: a place in the mountain where there is no mountain, a place within me where I am not.
4. The Paradox of Love
To faint, to dare, to be furious, harsh, tender, liberal, elusive, bold, mortal, deceased, alive, loyal, traitor, coward, and spirited; to find no center and repose outside of good; to show oneself happy, sad, humble, haughty, angry, brave, fugitive, satisfied, offended, suspicious. To turn the face from clear disillusionment, to drink poison as a smooth liquor, to forget profit, to love harm, to believe that a heaven fits inside a hell, to give life and soul to a disillusionment—this is love, whoever has tried it knows it.
5. The Time of Flowers
You will look at me weeping, it will be the time of flowers. You will look at me weeping, and I will tell you, “Do not cry.” Slowly my heart will fall asleep, your hand will caress the sweating forehead of your brother. You will look at me suffering, I alone will hold your pain. You will look at me suffering, you sister who are so good, and you will ask me, “What is the matter?” and I will look down at the ground. And you will ask me, “What is the matter?” and I will look up at the sky, and I will smile, and you will be frightened, and I will smile to tell you, “It is nothing.”
6. They Loved Each Other
They loved each other, they suffered for the light. Blue lips at dawn, lips emerging from the hard night, split lips, blood, blood where they loved each other in a ship-bed, half-night, half-light. They loved each other like flowers to thorns, waves to that loving gem of the new yellow when faces turn melancholically, turning moons shining, receiving that kiss. They loved each other at night when deep dogs howl beneath the earth and valleys stretch like archaic loins feeling stroked.
a caress, silk, moon-hand arriving and touching. They loved each other by day, a beach growing, waves caressing thighs with their feet, bodies rising from the earth and floating, loving each other by day upon the sea under a perfect midday sky. They loved each other so intimately, highest and young sea, extensive intimacy, solitude of the living, remote horizons linked like bodies in solitude, singing, loving, they loved each other like the lucid moon, like that round sea applied to that sweet face, water eclipse, darkened cheek where red fish come and go without music. Day, night, sunsets, dawns, spaces, new, ancient, fugitive, perpetual waves, sea or land, ship, bed, feather, crystal, metal, music, lip, silence, vegetable world, stillness, its form.
7. The Flame of My Soul
Weep in silence, my solitary soul, except when my heart, united to yours in a celestial alliance of mutual sighing and mutual love, is the flame of my soul with a beacon shining in the sepulchral enclosure, almost extinct, invisible, but eternal; not even death can anoint it. Remember me, do not pass close to my tomb without giving a prayer for my soul; there will be no greater torture than knowing you forgot my grief. Hear my timid voice—it is no crime to pray for those who were. I never asked you anything upon expiring; I demand that you come to my tomb to sob.
8. Not for Heaven
It does not move me, my God, to love you, the heaven you have promised me, nor does the feared hell move me to stop offending you for that reason. You move me, Lord; move me to see you nailed to a cross and mocked. Move me to see your body so wounded, move me your affronts and your death. Move me, finally, your love, and in such a way that even if there were no heaven, I would love you, and even if there were no hell, I would fear you. You do not have to give me anything for me to love you, because even if I did not hope for what I hope, the very way I love you, I would love you.
9. Green Eyes
Because they are green, child, your eyes like the sea, you complain? Green have the Nades, green had Minerva, and green are the pupils of the prophet’s houris. Green is the glory and adornment of the forest in spring; among its seven colors, the brilliant iris displays it. Emeralds are green, green is the color of those who hope, and the waves of the ocean and the laurel of the poets. It is your early cheek, a frost-covered rose where the carmine of the petals is seen through pearls, and yet I know you complain because you think your eyes disfigure you.
Do not believe it; they look like their moist, green, and restless pupils—early almond leaves trembling at the breath of the air. It is your ruby mouth, an open purplish pomegranate that invites one to quench thirst in it, and yet I know you complain because you think your eyes disfigure you. Do not believe it; they look like, when angry, your pupils flash—the waves of the sea breaking on the Cantabrian rocks. It is your forehead, crowned by crisp gold in a broad, snowy braid—a summit where the day reflects its final light, and yet I know you complain because you think your eyes disfigure you. Do not believe it; among the blonde lashes, next to the temples, they resemble brooches of emerald and gold holding a white ermine. Because they are green, child, your eyes like the sea, you complain? Perhaps if they turned black or blue, you would feel it.
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