Para Eva, con disculpas

At first, I wailed the wail
of all life as it crosses
the threshold from void to shape,
the unintelligible world from which
the sole escape
is a return to void, wordless, silent.

Slowly, I learned articulation, to move
my tongue such that I was understood.
But with whom could I speak of my desire
to suck milk from the moon before it curdled
and I was bent over a grave, dying of thirst?

Remember the evenings in Granada
when we ate the flesh of stones and
got drunk on the milk of mutual dreams.
My imperfect grammar was of no concern;
We were fluent in the language
that we bring with us from the dark.

Later, I made an awful mistake.
Would that it had been grammatical,
nothing more:
Then the stones would not have chipped my teeth,
dreams would not have gone sour…

How easy to lose control of the comet
that streaks through our hearts
from the first to the last! To forsake our mother
tongue for the vernacular of adulthood!

Every night I climb to my solitary roof
to marvel at what goes unsaid,
and I know that you too are looking up, you too
are soothed by the fresh milk pouring down
from the darkness.