Wasteland Poem by Albert Roig

I

Dripping, placidness—
of wings,
skin,
petals of blood that gushes,
of living smell,

and the eager hand and the thorn
and the scabs of blood of the sun,
of things forgotten.

And its hand, what does it want to tell me?

The wind's white open hand,
the hand offered
here,
of the damp silver
of the olive tree, hair and light tossed by the north-west wind.

In the hands of the old sun are trembling the branches of water,
the white smell, oblivion,
and it sets.

It still has the wide-open eyes of black night,
the mouth still living
and flies
and tender dust.

And the starlight—
the open door,
and the drenched dog, the smell of winter that now comes in,
and the eel in the cistern
and earthworms,
the pouring rain.

And so for me your body rises into being.

II

"Yearn, you who become mouth, nights,
the open wound,
Old sun,
still pouring yourself out,
every silence in my leaves,
the clear water that you make tremble here,
mirrors, such clean leaves."

III

And the bird's shadow
and the three vivid flames,
the deep honeycomb of the eyes, of eyes
that shine against the night.

Flower and night,
wedding garden of shadow and delight,
sweet music of oblivion,
embraced at the thorn of night
the hand which kindles every dream
within me sleeping,

and I wake here again and again
and I close my ears and I'm whirled
by the lean lithe dance
of the water and its pebbles
and the pouring out of the ditch
and the outhouse still bright by the limelight
and the slice of bread and the jug of wine on the table,

and it is Love that breathes here slow,
in being Love of dregs, the last of all,
in being barely
in the ripeness of the pulp and the mouth.

The mouth, with the sharp flavour of dahlias,
the fruit of the wilderness,
is rotting here.

We turned the sky into the most placid shore,
from nightjars' wings, orchards
of red water, bullfrogs, at nightfall,
and their suns rotted in our hands
and we lit a fire
to shelter from the final winter.

I wish the black mouth
of echoes warded off the fire.
For it flows through the branches and everything wells up
in the fire.

All in leaf, everywhere ravings
of ash into sowing and flames.

Translated by Anna Crowe