CIRCLE Poem by Fernando Rendón

The unwary Margarita cried terrified when she dipped her foot in a gelatinous swamp
that called her by her name.

She was howling for eight endless hours while she carried an invisible child.

It rained and the only one of her words you could understand was hell.

The wind and the spring, jurors, condemned in silence her executioners.

The trees jumped cursing and then fell back to their roots.

Pain twisted and turned eroding the edge of the waters.

Faraway: the age of earth.

The nerves were pinched by the stem of the poppies. And we waited between patience
and impatience.

Maddened vegetables, as in nightmares we could not run.

After the supreme effort, we hardly kept life on the last step of human ridiculousness: a
clockwork drunk.

The next day the battered body, the wings more vigorous than ever.