HOMAGE TO ST JOHN OF THE CROSS Poem by Nuno Júdice

When I plucked the fruit from those branches
that had never given shade, night fell
quickly, with no sunset or twilight - a night
already present in each fruit
and thicker each time my lips
touched their acid skin. What night
was in progress? Surely not the bleak night
of weeping and song, nor the compassionate
night that precedes dawn, nor even
that singular night of dream and insomnia, confounded
in the hypnotic conduct of bodies ruled
by love's torpor. A night without end, since
it had no beginning, definitive in its blind
stare, a reflection without memory that names
what had been nameless, and from the names
takes substance - this night runs
through the middle of me, between who I am
and who I think I am, preventing me from seeing either
of the sides I occupy. A night that fell, therefore,
where it had always been: a beloved, desired,
rejected repetition of what I describe
whenever I write - the fire I call
but do not see in that dark desire.