In the Mirror Poem by Blanca Varela

I explore the flame and do not extinguish it because I love its dolorous heat,
its distraught and soundless tongues,
its round skin that my fingers trespass
to reach the solitary water of such light eyelids.

And I feel the wing in those mirrors that always deliver me,
as if reaping violent ashes that have been cast to fish,
as if a dead bird weighed somewhere between my blood and stagnancy,
close to the fire I live in the insects themselves,
in their little bodies,
little beauties beneath dark, rancid liquors,
intimate and nervous in profound joys.

Roots of heavy dream-columns in the forehead,
arid drops of the fallen fruit
that spill bitter essence, fathomless.

Translated from the Spanish
by Carlos Lara