Silence runs over all things Poem by Carlos Obregón

(Cloister)



Silence runs over all things,
hand burning in the shadow, pure fountain.
The river hardly sounds through the foliage,
the water brief in its quiet talk,
the hours brownish-grey, the summer fled.
Slow, the day folds up like a bird
when the ankle-length psalm lights every
wax candle and in the language of the rites,
the cisterns keep the chaste echo
of the wind and the centuries. The shore
of the voice was stripped of every
vestige of bonfires and vessels.
Time wails broken in the arches, wails,
time of the cloister and prayer of the ogive.
Among pillars and golden ears,
the minute hands of the rain
trace and sing the torn song
that lulls the rose and bathes memory.
Exile was the voice from the towers:
Only this space remains which is absence,
an impalpable flowering of ashes.