THE RED WIND WHISTLING Poem by Carlos López Degregori

She lives inside a stone in a stone country.

She opens and shuts her stone window each afternoon and knocks with stones on the stone door of her house.

Outside, the red wind whistles.

Are you made of stone? she asks.

But it's a useless question. Here the wind is made of stone, just like the moons and birds that fly the solid air, rising until they dash themselves against the sky, or like the sea that walks among the hard, halted waves.

She listens to her pounding pulse. She lifts her hair of stone. She opens her arms and receives, with a difficult happiness, the red wind.

It doesn't matter, she says, stay with me.
I'll carry you inside my mouth.
I'll keep you covered with my breasts.
I'll keep you in my bridal heart.