From “Ithaca”

The night approaches. Dusk drafts on buildings

their future ruins. Dusk deepens windows

and apertures. It hollows stones

with shadows like with water. It foretells

the near death of a hundred clouds

to the shining host. A thin layer of dust,

the seer leaves his footprints on the roofs

as he walks home from the future

not his own, swallowing his voice —

in its rays, fat blood flows down

the golden armor. Wet

blue entrails. Large heads

have rolled down the shoulders.

Speech has grown silent in deep mouths.

 .................................................

The signs of a life without past will emerge

like lies through the lines of an old page,

emptiness will turn into loss,

foreign sand into Ithaca.

Ithaca is the time

when there’s nowhere to go. If it’s night,

it means the night is the end of the voyage.

A sackcloth hiding the shoulders

of the stranger is truer than

speeches about past and future

he won’t make. Nobody

will. On the streets rain readies 

hollows for the funeral, already

overgrown with grass.

In a long puddle he sees:

a pauper, a random victim of the skies

hangs with his head down.

In height, he is a cloud, the size

of a lost faith

in returning home.

 .......................

So should I, a pauper sitting

by a stranger’s door, declare: I’m Odysseus,

and I’m back. Should I say:

The twilight pushes a heavy box of reflection

out of the windows

and thumbs through a pale face

as if it were a stack of letters lying in a vacuum,

written by an unfamiliar hand. 

You are in Ithaca, but you are not yet home.

The soul goes home the way of flesh,

clothed in white rags,

so that to say

upon arrival: I recognize

Old rags are stronger than old life.

Night, like dead water, sows together

the tattered contours of the past. 

A stranger’s death is a seed of your homeland,

sprouting from the graveyard statues,

from the clouds, forever still.