The Wound

1

The leaves sleeping beneath the wind:

A vessel for the wound.

Time perishing: the glory of the wound.

The trees rising among our lashes:

A lake for the wound.

The wound lies in bridges

When the grave lengthens,

When patience stretches

Between the banks of our love and death.

The wound, a gesture, is passing.

2

I give the voice of the wound

To the tongue of strangled bells,

To stone approaching from afar,

To aridity and the arid land,

To time borne on a stretcher of ice,

I kindle the fire of the wound.

When history burns in my garments,

When blue nails sprout in my book,

When I shout during the day,

Who are you? Who’s thrusting you

Into my notebooks,

Into my virgin earth?

In my notebooks, in my virgin earth,

I glimpse two eyes of dust

And hear someone say,

“I am the wound that grows

In your narrow history.”

3

I named you cloud,

Wound, dove of departure,

I named you quill and book.

And here I am, starting a dialogue

Between myself and the drowned tongue

On the isles of exodus,

On the archipelago of the ancient fall.

And here I am, teaching the dialogue

To the wind and palms—

Wound, dove of departure.

4

Had I a harbor, had I a vessel

In the land of dreams and mirrors,

Had I the remains

Of a city, had I a city

In the land of children and weeping,

I would forge them all for the wound

Into a spear-like song

That pierces trees and stones and sky,

A song as supple as water,

Unruly and dazed, like conquest.

5

World adorned with dreams and yearning,

Rain down on our deserts,

Rain down, but shake us, palms of the wound,

And break two branches off for us

From the trees that love the silence of the wound,

From the trees with arched lashes and hands

That keep vigil over the wound.

World adorned with dreams and yearning,

World falling in my brow,

Drawn like the wound,

Come no closer—the wound is closer than you.

Don’t tempt me—the wound is more beautiful,

And the wound has passed by that enchantment

Cast by your eyes

In the last kingdoms,

Passed without leaving a sail to tempt it astray,

Without leaving it an island.