The flowering sea and the mountains in the moon’s waning



the great stone close to the Barbary figs and the asphodels



the jar that refused to go dry at the end of day



and the closed bed by the cypress trees and your hair



golden; the stars of the Swan and that other star, Aldebaran.







I’ve kept a rein on my life, kept a rein on my life, travelling



among yellow trees in driving rain



on silent slopes loaded with beech leaves,



no fire on their peaks; it’s getting dark.



I’ve kept a rein on my life; on your left hand a line



a scar at your knee, perhaps they exist



on the sand of the past summer perhaps



they remain there where the north wind blew as I hear



an alien voice around the frozen lake.



The faces I see do not ask questions nor does the woman



bent as she walks giving her child the breast.



I climb the mountains; dark ravines; the snow-covered



plain, into the distance stretches the snow-covered plain, they ask nothing



neither time shut up in dumb chapels nor



hands outstretched to beg, nor the roads.



I’ve kept a rein on my life whispering in a boundless silence



I no longer know how to speak nor how to think; whispers



like the breathing of the cypress tree that night



like the human voice of the night sea on pebbles



like the memory of your voice saying ‘happiness’.







I close my eyes looking for the secret meeting-place of the waters



under the ice the sea’s smile, the closed wells



groping with my veins for those veins that escape me



there where the water-lilies end and that man



who walks blindly across the snows of silence.



I’ve kept a rein on my life, with him, looking for the water that touches you



heavy drops on green leaves, on your face



in the empty garden, drops in the motionless reservoir



striking a swan dead in its white wings



living trees and your eyes riveted.







This road has no end, has no relief, however hard you try



to recall your childhood years, those who left, those



lost in sleep, in the graves of the sea,



however much you ask bodies you’ve loved to stoop



under the harsh branches of the plane trees there



where a ray of the sun, naked, stood still



and a dog leapt and your heart shuddered,



the road has no relief; I’ve kept a rein on my life.







The snow



and the water frozen in the hoofmarks of the horses.





