4 Poems Pura López-Colomé translated by Jason Stumpf



Four Steps

1

Loveless creature,
withered plant.
Pitiless,
you dim the certainty of my life.
Next to its dying image,
I light a candle.

You made me pass through each of the stations. To find myself face to
face with dreams of forgiveness summoning those who went: I could not
forgive. I felt like the monk who could not cross the river because he
carried the weight of a woman who, in silence, he desired. And you are
like the other monk, so light he got lost between his robes.

I snuff out the flame now
and set a mirror to face it:
it has granted me,
purging soul,
its illuminated night.


2

The endless chain.
Lovers with the scent
that others left.
The immortal are in
the dampened sound,
in anticipation
of which, so many ends begin,
the infantile,
engrossed sweetness,
that ignores
that which will be.


3

All the others fall,
pass through,
like a drop
of nectar
on the mouth
of a god
that bleeds
within.


4

Pestilent smoke and exquisite aromas
from the censer.
Dreams, bodies,
words of sand.

The heart finally at rest,
burning without pain:
the dawn-song’s buds have bloomed,
opened themselves into
the divine light.

Night is not a locked house.
It is air without essences.


Be your name

I turn to you.
I do not see myself.
I keep looking for
myself in what you see
but I am lost.
I manage to distinguish
mountain ranges that do not end,
that undulate, love, unite,
are diluted.
And I don’t recognize myself.
Do you hope, perhaps,
that I will hover at your borders
labyrinth?

*

Blood is a blesséd prison,
gold of centuries,
coffer of pain.
Divine substance,
escapes,
is distilled,
becomes elixir.

When wind walked by the pool
breaking the mirage of the cell
into a thousand and one absolved drops,
the bottom rose to the surface,
a thousand and one incandescent fish.
What solar mercy.


In Memoriam Edna

You had hours of nothing more
than absolute, sealed confinement,
when the flowers hid, your face,
hands, legs, the womb:

fresh gladiolas,
fresh cut,
the aroma of your acts,
their star sap in the soul:

white chrysanthemums
bubble up upon opening the house’s doors,
inviting, offering,
caressing the bleeding
universe
of each one;

the voice of the iris
calls me from a place
both distant and near :

love me always,
don’t allow them to separate you
from this intact
mirror,
flower of the living
vision.

Forests

1

The dream floats
on the paths of this forest.
Difficult melody,
letter to the secret
of the echo:
Divine narcissus,
ubiquitous voice
The narcissuses were never so beautiful.


2

Each whiff of this air
puts one seed more
in motion,
hagia sophia,
endless forest,
eighth wonder
identical to that body
that devours other bodies,
full of grace.