Beast
In the motionless forest a rhythm
hidden by the sun through branches
at midday alert fear the leap
(time will go on deflagrating
its ray
annulling limbo
absence
ambush
will go on able to wound
the blank center of what is eternal).
Beast: rhythm and color
light and shadow
beast: rhythm in flight
melody.
Peril of the beast: false absence
in unwary silence.
Intense beast. Sudden, in the
forest,
fear leaps! But meaning appears.
Destruction
Thing against thing:
useless cruelty
of analysis. Cruel
knowing that rends
the knowing being.
Life against thing:
violation
of form recreating
it in wise and useless
human syntheses.
Life against life:
sterile cruelty
of light that consumes itself
disintegrating essence,
uselessly.
Seven Bird Poems
I
The bird is definitive—:
we do not seek it:
it will elect us.
II
If it were the hour of the bird
you'd open and know
the eternal moment.
III
It will never be the same,
our atmosphere:
we uphold the flight
that holds us up.
IV
The bird is lucid
and lacerates us.
We bleed. No possible
scarring in that
direction.
V
This bird is plumb:
it architects the real and is the very real.
VI
We'll never know
such purity:
bird devouring us
while we sing it.
VII
In light of full flight
we will exist in this bird:
it lives us.
Poemites
a) morning
No one yet. Roses greet me
and I greet the silence
of roses.
b) absence
No one here
and clouds.
c) bird
Wings hanging in
lightinstant.
d) moon
Integrality.
Fixity.
e) Narcissus
Flower water face
flower water
flower.
f) spring
From not-hope
occur
flowers.
g) lake
Water's
chill
tension:
peace—in—being.
h) expecting
Open windows.
Door merely leaning …
i) vase
but incommunicant.
j) end
Absence of roses. The way
now with no one, to silence.
Challenge
Against the flowers I live
against limits
against appearance pure attention
constructs a countryside with
no more gardens
than essence.
Translated from the Portuguese by Chris Daniels