Venus - María do Cebreiro

The book is sexless. The book is a tree.

She was like morning frost.
He wore a ring on his little finger.

—I don't want to thaw you,
I only want to see the grass
beneath your body.

And if we have ideas
it's because the frost will come to retrieve them.

What deed splits our history in two
if we don't have a history,
only these verses?

—I barely remember my childhood.
I'm falling asleep.
My little head resting on the table,
while the others are talking.

—Was it the language of the dead,
the language of your dead?

—No, and she looked down.

—It was the language of school,
it was the language of machines.

—Intimate is a word we use
for what is deep inside.

—The poems I've kept are the ones that don't close down.

—Or the ones that don't open up?

—I'm looking for a lost language,
the one that came before me.

If I write I occupy space.

—Like astronauts?

—Almost like that, almost,
but without the flag.

Without planting it in the ground,
without raising it up.

—Not even the one with the river
that crosses it corner to corner?

—Not even the one with the black field.

Her voice quavers as she reads.
As he listens he spills wine on the table.

Vibration is the rhythm of desire.

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María do Cebreiro (born 1976) Spain
Translated Neil Anderson