You came to lean on a leaf from my body - Emilio Adolfo Westphalen

You came to lean on a leaf from my body

Sweet and heavy drop like the sun over our lives

You brought the scent of wood and the tenderness of a leaning stalk

And high sea sail gathering in your glance

You brought the light step of dawn when it leaves

And scanned incense of tremulous groves in your hands

Step off a breeze in a breeze like a wave ascends the days

And in the end you were the abiding spring rolling the flowers

Or the beaches heading to a pointless dispute

To say if your hand was harmonious in time

Or if your heart was fruit of the tree or of tenderness

Or the muffled roar of the pump

Or the quiet voice of happiness denying and affirming itself

In each diastole and systole of permanence and negation

You came to lean on my cup

Red star and complete trill

You came to lean like night calls the creatures

Or like the arm closes its circle and encompasses the entire schedule

Or like the tempest removes the veils from its face

To look at the world and not mistake its oars

When the walls are raised and caves closed

You have come and I can’t reach what justice you mistake

So you can be without the levity of escape and planetary gravitation

Edged by honeysuckle in the infantile astrology

So you can be like the rose sunk in the seas

Or the boat anchored in our consciousness

So you can be without stopping the minutes climbing the rigging

And always falling before ringing the bell that summons death

So you can be besieged amid the sound of the harp and the skirmish river

Amid aura serpent and rosemary of the ages

Amid solstice tongue and caressing lips of delayed slowness

You have come like death shall come to our lips

With the joyous transparency of the days without lantern

Of the concerts of autumn leaves and summer birds

With the contentment of saying I have arrived

Seen in springtime when it puts its first hands on things

And ties the mane of the cities

And gives free passage to the waters and free song to the mouths

Of the girl when she awakens and of the countryside when it gathers itself

You have come heavy like the dew on the flowers in the jar

You have come to erase your arrival

Banner of centuries nailed into our chest

You have come marble nose

You have come diamond eyes

You have come golden lips

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Emilio Adolfo Westphalen (1911 - 2001) Peru

Translated by Guillermo Parra

Source: Venepoetics