Miguel Hernandez

Because Of Your Feet, Where Your Beauty Ends’
(VIII: From ‘El Rayo Que No Cesa’)



Because of your feet, where your beauty ends
in ten fragments of whiteness, more a dance,
a dove ascends to your waist,
an unending balm falls to earth.

Along with your feet goes the wonder
of nacre, in a ridiculous narrowness,
and where your feet go whiteness goes,
a dog sowing anklets of jasmine.

At your feet, as much foam as shore,
sand and sea reach me, and ebb from me,
and I try to enter the sheepfold of your sole.

I enter and let myself pass to your soul itself,
with the loving voice of the grapes:
trample my heart, now it’s ripe.