Eunice Odio

Epigraph

Your hand in which nightingales

unfold their palid nakedness,

their broad moss-crowned chest

is the hand that opens to the leaning wind

clear jasmine amid the dark temple.

.

Yes, the water beads down the forehead,

and plows the small placidness of iris

and clusters of violins between fingers.

.

III

.

Lend me your ear and listen to my song

that is like the seed of seasons.

.

That is like the house of summer

where a boy emerges from my hand,

and the soul pushes to the edge,

and the soul—like the skin—can’t be felt.

.

We will enter the summer suddenly like trees

vernally open by rustlings and dust,

.

Because all flows back toward the arrival,

the womb ascends to the capital of fruit

and the air forms an equation of swallows.

.

Sacramental buds of grass,

oh offerings surging from the entrails,

sum of traveled nourishment!

.

And there at the level of the chest and the plowed field

is the seed of silence and desert light.

Everything returns to its exact form.

Life reclaims its small ambition

of being, entirely, profound greenness,

hidden edifice and open light.