Miguel Hernández:

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.