The Innermost Zone

SO AS NOT TO STAND IN OUR OWN WAY

We alone
send darkness spinning
we alone repudiate
night and winter and milk-gray skin
the many mornings of shivering
we alone install
light and floating desire
it´s our eager fingertips
that open the clouds
and make the sky reflect itself
in the warm asphalt
it´s the chemistry of our dreaming bodies
that makes the soil awaken
under its crust
and sparrows land on the grass
we reckless lovers
who revive it all each year
as we feel our way between lips
as we wedge into flesh
forgetting ourselves
in the world.

The Innermost Zone 1983, translated by Roger Greenwald