A poem by Vicente Huidobro, translated from the Spanish by Jonathan Simkins.
Trees walled off from the adventure
Trees quarantined from the crestfallen lamp
The lighthouses of living skin in yesterday’s roses
The icon of the pilgrim’s journey
My spirit is a legend of the ages
It scorns the stable house and the star’s cold iron
Others seek to crown a leper king
A glory of the domes of marble in the night of time
Thunder of the labyrinth of lascivious clouds
No one escapes their lures
Every tongue will hail the earth and its mountains
I have created flesh and tears
I have created light and the abyss
I have sung the harmonies
At the wet crest of tenderness and violence
Where the air of the eternal begins
No breath makes the day go forth
No hand turns the wheel of night
The stars of the great sages
Bleed the song of the waters dry
The will moves closer to death
The gods exact their toll
In the avenues of leviathans
The sounds of death fade
From the paths of the leaves
The eyes of death close
On the evening’s passage
The long wait comes to an end
And a noise of skeletons clatters at the bottom of the river