WORLD POETS MAGAZINE

    Last night someone cut down a tree that was three thousand years old   Last night, someone cut down a tree that was three thousand years old, standing tall over the field. In the night, its pieces burned, warming the frozen men, and in the mist, the glow marked the site of its death, the same as its long life, the same as its brief bonfire.   Yesterday, its shadow stretched to the distant house, crossed the creek that was not there when it first emerged. Today, a pit with dangling roots, fragments of branches and bark, marks where its powerful sap flourished through the centuries.   In its crown, animals that no longer exist nested, and under its branches, infinite storms erupted. Its high arms rose from among the low clouds. Between its roots, our ancestors hid from the beasts, and later, treasures were hidden, love letters, stolen objects, and someone carved with a pocketknife words that cannot be read.   Last night, someone cut down a tree that was...

    Who Must Have Kissed Your Eyelashes?                                                                                                                                                                                                                        ...

  The First Déja Vu   A horse on the pampas and a tree.   A horse swaying with boat tenderness.   A honey horse and two stiff reins.   What? Didn’t you see death? How it galloped?   A wooden horse and a tree split wandering through wastelands.   Then I remembered what I was like: absent, swayed, sad, liquid.   What? Didn’t you see death? How it galloped?   (from Spanish to English translation: Katherine M. Hedeen)       The Drowned Man   I’d like to make it clear that it wasn’t the river but the earth itself where I drowned.   The only river in my memory is a shudder where small things sink even though they never fully disappear.   Sometimes they sink before the river runs past.   And their cries for help always comes too late.     (from Spanish to English translation: Katherine M. Hedeen)     Wonder   Today’s work involves moving a stone from here to there. It’s a heavy rock, more t...

  Love More Mysterious Than The Dead          ... odours of childhood       that welcomed sickly joy ...                          Quasimodo   We thought we had forgotten the smell of the old house, when suddenly, on opening a wooden door, those summer nights came back to us, the mosquitoes' torment, the holidays, their eves and the mysterious resuscitation of our dead.   The years used to age these memories too, used to superimpose other summer nights, other holidays, other eves, another love more mysterious than the dead. Until in an instant there returned the smell of childhood and its sickly joy.     Alexis' Moon   The street has changed: before, night here was wilder: on the corner a lamp would swing in the summer breeze, crickets and frogs were omens of storms and there came ...