Windows That Must Fall
Windows That Must Fall
I am free and I look at the world with eyes wide open toward mystery,
my fingers tremble like willows beaten by old, short-lived winds, like arrows forgotten in a bow's string long since slack,
and in my palms I hold a heart that burns like a torch in collapsed cathedrals,
just as sorcerers of long-gone nights would clutch, in their old ecstasies,
the moon, the grasses, the pyre, and the heavy silence of fallen stars.
Today's poets, with hands thin as delayed lightning bolts,
carry in their chests a window that must be broken so the light can enter,
and the lucidity with which we look at the universe afterward
is the only prayer that still keeps the flesh awake within our bones,
and their tongue of embers — what a disturbing, sacred spectacle.
Now that we are free, our walking through the streets carries the weight of a prophecy:
women carry today, in their eyes, treasures buried for centuries,
gentlemen smile with mouths full of old coins and silences,
shop windows burn like altars with saints of glass and false gold,
and our pockets, once full of sweets and letters,
now hide round stones, still warm from yesterday's sun.
Along with us, others too go out walking on the great boulevards of night,
they carry white, heavy fingers like unmelted candles,
and in my pocket, beside the face of a love long extinguished,
I carry a handkerchief soaked in the tears of all the empty train stations.
Today's poets, with hands trembling like willows,
poets with warm stones in every pocket of the soul,
must know that the only hard part is breaking the first dream met along the way,
because all the other dreams shatter on their own,
just as it's enough to put out a single star to watch
how the whole sky closes behind it, silent and beyond cure.
I ask forgiveness for the comparison to the star, poets of other times,
it's a memory from the years when I worshipped at every blossoming tree
and fainted with longing at every sunrise that seemed eternal to me.
Today's poets, with hands short and quick as gentle bullets,
can hurl their warm stones at the comparison to the star —
it will perhaps be the first window you truly break,
and all the other windows of the world will open on their own,
letting an entire sky pour into the houses, immortal and sad.
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