“The Dock” (English translation)

You stretch out in my mind

like a dock over the sea

            you whisper “come here”

and I climb up onto the wooden

boards strung together with

your voice so clam and certain;

lightly I walk, gathering your

words with every furtive footstep

            aware of the narrowness of the path suspended

            by grace, animated by your longing.

I sit quietly where your will stops.

I cast a glance toward the

strand,

the shore looks like the threshold of

            infinity

while the unanimous sea that

sees me now youthful

murmurs to the primordial horizon.

I let me bare legs dangle over the

dock’s edge, supple in their gentle swinging,

my feet skim the water without worry,

my toes dip in ripples that break like

            brightening smiles.

Then I lie back and hear you

sigh through the wood beneath my cautious weight

            the breezes of hidden stars in the sky thickened

blue race to overtake me, making me

turn my head aside. Everything stops abruptly

            the moment wraps me in arrested time

--I am startled by my spurred heart.

My blouse luffs at my breast transpired

            by secret burning emotions that

bead into tiny pearls of sweet oil on my skin;

my spine arcs gracefully off the dock

toward your body that covers me like a wave. The entire

sea rushes into my loving eyes.

I sink.

the dock and other poems