I borrowed the sun's wings
to fly toward that spot between two shores

I built towers of sand
where that shadow lived which served as my body

body ripened by a sun of extreme summer
I was in the wind's thoughts
intonations of light
composed my landscape

in the color of day
I scowled with the stones
where scorpions sheltered
on the island, women went masked
perhaps out of modesty

sky in my head I would make myself invisible
to see better, knocked at windowpanes
where the day gathered
in an ordinary hymn
I looked for meaning in form -
somewhere out there the world must exist

I was twenty years old impatient
to shore up at new continents
I left my father's house
gave my avian liberty up to the light
entered the space of darkness

I tried to open invisible doors
claimed to read the very stuff of silence
like a mother tongue
made a beginning of the past
and a double absence of the present

body more alive than dead
I refused to let night separate me
from day or day from night

watcher of dreams whom a dream invented
what was I looking for when I opened my eyes
on the colors of the world
which the sun never lets out of its sight

from words' second memory
real feeling is born
I inhabit that music
which I can't be the only one to hear

shadow which follows or precedes its shadow
on the border between dream and real
I stay on my own margins
in space and time

how to know if in this nowhere
place where a voice sets itself free
I came of my own free will
or if it was imposed on me

Translation: Marilyn Hacker