Rosa, to draw you an island roughly,
with words and heliotropes, I have to break the bands of pride.
From this moment, I become the follower of one who hears the rain
fall between your legs. Because the gods are generous
like the rain's face or perhaps the eggplant purple
texture and grain of the place where days breaks I can write
this poem for you. Outside is the rhythm of silence, grim
biblical storytellers and luck as powerful
as the assault or metal fingers solitude; there are
melancholy musicians on posters that lacerate the moon,
chaos enthroned by winter: the dead hands
of insects, leather and snowy mimosas from the last
battles for the sake of certainty, cemeteries
and snake charmers at the crimson hour we returned
home as the flower markets opened.
But we, Rosa, are already far away, at sea,
and everything has the epic sense of two weightless bodies
- angels, white wine, saliva - desperately
loving each other on the four cardinal points
of the bedspread, on the way to dawn: beauty and the short-lives

Translated by D. Sam Abrams