Clarity always falling from the sky;
it is a gift: it is not found among things
but very high above them and it floods them,
making their lives and labour its vocation.
Thus does day break; thus night
shuts off the roomy chamber of its shadows.
And this is a gift. Who makes beings
less created every time? What lofty dome
contains them in its love? But if it's here already,
though still early, homing in for the kill,
just as you come and go,
and it hovers, darts off and even from afar
nothing is clearer than its impulses!
Oh, that thirsty brightness of one form,
of one material to bedazzle her
self-consuming as it concludes its work.
Like me, like all that waits.
If you took all of light away with you
how am I to expect anything from the dawn?
And yet —this is a gift— my mouth waits
and my soul waits, and you are waiting for me,
inebriate persecution, simple clarity,
deadly like the embrace of sickles:
an embrace to the end that never slackens.
Translation: ANABEL TORRES