Poem to Be Read and Sung
(For Spanish translation click here)

I know there’s a person

looking for me day and night inside her hand,

and encountering me, each minute, in her shoes.

Does she ignore that the night is buried

with spurs in back of the kitchen?

I know there’s a person composed of my parts

whom I complete when my size fits

riding on its exact little stone.

Doesn’t she know that the money spent

on her portrait will never turn up in her trunk?

I know the day,

but the sun has escaped me;

I know the universal act she performed in her bed

with a courage not of her own and warm water, whose

superficial frequency is mine.

Is her being so small

that even her own feet would trample upon her?

A cat is the border between us,

right there beside its bowl of water.

I see her on the corner, her jacket

opens and closes, in the shape of the questioning palm trees . . .

What can she do but change weeping?

But she looks and looks for me. What a tale!

7 September 1937