To Isabel and Josep Maria Castellet
Perhaps a dark furor of centaurs.
Blue seizure of auras and stars.
Thwarted, furrows beaten, the fall
like a trowel of terminal light.
Stout scepters, tempest, pyrite.
To what fire, dying body, are you in thrall?
A buried cry hushed by the sky above.
Sulfur in the court of the bare, blind grove.
The crag ignited by the setting sun.
Bristly visage of what we lived long ago.
The night espies me with eyes of snow
and I and the black sky are one.
Scowling, my future portends.
No signet seals or ciphers in pen.
No ceremony, no codicil.
At once, the verdict recognised,
They will strip me of my skin and eyes.
My passion, my sustenance
red standard of madness,
the warmth of a body of light:
all are rubble, kingdoms razed.
No more do you mourn them in winter days.
Destruction has devolved into rite.
Autumnal, who will return when
the vagabond northeastern wind
prays over the vastness of the oblivion of vice,
bare meadows on the moons,
dark stomach of the nubile dunes,
the bloody scythe wounding the heights?
The nightfall shifts its dark eyelash.
The tremulous wind of the past.
You win what you lose, my heart.
Longing, why now venture forth?
The moon has blood on its horns.
Sylvan, the sky departs.
Winter of crutches. A solitary sough
draws breath from the leaves. The shadow
of the madman grows. In the shroud
of the woods we hang demons. The foul
masks – tongue of gall, petrified scowl –
will utter our truth aloud.