The Stillness Of The Dutch

Something—desires me,
as if it—and I
were part—from another part
that at the same time desires us
and at first—were everything.
Even though the voice in my ear tells me
that the game is reduced to the girl in the garden:
the sun, the granite roundabout, the string of lights
for a summer feast.
There is nothing else: sun and desire.
No desire of another body, but sun and desire
for the evidence of a body,
that objects remain close and calm,
that the voice in my ear doesn’t get worried
and does not tell
the outdated fable
in a new way.

Translated by Curtis Bauer
“The Stillness of the Dutch” is from Espíritu a saltos [Hurdling Spirit] (Pre-Textos, 2003).

You can read and listen to the poem in the original Spanish here.