Highway To Heaven

I.

The scars of impossible curves remain on the highway,

flickering lines that straighten against the border.

What would my spiked beauty look like

while bloody against the windshield glass,

and what would the true condition of my breasts be

for they would never

fall

again?

II.

Capsule only.

Between this      and nothing      a worthless movement.

A movement’s inattention, a foolish crack of chance and the

rosy weight of my

bones against the

ditch.

A cold butterfly crosses the way through,

my eyes caught by its leap and

I am lucky.

One two, one two, one

two.

III.

If at this very moment in time

my lane were crossed by the least misfortune

and my young luck just blew up at once,

nobody would see anything

shady or suspicious

in the glittering beauty

of my corpse at the edge.

IV.

At night the highway resembles a videogame.

The dullest blackness does not confuse me.

Like an intermittence

my youth, a cocaine line that sometimes

bends.

Behind my orbit the wheels get excited.

And I speed up as fast

as life is leaving this verse.

Translated by Susana Castro

“Highway to Heaven” was published in Profundidad de campo /Profundidade de campo [Depth of field] (Madrid: Visor, 2009).

You can read and listen to the poem in the Galician version here, and the Spanish version here.