Natural Happiness

                     for Ángeles Pérez López

It is good for the body to see the wheat fields

green this morning at the beginning of May.

It is good for the body to imagine

that this high meadow, so completely given to the wind

that it seems to be made only of wind,

would never end in any sum

of arid edges.

It is good for the body that the only sound

be

the rumor of rain on the car roof.

It is good for the body to stop.

And get out. 

In an undefined place on this peninsula, the furthest 

west in Europe,

I remember the liturgy of the Eastern Orthodox Church 

that in the moment of communion

the only thing said is:

that which is good,

for those who are good.

 Translated by Curtis Bauer
“Natural Happiness” was published in Eros Is More (Alice James Books, 2014).

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