PELLICER, Carlos

Invitation to a Landscape

To pose in my hand – I invite the landscape,

invite it to call itself into question,

and then give to it a dream of abyss for ingestion,

in the spiral hand of heavens with a human shape.

That by loosening the moorings in the river

the mountain to its marbles will speak

so that a frozen sigh leading to its peak

might hold the worth of fruit in a double summer.

To the cloud, I might proselytize

the risks posed by height and morning light,

then argue that the low tide is not on the rise,

but rather every hour, set alight.

To make a shadow tame

within a rosebush, at its very gut

(To add to love what is subtracted on its name

and feed the remains to a dovecote of naught).

What if the sea might abandon its pearls

and then step out its shell… !

What would happen to these frothy swirls

if instead of splashing all over, they lay forgotten?

Who knows if the stone

that at every turn is a wonder,

to join the exact exedra would be prone,

fountain-garden-love-tumbler.

What if the benign lane

that comes, goes and is, becomes impassable

on account of a blunder without aim:

a magnetic waterfall that rendered it pliable.

Will the trees be able to put in motion

all their elementary schools of chirping?

(I feel my desires go mixing and mingling

Like townspeople at a wedding celebration).

Over there, the river is a boy, but it is a man here,

One that gathers dark leaves in a creek.

Everybody calls him by his name, without sneer

and strokes him like a dog, one that is meek.

Which season should my guests

want to get off at? In autumn or in springtime?

Or will they wait till the foliage speaks of harvests

like an angel announcing apples at its prime?

And when the guests

finally arrive – within myself –, the gentleness

to which every corner of my being attests

shall leave them alone and, as a sign of happiness,

will show a set of ten fingers that rests

untouched

but

by

poetry,

alone.

Recinto

VIII

You are more than my sight for you see

what I bear of your life in my eyes.

And so I walk blind to myself

illumined by my eyes that burn

with the fire of you.

You are more than my hearing for you hear

what I bear of your voice in my ears.

And so I walk deaf to myself

full of your tender inflections.

Your voice alone!

You are more than my scent for you smell

what my nostrils bear of your odor.

And so I go in ignorance of my own aroma,

exuding your perfumed precincts,

a sudden garden of you!

You are more than my tongue for you taste

what I bear on my tongue of you alone,

and so I go insensible to my flavors

tasting the delight of yours,

the taste only of you.

You are more than my touch for on me

you caress your caress and spill over.

And so I touch on my body the pleasure

of your hands set afire by mine.

And I am only the living mirror

of your senses. The faithfulness

of the lake in the volcano’s throat.