When the words start to love

With one word, or maybe only with its edge
I hit the air in the poplar’s leaves
and several times I surrounded its green
and all its nests I filled
with multi-colored birds, and naked baby birds
so that each letter in the alphabet could understand its neighbor.

And then, everything was whistling with meaning - like a train
heading to its final destination.
Everything was vibrating
in the silence that follows the meaning.
And I was thinking, thinking aloud
in the voice of each single letter
straight and firm like the axle which splits
the forest, like the sword of a night between years.

Until it hurt, until it hurt I rummaged around
until I named every bent of the shadow
in its way to the heart, until I was beginning
to be clothed in poem, to be dressed up
for the wedding at which they - the angels - will see,
whom they took care of all along.

So it was getting lighter when I touched the sky with a word
or maybe only with its edge. Up the heart’s stairs
the King was climbing
saving those on his right and left and front and back
with a cosmic gesture - like a cross
rising up in the incandescent sunset.
That’s how I have learned to be awake when the words
start to love.

Translated by Andreea Luncan

From “The peace between two silences” - 2004

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