I have walked the distance of the earth
since first I saw you
In your carpet of milk,
perpetually shining. Thinking,
revolving beneath streetlamps,
among laundromats and sundials
I have wandered,
troubling myself with questions:

Shall I disfigure chandeliers?
Or shall I with teeth and liver and spine
swallow whole shores of stone and twilight?
Shall I tell you?
Burn down cathedrals?
Shatter the membrane not to enter,
but to exit?
Abandon myself in your wilderness?
Give my mind to the text of flowers?
How simple-minded life is.
How tiresome that we are still
the outlaws of the grain, Luis:
we who are as unbodied snow-fragile,
open and mild.
How strange that we must be so careful,
you and I.
For night cares nothing for we humans;
as neither do pine, nor wave,
nor the lunatic stars
contemplate our names or sorrows.
But here doubt invades us,
and everywhere the cities
drown the dove
in waves of mud and hatred.

But even so—even though
I have wandered in the boulevards,
and the red lakes may grow
tired of our weeping,
even though we are alone,
and the public microphones cry
with the venom of old charlatans—

let me speak openly and say:

I could take up residence in your hair.
I could weep and turn to dust,
or light, or poppies in your arms,
for I have been a ghost,
a shroud of smoke.

I could sing for the bright muscle
of your voice,
your smile of linen,
your oceanic eyes.

I could take up residence in you.

You, who came to me as a garment of flame,
of coal ore,
and luminous rain.