A Tapestry

Poems by Benjamín Valdivia.                                                                    Translated by Kimberly​ Williams


A Tapestry

In the west forms a web of unprecedented purple:
threads of night and the day’s end are warmed in the warp
of sun or sound:

Crackle of the spectacle, scream of the dying star
or today’s kiss. It is the radiant weave of violets
in their rough grays and their definitive reds and amethysts. 

There you take the voice from which you weave a joyful season:
an afternoon sifted in space as the threads of night burn
into the plots of a tapestry.
 

Jasmine’s Gift
 
Astounding jasmine,
its scent,
its fresh gift;
 
I don’t have a clear memory
of having jasmines that day
or if alone
 
it was your appearance
when the motion of your hair
became a movement of aromas
 
sailing by
the constellations
of the house.
 
Everything blazed
jasmine
before your path:
 
light white vegetable stars
illuminating the keys  
of this same place.
 
 
Figure in the Shade
 
On my side, city of the heart
drawing towards shore,
throwing sands in the night:
 
sea of those stripped of their load,
water of the weightless
gripping the pupils of the twilight.  
 
It’s a sea with defined lines: immovable
waves striping the skin whose
movements beat and regret the night.
 
In these sands are two figures
in a trance of unity: it is us
traveling birds
 
the contemplative air
above the water:
it’s us
 
the figure in the sketched shadow
wherein two wandering birds have flown
to their perfect identity.
 
 
A Drawing About Skin
 
You draw on my skin a landscape: that black sun,
the dark pine in the forest
of the prodigious mountains.
 
Underneath the drawing
rounds the blood in its ardent
circulation, its secret river.
 
The colors warn
and feed the eyes
in the notebook of my skin.
 
The blood sun reddens.
The pine vibrates in the vital wind.
And the mountains burn moss
 
in whose dampness
and mirages
already spell this morning.