Ages of Oblivion

Hours, passion or sorrow achieve their peace.

José Ángel Valente

There was at that time,
a rare quality of things green and growing.
It came from enormous pods
and stretched its branches parallel to the ground.

Filtered through surprises
in the limits of premature caresses,
the air shook its purple tresses,
royal poinciana of kisses barely traced
incapable of tasting
yesterday at that very moment
of touching the inconclusive morning.

Such a mass of roots exalting
the ancient, distant light
will fall silent when a shadow passes
and a lily pad muffles its scream in flight.

That creeping shade knows about different flashes of light,
about angles and furrows carved by sharp tools
that in a naked childhood
traced the inside and outside of things
with the hope of confining
the scope of fear,
the song's combustion, the orbit of the dream.

No way to remember. Harsh hours of fog
have passed without mourning,
but also droughts, months, ages of oblivion.
And if pain and evil
have suffocated without end in their own rust,
it seems to have been enough for humanity
to lean the staff of time against its voice.