III

Harsh love, violet crowned with thorns,

a thicket made sharp between so many passions,

spear of pains, corolla of rage,

through what roads and how did you find my soul?

Why did you cast your painful fire,

suddenly, between the cold leaves of my path?

Who taught you the steps that would lead you to me?

What flower, what stone, what smoke revealed my abode?

What’s true is that the frightful night did shiver,

dawn filled all glasses with its wine

and the sun established its celestial presence,

while cruel love surrounded me unrelenting

until piercing me with swords and thorns

it opened in my heart a burning path.

IV

You will remember that capricious waterfall

where the throbbing scents climbed,

from time to time a bird dressed

with water and slowness: winter suit.

You will remember the gifts of the earth:

angered fragrance, clay of gold,

herbs of the thicket, crazy roots,

bewitched thorns like swords.

You will remember the bouquet you brought,

bouquet of shadows and water with silence,

bouquet like a rock with foam.

And that time was like never and always:

we go there where nothings waits

and find everything that is waiting.

V

I did not touch your night nor the air nor your dawn,

only the earth, the virtue of things that grow in clusters,

the apples that grow hearing pure water,

the clay and the resins of your fragrant country.

From Quinchamali where your eyes were made

to your feet created for me in the Frontera

you are the dark clay that I know:

in your hips I touch once more all wheat.

Perhaps you did not know, araucana,

that before I loved you I forgot your kisses

my heart was left remembering your mouth

and I went through the streets like one who is wounded

until I understood that I had found,

Love, my territory of kisses and volcanoes.

VI

In the forests, lost, I cut a dark branch

and to my lips, thirsty, I lifted its whisper:

it was perhaps the voice of the rain crying,

a broken bell or a torn heart.

Something which from so far seemed to me

gravely hidden, covered by the earth,

a scream deafened by immense autumns,

by the half-open and moist darkness of the leaves.

But there, awaking from the dreams of the forest,

the branch of the hazel tree sang under my mouth

and its wandering smell climbed through my mind

as if suddenly the roots I had abandoned

were searching for me, the land lost with my childhood–

and I stopped, wounded by the wandering scent.

VII

"You will come with me" I said–without anyone knowing

where and how my pain was beating,

and for me there was no carnation nor mariner’s song,

nothing but a wound, opened by love.

I repeated: come with me, as if I were dying,

and no one saw in my mouth the moon that was bleeding,

no one saw the blood that was rising into the silence.

Oh love, now let us forget the star with thorns!

That is why when I heard your voice repeat

"You will come with me"–it was as if you had unleashed

pain, love, the fury of imprisoned wine

that would rise from its buried vault

and once again in my mouth I felt a taste of flame,

of blood and carnations, of stone and something burnt.