THE DIGITAL TREE

This was a man whose right hand had been buried
who would spend his days in an empty room
resting his feet against the upper corner of the window
while holding a ship's porthole in his left hand;
rhinoceroses would pierce it with their horns
and allow their metallic hides to shine through

He had taken up the notion of being a poet
and spent so much of his time talking about the war
that he had neglected his right hand.

It had grown slowly and furiously
and, without his being aware of it,
had crossed through the very center of the earth and surfaced at the other end.

When the children of northern Sumatra
suddenly saw a tree without leaves and without fruit,
they rushed off to summon their parents,
When they came, they brought heavy swords
and felled the tree at its roots.
A white liquid seeped from its ravaged bark.

From that moment on,
this man as a poet, feels a sharp, cutting pain,
but he cannot tell exactly where in his body
it is contained.