SECOND LIFE OF MY MOTHER

I hear your familiar footsteps all about me,
your pace like a cloud's or a slow river's,
your presence making itself felt: your humble majesty
visiting me, subject of your eternal dominion.

Over a pale unforgettable time,
over green families prostrate on the ground,
over empty dresses and trunkfuls of weeping,
over a land of rain, you rule silently.

You walk in insects and in toadstools, your laws
are executed by my hand every day,
and your voice slips furtively through my mouth
softening the metal and ash of my voice.

Compass of my long earthly voyage.
Origin of my blood, source of my destiny.
When the featureless dust hid you in its lair
I woke astonished to find myself still alive.

And I tried to tear down the invisible doors,
and vainly, a prisoner, I prowled about them.
I hanged myself haplessly with a rope of sobs,
and calling on you, traversed the marshes of dream.

But you are here, living, all about me.
I am aware of you breathing gently
through those sweet things that gaze upon me
in heavenly order, ranged by your hand.

You inhabit the breadth of the morning sunlight
and with your accustomed care enfold me
in its weightless mantle of lofty light
still chilly with cocks and shadows.

You measure the liquid chirrup of insects and birds
making me a gift of the sweetness of earth,
and your tender signals keep guiding me,
my solitude filled with your hidden speech.

You are in all that I do, you inhabit my silence.
Yours is the mandate that stands at my shoulder
when night drinks up the colours
and your infinite presence fills hollow space,

I hear within me your prophetic words,
and throughout the vigil you companion me,
warning of things to come, incomprehensible keys,
births of stars, ages of the plants.

Dweller in the skies, live, live without years.
My original blood, my earliest light.
May your immortal life, breathing through all things
in vast simple chorus, surround and sustain me!