I love the organized composure of the wind;

its curly fingernails of climbing vines reaches out to me

and brings some odours of fire in the afternoon.

I am rolling down under the tree of silicon,

among the doubts of the milky quartz

and the laudable arrogance of the opal;

I murmur in the streets the lines of Emily Dickinson,

and, without snowing how I get anywhere,

I return, lost from the depths of the waterlilies

having become a bird with a rare song.

I play with the aeolic will of my dark infancy,

dance in my bloody foul-mouthed territories,

and in the streets that I rarefy with volatile foam

I sculpt fantastic theories

that I insult with one smile.

There is no silence farther than the silence;

a sad memory that understands what to keep silent

wriggles and dies without knowing why.

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Letelier, Elias. Silence. Trans. Ken Norris. Montréal: The Muses Co., 1992.

ISBN 0919754-41-6  &  ISBN 0919754-41-4  < http://www.letelier.org >