Waterfowl Lullaby

after Miguel Hernández

I see you on a beach, one
of many you have been to.
You eat seaweed
from the rocks to keep salt
always at the ready. Your eyes
tint my skin, they grow roots
under my feet. They give
sense to my shape.

There is nothing I can say
to change your hours. Each one
comes and goes, a wave
evaporating into sand.

My sister is an island, lying
in the ocean. Please laugh,
laugh into the wind. I can hear you
in the taste of the desert,
sucked dry but for faint traces
from beyond the places I have been.

The ocean is a sky. You will die
if you fall into it. But the bird
can wave the white flags
of its wings and fall, falling
which is flying which is floating
and each one remote
from the beach where a wave’s
dissolution ends only itself.

The body with wings beating
flies blind and erratic,
the sun has never
shone so brightly.
How have I never seen
your outline pasted
against the clouds?

Now, so far from the water,
the sky distinguishes
shades of blue only
from itself. How, how
can I tell it your eyes
go deeper, you know more
than it will in seasons of days?

Your eyes are the Pleiades
less five, leading only in loops.
They cry out for corporality,
for the death of all illusions.

You remember, you remember me.
You remember each one of me,
and you are the only one.
Tell your eyes if they no longer
see me, I will not cry. Stay blind
to what’s happening
and to which thing
I tell you is a lie.