Enigmas

You've asked me what the lobster is weaving there with

        his golden feet?

I reply, the ocean knows this.

You say, what is the ascidia waiting for in its transparent

        bell? What is it waiting for?

I tell you it is waiting for time, like you.

You ask me whom the Macrocystis alga hugs in its arms?

Study, study it, at a certain hour, in a certain sea I know.

You question me about the wicked tusk of the narwhal,

        and I reply by describing

how the sea unicorn with the harpoon in it dies.

You enquire about the kingfisher's feathers,

which tremble in the pure springs of the southern tides?

Or you've found in the cards a new question touching on

        the crystal architecture

of the sea anemone, and you'll deal that to me now?

You want to understand the electric nature of the ocean

        spines?

    The armored stalactite that breaks as it walks?

    The hook of the angler fish, the music stretched out

    in the deep places like a thread in the water?

    I want to tell you the ocean knows this, that life in its

        jewel boxes

    is endless as the sand, impossible to count, pure,

    and among the blood-colored grapes time has made the

        petal

    hard and shiny, made the jellyfish full of light

    and untied its knot, letting its musical threads fall

    from a horn of plenty made of infinite mother-of-pearl.

    I am nothing but the empty net which has gone on ahead

    of human eyes, dead in those darknesses,

    of fingers accustomed to the triangle, longitudes

    on the timid globe of an orange.

    I walked around as you do, investigating

    the endless star,

    and in my net, during the night, I woke up naked,

    the only thing caught, a fish trapped inside the wind.

From: ‘Canto General’