PROEM

   At times poetry is the vertigo of bodies and the vertigo of speech and

the vertigo of death;

   the walk with eyes closed along the edge of the cliff, and the verbena

in submarine gardens;

   the laughter that sets on fire the rules and the holy commandments;

   the descent of parachuting words onto the sands of the page;

   the despair that boards a paper boat and crosses,

   for forty nights and forty days, the night-sorrow sea and the day-

sorrow desert;

   the idolatry of the self and the desecration of the self and the dissipa-

tion of the self;

   the beheading of epithets, the burial of mirrors;

   the recollection of pronouns freshly cut in the garden of Epicurus, and

the garden of Netzahualcoyotl;

   the flute solo on the terrace of memory and the dance of flames in the

cave of thought;

   the migrations of millions of verbs, wings and claws, seeds and hands;

   the nouns, bony and full of roots, planted on the waves of language;

   the love unseen and the love unheard and the love unsaid: the love in

love.

Syllables seeds.

From ARBOL ADENTRO (A Tree Within)

1976-1987