Triangles

Three triangles of birds crossed  

Over the enormous ocean which extended  

In winter like a green beast.  

Everything just lay there, the silence,  

The unfolding gray, the heavy light  

Of space, some land now and then.  

Over everything there was passing  

A flight  

And another flight  

Of dark birds, winter bodies  

Trembling triangles  

Whose wings,  

Frantically flapping, hardly  

Can carry the gray cold, the desolate days  

From one place to another  

Along the coast of Chile.  

I am here while from one sky to another  

The trembling of the migratory birds  

Leaves me sunk inside myself, inside my own matter  

Like an everlasting well  

Dug by an immovable spiral.  

Now they have disappeared  

Black feathers of the sea  

Iron birds  

From steep slopes and rock piles  

Now at noon  

I am in front of emptiness. It’s a winter  

Space stretched out  

And the sea has put  

Over its blue face  

A bitter mask.

translated by Jodey Bateman