Kelp
—Photo by D.R. Wagner, Elk Grove
VI
THE CLOCK FALLEN INTO THE SEA
—Pablo Neruda
—Pablo Neruda
There is so much dark light in space
and so many dimensions suddenly yellow
because the wind does not fall
and the leaves do not breathe.
It is a Sunday day arrested in the sea,
a day like a submerged boat,
a drop of time assaulted by scales
that are fiercely dressed in transparent dampness.
There are months seriously accumulated in a vestment
that we wish to smell weeping with closed eyes,
and there are years in a single blind sign of water
deposited and green,
there is the age that neither fingers nor light captured,
much more praiseworthy than a broken fan,
much more silent than a disinterred foot,
there is the nuptial age of the days dissolved
in a sad tomb traversed by fish.
The petals of time fall immensely
like vague umbrellas looking like the sky,
growing around, it is scarcely
a bell never seen,
a flooded rose, a jellyfish, a long
shattered throbbing:
but it is not that, it is something that scarcely touches and spends,
a confused trace without sound or birds,
a dissipation of perfumes and races.
The clock that in the field stretched out upon the moss
and struck a hip with its electric form
runs rickety and wounded beneath the fearful water
that ripples palpitating with central currents.
(trans. from the Spanish by Donald Walsh)
_____________________
—Medusa
