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Summer in Mallorca
The terrace stripped bare of every shadow.
A gekko basks. The sun pokes into every crevice
Drying out the plants, the soil, the roots,
Turning them into its own image,
Bland, flat, the second and third dimensions
Removed, a one party dictatorship
Broadcasted through klaxon sunrays,
Hammering on the anvil of the earth,
Banging flat the detail of wisdom and words.
And we long for the days of limpidness
The torrente running through melting green,
The fresh cold morning, the delicate peony petals.
This is when humankind expires. There's the cold,
Yes, the shivering cold that gouges out
The you from you, the me from me;
But summer heat's a smiling assassin
Skilled in the snake's deceiving arts
As it moves to the kill, softening, stroking.
We return to the house's shaded rooms,
The custom-bound particulars of daily life
With the sun's silent scream at the windows,
Carrying something to show that out of endurance
Some good may come, owing its very being
To the suffering: a basket of ripe oranges
For slicing, for squeezing out the tangy syllables
Of a language that will come to us in dreams
Hanging from limp green leafed boughs.
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