Poetry

Cuando todos los siglos vuelven,
anocheciendo, a su belleza,
sube al ambito universal
la unidad honda de la tierra.

Like two wrestlers etched
around some ancient urn,

we’d lace our hands, then wrench
each other’s wrists back

As if you were a child again; you smooth
a little space of sand, with careful fingers
pick out a twig, a stone, a scrap of paper,

When all the centuries return,
night falling, to their beauty,
to the ends of the universe rises
the deep oneness of the earth.

A wanderer hears drums, warning him of war,
And that one cry of autumn from a wild-goose at the border,
And he knows that the dews tonight will be frost