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