The Mouth

Mouth that tugs at my mouth.

Mouth that has tugged at me:

mouth that comes from far off

to illuminate me with its rays.

Dawn that gives to my nights

a radiance, reddened and white.

Mouth inhabited by mouths:

bird filled with birds.

Song that flaps its wings

upwards and downwards.

Death reduced to kisses,

dying slowly to thirst,

you give the blood-stained grass

two great beats of your wing.

The upper lip is the sky,

and the earth is the lower lip.

Kiss that wheels in the darkness:

kiss that comes rolling

from the first cemetery

to the last stars.

Star that holds your mouth

dumb and enclosed,

until a celestial dew comes

to quiver your eyelids.

Kiss that moves to a future

of young girls and boys,

who won’t leave the streets

or the fields empty.

How many mouth-less mouths

already buried we disinter!

I drink from your mouth to them,

toast them from your mouth,

as many as fell: over the wine

in their loving glasses.

They are memories, memories,

kisses distant and bitter.

I sink my life in your mouth,

I hear the murmurs of space,

and infinity seems

to have emptied itself over me.

I have to return to kiss you,

I have to return. I sink: I fall,

descending among the centuries,

towards the deep ravines,

like a feverish snowfall

of kisses and lovers.

Mouth that unearthed

the clearest dawn,

with your tongue. Three words,

you’ve inherited, three fires:

Life, Death, Love. There they remain

written on your lips.