A ghost, though invisible, still is like a place
your sight can knock on, echoing; but here
within this thick black pelt, your strongest gaze
will be absorbed and utterly disappear:

just as a raving madman, when nothing else
can ease him, charges into his dark night
howling, pounds on the padded wall, and feels
the rage being taken in and pacified.

She seems to hide all looks that have ever fallen
into her, so that, like an audience,
she can look them over, menacing and sullen,
and curl to sleep with them. But all at once

as if awakened, she turns her face to yours;
and with a shock, you see yourself, tiny,
inside the golden amber of her eyeballs
suspended, like a prehistoric fly.

^{translated from the Spanish by Alice Stone Blackwell}

Freaks of bright crystal, airy beauties fair,
Whose enigmatic forms amaze the eye—
Crowns fit to deck Apollo’s brows on high,
Adornments meet for halls of splendor rare!
They spring from knots in tree-trunks, rising there
In sweet gradation; winding wondrously,
They twist their serpent stems, and far and nigh
Hang overhead like wingless birds in air.

Lonely, like pensive heads, all fetterless.
Lofty and free they bloom; by no dull chain
Their flowers to any tyrant root are bound;
Because they too, at war with pettiness,
Desire to live, like souls that know no stain,
Without one touch of contact with the ground.

Las Orquídeas

   Caprichos de cristal, airosas galas
de enigmáticas formas sorprendentes,
diademas propias de apolíneas frentes,
adornos dignos de fastuosas salas.

   En los nudos de un tronco hacen escalas;
y ensortijan sus tallos de serpientes,
hasta quedar en la altitud pendientes,
á manera de pájaros sin alas.

   Tristes como cabezas pensativas,
brotan ellas, sin torpes ligaduras
de tirana raíz, libres y altivas;

   porque también, con lo mezquino en guerra,
quieren vivir, como las almas puras,
sin un solo contacto con la tierra . . .

Like tiny drops of crystal rain,
       In every life the moments fall,
To wear away with silent beat,
       The shell of selfishness o’er all.

And every act, not one too small,
       That leaps from out the heart’s pure glow,
Like ray of gold sends forth a light,
       While moments into seasons flow.

Athwart the dome, Eternity,
       To Iris grown resplendent, fly
Bright gleams from every noble deed,
       Till colors with each other vie.

’Tis glimpses of this grand rainbow,
       Where moments with good deeds unite,
That gladden many weary hearts,
       Inspiring them to seek more Light.

curved as a lip pouting for a kiss

sponge of sunlight,
my tiniest
filaments stand in ceremony
to your song of color

insects decide to walk the labyrinth
of your perfumed path

are you tickled by these
cellular inspectors
sipping your sweet wine of particulates

would you have preferred to be a robin
burdened with the sky’s
most unique song

do you wish you were the moon
a whole planet of petals
with an atmosphere of cologne

a dolphin bathing in the coral medicines
of an oceanic garden?

you itch
when you are closed
                          shy & anxious

unconcerned with weather
              death or dementia

you are the earth’s soldier of love,
                                    desire

yet––what do you know of it?

I wandered lonely as a Cloud
   That floats on high o’er Vales and Hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
   A host of golden Daffodils;
Beside the Lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine
   And twinkle on the Milky Way,
They stretched in never-ending line
   Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced, but they
   Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:—
A Poet could not but be gay
   In such a jocund company:
I gazed—and gazed—but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft when on my couch I lie
   In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
   Which is the bliss of solitude,
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the Daffodils.