The Cloisters

^{translated from the Spanish by W. S. Merwin}

From a place in the kingdom of France
they brought the stained glass and the stones
to build on the island of Manhattan
these concave cloisters.
They are not apocryphal.
They are faithful monuments to a nostalgia.
An American voice tells us
to pay what we like,
because this whole structure is an illusion,
and the money as it leaves our hand
will turn into old currency or smoke.
This abbey is more terrible
than the pyramid at Giza
or the labyrinth of Knossos
because it is also a dream.
We hear the whisper of the fountain
but that fountain is in the Patio of the Orange Trees
or the epic of Der Asra.
We hear clear Latin voices
but those voices echoed in Aquitaine
when Islam was just over the border.
We see in the tapestries
the resurrection and the death
of the doomed white unicorn
because the time of this place
does not obey order.
The laurels I touch will flower
when Leif Eriksson sights the sands of America.
I feel a touch of vertigo.
I am not used to eternity.