V (from Suite for Maruja)

By Pablo Armando Fernandez

I hope you wake up.
My hands have tried, in vain,
to tear the wings of that dark bird
away from your eyelids,
to tear his claws from your throat,
and his rapacious beak from your forehead.
Could death be a night-bird?
I see it growing over your body, its feathers
still; I shall never reach its eyes,
even though my hands ring its neck
and grab its enormous wings.
I am about to call out to frighten it,
because it is also asleep.
I have never known such silence.
I am about to call out.
I shall never reach your mouth, even though all my body
loses, I know not how many times, its blood,
tugging, at that nameless beast.
I have my hands full of feathers and blood.
It seems that you do not feel the weight upon you.
I have never known such blackness.
Steps and voices are heard, someone opens the door.
I am afraid. I am about to call out.
The doctor and the nurse come in, they consult
on a matter which my ears cannot pick up.
They speak to you and you smile.
Zeinaida gathers your damp hair, kisses you.
You look like two little girls.
You float on a lake of snow
which undulates gently with your body.
The cowardly bird spies upon me through the window-pane:
his eyes are turned off, 
but he does not avert them from mine.
Zenieda arranges your pillows.
This girl brings the summer sun
(in GuidaXXX de Melena the barometer fell two degrees
celsius, the wind never trembled as on these nights, 
we have not seen the moon and it is January),
it is as if she were singing.
If ever I have heard the blessing of the day
in the air, if ever I have felt life burning, it is now.
But that odious bird is waiting for them to leave us alone
I discovered she has hatched her eggs, and soon
they will fill the room with their wings, beaks, and claws;
they will block up the door, and cover up the window.
We shall not be able to get out.
The doctor and Zeniada take their leave.
The room shines with whiteness, it is snowing;
the snow piles up, it will reach your bed.
I run, shivering; my arms and my mouth
long to be on fire.
Frosted, silent birds fall from the ceiling, 
they mingle and merge in a block of ice.
You seem to be asleep, white moon-bird.
I want to open the window, I want to make two gigantic spades of my hands
and tear their closed, fearful whiteness
from floors and walls.
One more hour and we shall be two ice cubes, or locked in an embrace, 
an iceberg the size of the room.
It is pointless calling out, we are frozen, 
although within us a steady flame is rising.
Asleep as you are, you will not be able to share my vigil,
but we shall arrange a meeting in your dream.
I shall say that I in love and a snow-woman awaits me,
that she meets me with flowers and snow songs,
that she is bedecked with necklaces of snow pearls, 
and she melts in my arms and becomes the water
that drips from my eyes.

What time is it? At eleven they change shift,
but the watch of my frozen pulse has stopped.
Outside without doubt there is life and warmth
and breathless lovers seek the green shade
of trees.
But my love is beautiful in her snowy season.
Love, do you perhaps dream of those birds that fly beneath the sun?

I hear voices and footsteps through the door.
The snow-birds begin to hide themselves away.
When Milagros comes in, my love sits up
on a white beach, and they talk of the coming morning
and of other mornings that await us,
sweaty, in a street full hubbub.  

I still doubt that death is a bird
but I know that life is always a girl.

National Hospital, 1970.

					Translated from the Spanish by John Brotherton

http://www.think-ink.net/visit/maruja.htm