This is somewhat of a poem of a different tone,
a difficult subject, really, to deal with.
It's about the Blessed Virgin.
Some nights we see you looking over the forest, a ship
hoarding the sky, your four horns pointing us.
Oh, Maria, here we sit in wrecked forests, toes cracked,
and our dead sheep lying around.
By the light of your breasts, stare at our white hands
in disbelief, tinged green.
Hibiscus and love notes in our boots.
Is that basket you hold, like ours,
filled with chloroformed dogs, with steaming apples,
handcuffs, sly crocodiles?
And that rivulet eating your marble egg,
the same that eats ours.
Oh, Maria, master of the heavens, speak to us.
Maria, fire your guns, give us at least the dead flesh
of your palms.
Sometimes one cheek seems to slide,
your haunches shift, lizards flash in your eyes,
trees rustle, and the acid of gunpowder scrapes our knees.
In your windless see you topple half over, like a boy.
Still smiling, leer toward us a wooden clown.
And sometimes wake seeing you already gone, toward the hills.
Already facing the sea, a hole blown
in the back of your skull.