(the first page is missing)

1.

There are fish that bathe in the sand,
and cyclists that wheel over the waves.
I think of me. My schoolhouse on the sea.
Childhood already on skiff boat or bicycle.

Free balloon, the first balloon floating
over the screams that spiraled in the clouds—
Rome to Carthage face to tusk they went,
the fluid, sweet, French sailor boys in sandals.

Anda padrecito! no one ever loved learning Latin at ten.
And algebra, who ever knew what it was at that age!
Physics and the study of Chemistry—God!
Sunlight has better uses: a tan, girls, or futbol games!

And the open air cinema with its chocolate drinks.
Anne Boleyn, why I don’t know, in blue, takes the beach.
If the waves do not wash Anne over, a billy club copper
will dissolve her in the flower light of his lantern.

Penguin tuxedos with tommy guns enter to aim at 
my naked eyes, triggers half squeezed. Frozen— sent 
to cities of instantaneous heavens, I’m wrested
away without a soul, and—

New York flows to Cádiz to my home in the bay—
Sevilla’s fairs to París cafés, Iceland, Persia in a day.
A Chinaman is not a Chinaman.  A Pedestrian is Green 
while at the same time White or Black, don’t you say?

You are everywhere, from the stamen of your rose,
from your red, blooming center without a ticket 
to move—be still and rule all, king of everything you know…
and with every experience send out your postcards.

And by the multiplying passages
in the chase of the trains and trams,
it is not the lightning you imagine that brings your death,
but the million moons from your unassuageable lips.

2.

I was born with the cinema—respect me!
Under a net of cable and airline networks.
I was there when Royal floats were abolished,
and the Pope first ascended the automobile.

I saw phone calls sliding down the water panes,
angel feather blues from the skies raining sideways.
Those seraphic orchestras of the air
guarded the entrance to my ear canals.

Sing song fish from canvases, cloud and nickel
chasing newspapers and letters into the sea.
The postman does not believe in mermaids or sirens
nor in the waltz of the waves, but in death, certainly.

There are still bald spots tethered to the moon,
and sorrowful locks of hair used as bookmarks.
A rush of snow, bleaching the shadow, 
commits seppuku in the gardens.

What could it be my soul, how long ago 
breaks the running record of your absence?
What of my heart?  He is disconsolate. He never leaps.
Haha, stung by harlot’s chance and accident?

Look deeply into my eyes, and, lost,
you’ll break your swimming hips on the anxieties 
of the shipwrecked. The heap of the totally dead norths,
the only echoing be, a wobbling bobble of the seas.

3.

I know gunpowder and flintlock helmets, 
riders without a soul nor feedbags riding through 
wild grown wheat, the fields strewn with crumbling
basilicas, fire streams of blood, lime, and hellish ash.

But also each a bright sun of meeting in each arm.
The bird of morning. Shining like a goldfish, 
keeping a place in the book of love. Upon its head
a number, letter, beak a letter, without seal.

4.

P.s. (from the Great Ambassador to the Pope)

The voice, electricity and the tail 
of the acceleration of stars arose from
the confines of love in an explosion of 
the mechanical world.

Know about me? What I said on the phone
my mellifluous angel to men: who are you,
steel, tin, and lead?—One more bolt 
of lightning, there will be new life.

Author: Rafael Alberti
Translator: Manny Grimaldi